BALTIMORE — His home of 50 years may soon look out on 72 acres filled with nine thousand solar panels along rocks road in Jarrettsville, but Don Brock’s concerns over the state’s efforts to boost clean energy don’t end there.
“They’re putting in a battery storage area not far from here and, environmentally, it is a disaster,” Brock told us last month after viewing a presentation on the proposed 500 MW facility.
Maryland PSC reviewing plans for controversial plants
It’s one of four proposed transmission-connected energy storage projects seeking approval from the Maryland Public Service Commission under the Next Generation Energy Act.
Proponents say they’re part of the answer to bringing down high energy bills while the load on the power grid will be increased with data centers and other forms of energy production are being forced into retirement.
“Retirements that we want. Coal retirements. That’s a good thing. That’ll decrease carbon emissions,” said Del. Lorig Charkoudian, (D) Montgomery County, “but we need to face this with the most affordable, the most reliable and the quickest option, and that is battery storage.”
Too quick for opponents who say the storage plants could risk lithium-ion battery fires and that could send toxic emissions into the air and contamination into water bodies.
“I don’t know if you’re familiar with the battery banks, but they are absolutely huge and that feeds the grid at night,” said Brock, “They decided this area that they picked overlooks Deer Creek. I mean it is immediate and it is a steep embankment. If anything were to happen, Deer Creek would be destroyed from here to the Chesapeake Bay.”
In Focus: calls for large-scale battery storage projects in first round
Proponents of building more battery storage facilities here in Maryland say they’re much more safe now than they were even a few years ago.
In their haste to move forward with the projects, they say they may not have enough time to convince people who don’t trust their science.
“It’s just really important that we don’t add to fearmongering,” said Charkoudian, “and we make sure people have the accurate information about the things that keep batteries 100 percent safe.”
