Hey everybody, meet BESS. Comely little lass, no?
BESS is short for Battery Energy Storage System. Inside those modular-home-lookin’ boxes are lots and lots of lithium-ion batteries. (The technology is changing; some newer BESSes have other kinds of batteries.) These installations store energy produced during off-peak times, often from wind or solar arrays, and save it for times of peak demand. They can also provide emergency power during outages.
These things, it says here, are poised to become key components of the electric power grid of tomorrow.
I hadn’t been formally introduced to BESS until I spent a few days in Long Lake, New York, a tiny town in the heart of the Adirondacks. While driving around town, I couldn’t help notice bright yellow signs along the roadside that said “Stop the Lithium Battery Farm” with a URL at the bottom. Following the link, I discovered that a group of local residents is trying to block the installation of a BESS.
Oh great, I thought. Another energy panic is upon us.
When I returned home I did a bit of looking around, and discovered that VTDigger just recently ran a story about a series of BESS-type installations being built in the Northeast Kingdom by a subsidiary of our friends at Hydro Québec. There was a link to a piece from last September about Green Mountain Power installing a series of battery storage systems. There was no mention in either story of any local opposition, let alone the Annette Smiths of the world sticking their noses in, but after watching new kinds of energy technology take hit after hit after hit from aggrieved activists and NIMBY stalwarts, I think I know what’s coming. I’m just surprised it happened in Long Lake before it got here.
Are there potential issues with these units? Sure. There are potential issues with anything. You know what we have real, tangible, existential issues with? Existing technology. If wide deployment of battery storage systems will take the edge off peak demand, allowing us to reduce maximum production, then they’re worthwhile. If they will make renewable energy a better deal, I’m all for it.
And if, on top of all that, a nearby BESS unit will reduce or eliminate power outages, well hell, sign me up.
Our current energy systems are a chaotic mess that has helped worsen climate change. Barring a drastic decline in the human population, our only way out of this situation is new and better technology. It won’t always work out, but what we don’t need is kneejerk opposition to anything new and unfamiliar.
BESS technology, it seems to me, is a promising component of the smarter, decentralized electricity system of the future. Let’s hope it doesn’t become the next victim of know-nothing opposition.
The Vermont Political Observer. 
I don’t know much about BESS yet. But that said, I am all for new technologies that reduce emissions, make power more reliable, have potential for less expense and greater equitable distribution.
Walters, You have no idea what you’re talking about. You need to research and understand the human and environmental and political costs of large-scale lithium mining (and associated rare earth metals) and lithium battery production. Get out of your now flooded Montpelier mansion and actually learn about the reality of the world, not your typical self-absorbed, deluded and duplicitous Vermont fantasy.
Right on cue.
Well, yeah, there are issues
https://www.silive.com/news/2023/07/toxins-may-have-been-among-chemicals-in-the-air-amid-lithium-ion-battery-site-fires-in-warwick-report-says.html
John’s one of them true-believers… can’t do much with a true-believer in the ‘technology will save our little white asses’ cult.
Yup, that’s me, uncritically accepting of any and all technologies.
Just landed in Vermont after driving 5 hours from 3 states away to get here to assist Vermonters in flood relief triage with equipment, supplies, and means to house myself.
Curiously, vermonters have flooded out of state in droves.
Vermont’s mass exodus serves to yet again reveal the true character of vermonters.
Is that why vermonters feel the need to sport Vermont Strong license plates, because you don’t actually possess strength, or fortitude, moral or otherwise?
There is no evidence in Census figures or anywhere else that supports the false claim of a mass exodus. Vermont has actually gained a modest amount of growth since Covid-19. That’s why we have a real estate affordability crisis, don’t you know.