The Not in My Back Yard (NIMBY) movement has targeted nuclear power plants, high voltage transmission lines, windmills and solar farms, demanding that builders just put them somewhere else. Now Equinor, the Norwegian energy company, wants to install New York’s largest grid battery storage facility in middle-class Mahopac, in Putnam County, about forty miles north of New York City. This proposed site is right next to posher Somers in Westchester County, on property owned by— as described by the local paper — members of two politically prominent local families.
(It’s bad enough bringing several government jurisdictions into the fray. Why add a political component to the deal?) Opponents argue that lithium-ion batteries can develop thermal runways which lead to high temperatures that cause the battery to vent combustible gas or to ignite. The Equinor people say that such occurrences are extremely rare (have you heard that before?), which may be true but one such event happened not that far away across the Hudson River in Orange County on property owned by the local school district.
And lithium-ion battery fires are becoming regular events in New York City, where delivery bike owners store and charge their vehicles in a willy-nilly fashion in old residential buildings inadequately wired for these electrical loads. Maybe not rare enough. if(window.
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