AES lights up benefits of Esco battery project
Company details the economic, environmental benefits for its large-scale battery storage facility in Eden Valley, while residents protest location
ESCONDIDO — The company behind the large-scale battery storage facility in Eden Valley is touting the benefits of its proposal in unincorporated San Diego County.
AES Corporation is a global energy firm with 40 battery storage projects with about 1 gigawatt of capacity in the U.S. Their latest proposal, known as the Seguro Battery Storage System, is a 320 megawatt of storage with 1,280 megawatt per hour of capacity on 22.55 acres along Country Club Drive near Escondido at a former horse ranch.
Residents are pushing back as the two sides have locked horns over the proposal. Residents say it doesn’t belong near homes and is a safety threat, while AES Permitting Director Corinne Lytle Bonine said a state-of-the-art fire suppression system will be deployed, safety is the top priority, along with its economic and environmental benefits to the region.
On Wednesday, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors will discuss potential regulations, standards or moratorium; however, the Seguro project is unaffected by any action the board takes as AES already submitted its project application and will avoid retroactive action, Bonine said.
“The Seguro battery energy storage project will provide numerous benefits to the community and the region,” Michael Huynh, AES senior stakeholder relations manager, said. “It will keep the local grid reliable, minimize power outages, and contribute to reducing local air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the electrical grid, helping to meet San Diego and California’s decarbonization goals.”
As the battle between residents and AES heats up, a fire ignited Thursday at a San Diego Gas & Electric lithium-ion battery storage facility at 571 Enterprise St., the site of the Escondido substation. The city of Escondido issued mandatory evacuation orders covering hundreds of businesses and forcing classes to be canceled on Friday for three schools and a fourth pivoting to virtual instruction.
The fire sparked in one container of batteries and did not spread to other containers, according to reports. Also, the Escondido Fire Department, SDG&E’s fire coordinator and San Diego city and county hazardous materials officials decided to let the fire burn itself out, per reports.
Residents were also quick to note that with Thursday’s fire many of them were without power for hours. AES constructed the facility in 2017, while SDG&E controls the operation, but Bonine said the company will deploy a new fire suppression system at the modular level, which will prevent large-scale fires from ripping through a container or facility.
Economic benefits, political landscape
The Escondido City Council passed a resolution on Aug. 28 to pause the development of battery energy storage systems (BESS) and develop regulations for such facilities. The resolution said there is little economic impact and does not create jobs for local residents, along with safety and public health risks.
Councilwoman Consuelo Martinez was the only council member to oppose the resolution. In part, she said it was because of conflicting information over the economic benefits, or possibly lack thereof, from the project.
Huynh said the economic benefits will be significant for the region. He cited an economic impact analysis conducted by the San Diego North Economic Development Council showing the project includes more than 450 jobs and $11.5 million in local property tax revenue during construction.
Once in operation, the project will provide $5.8 million annually in local property tax revenue, with $3.6 million going to Escondido schools and more than $1 million to the county and city, San Diego North Economic Development Council Executive Director Erik Bruvold said. Opponents, though, question the number of jobs saying most are for the construction, which is estimated between 12 to 18 months, and few employees onsite.
Bruvold analyzed the project and said there are three “buckets” for economic impact. He said there will be a boost with hundreds of construction jobs, a temporary impact, and permanent onsite jobs, albeit about a small number and then the tax windfall.
Bruvold said the number of onsite jobs is minimal, probably between six to 10, as many battery and solar projects have employees to keep labor costs down.
“We looked at the likely assessed value of the new value of the facility based on the capital investment made,” he explained. “The change of ownership would trigger a reassessment of the property, and we calculated the tax bill AES would be hit with. Right now, that property has almost no, or very little, property tax that’s generated off of it. Based upon the data and the numbers provided by AES the assessed value of the property would probably be a little north of half of a billion dollars. So, the tax bill would be about $5.8 million, $5.9 million per year.”
Political push for batteries
Meanwhile, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors will discuss the Seguro project, and all battery storage projects, during Wednesday’s meeting. On July 17, the board directed staff to develop regulations, standards and incentives for BESS projects.
The board will decide whether to approve a moratorium, a mandatory review of all BESS projects by the board, add stopgap measures or an urgency ordinance.
The supervisors’ decision may also impact their state-mandated climate goals and Climate Action Plan. The state has approved goals of a 100% clean energy grid and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 85%, air pollution by 71%, oil demand by 94%, and all fossil fuels by 86% to achieve net zero carbon pollution by 2045, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom. The county also has its own CAP, which commits to 100% renewable energy by 2045.
“As part of both statewide regionwide and then county-specific goals is to decarbonize our electrical grid and that means a lot of solar, a lot of wind and because solar is an intermittent resource, we need an ability to bridge the gap for what happens when our state and and counties, solar facilities go offline,” Bonine said. “And right now our, you know, best utility-scale solution is to use battery storage that can charge these batteries during the day.”
The California Energy Commission reported in October 2023 there is more than 6,600MW of BESS online, which is enough to power 6.6 million homes for several hours. The CEC’s report said another 1,900MW was expected to come online by the end of 2023.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported in January that California has 7.3 gigawatts (7,300MW) of online battery storage. The largest facility in the country is at Moss Landing in California at 750MW.
Bonine said most storage systems provide four hours of electricity.
Site selection, concerns
The site selection has been criticized by residents and Joe Rowley, the former vice president of project development with Sempra U.S. Gas & Power, a non-utility subsidiary of the parent company, Sempra Energy. He said his career covered projects with natural gas, wind, solar and batteries.
Rowley, along with many residents, say the site is not suitable for a battery storage facility due to the likelihood of a “failure,” or thermal runaway fire emitting toxic fumes.
Residents Phyllis Laderman, Andrew McSparron and April Bevins-Cooper said in a previous interview residents are urging the board to relocate the project and mandate zoning restrictions in residential areas. They said they are not against BESS projects, but they can’t be located in residential neighborhoods because of the risks.
Laderman also said political pressure from labor unions have ramped up the heat on the issue. She said they just want to build the facility and have not showed any concern for the issues brought forward by the residents.
“If you look at the Electric Power Research Institute data on failures … on average, fleetwide and worldwide, if you look at that failure rate and apply it to Seguro, the Seguro project would have a failure about every four years,” Rowley added. “When I say failure, I’m talking about a thermal runaway fire.”
Regardless, Huynh said AES evaluated many sites before selecting the Eden Valley location. As part of the siting process, he said many factors were considered including the proximity to electricity demand, availability of existing electric grid infrastructure and access (rights of way, etc.), potential environmental impacts, cost-effectiveness and availability of suitable land.
The site was selected because of its proximity to the San Diego Gas & Electric Escondido substation, the land’s size and physical characteristics, the minimal environmental impacts it presents, and its zoning designation per county rules allowing utility infrastructure in the area, Huynh said. Along with those aspects, the proximity to the substation minimizes the need for overhead transmission lines and makes it the most suitable, Bonine said.
She said the proximity to residential areas scales down costs, reduces the need for above-ground transmission and distribution lines and provide faster delivery of electricity.
She said safety is a top priority for AES and they are committed to constructing and operating the safest battery energy storage system. He said the project will meet or exceed all required safety standards, including National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 855, the national standard for energy storage safety developed by fire service professionals and fire protection experts, and Underwriter Laboratories (UL) standards.
“Seguro will have that fire detection, fire suppression at the module level (about the size of a DVD player), which is just a portion of a container,” Bonine explained. “We expect the UL testing to prove out and then we'll be required to show via UL testing that fire could not spread beyond that module level suppression. It creates a combination of physical barriers, chemical barriers, as well as having a unique HVAC piping and fire suppression piping to that area so in that small and subset of a container the fire can't get beyond it.”
Rowley, though, said the NFPA standards are in their infancy and there’s not enough data to appropriately address concerns of a fire and how to address those. For example, Rowley said the fire at Otay Mesa lasted for 17 days, while other projects fail every two to four years, and those fire suppression systems don’t suffice in protecting the assets.