Energy Park battery unit given green light

An energy storage facility has been approved despite claims from some opponents that it has the potential to “threaten the lives and health of residents”.

Thanet District Council has given retrospective planning permission for the 99.9-megawatt Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) at Richborough Energy Park, near Sandwich in Kent.

Consent was originally given for battery storage in 2020, but the developer Pacific Green built the project to different specifications and layouts than had been originally approved.

A planning officer at a meeting on Wednesday acknowledged the "real concerns" of councillors and residents, but said it was "not the purpose of the planning system to debate the safety of this technology".

Howard Banks, acting as an agent for the energy park, told the planning committee that it stores carbon-free electricity "which would otherwise be wasted".

But some councillors opposed the scheme at the site, which is close to the Sandwich and Hacklinge Marshes Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).

Conservative councillor John Davis told the meeting: “Traditional energy consumption created peaks and troughs in our energy supply and we didn’t need to destroy our environment to store it."

Green councillor Tricia Austin said: “You’re being asked to give retrospective approval to a proposal with potential to threaten the lives and health of residents as well as the environment next to an SSSI."

BESS store energy in lithium ion batteries and have proved controversial over safety and environmental concerns.

Fires in such batteries do not require oxygen to burn, and cannot be extinguished with water, they can only be put out with some forms of chemical gas.

In 2020, a fire at a 20MW lithium battery storage plant in Liverpool took 59 hours to extinguish, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

The council officer told members that the facility supports "the transition to low carbon energy from electricity sourced from renewable sources".

He said the planning system's purpose was "about ensuring whether or not the impact of the development has been dealt with".

The planning committee voted to give retrospective planning permission, with seven votes in favour, two against and no abstentions.

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