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CONWAY — Residents questioned the safety of a battery energy storage system included in developer BlueWave Solar’s plans for a 20-acre solar array on farmland along Roaring Brook Road at the latest public hearing, with discussion to continue in June.
The application for the project on Ronald Boyden’s property describes a 4.99-megawatt system with solar panels set 10 feet above the ground, along with a battery energy storage system, a 20-foot-wide gravel access road and a stormwater basin.
The solar farm would be a dual-use system, allowing landowners to continue using the site for farming, with animals grazing under the solar panels. The panels would be spaced with enough room for sunshine to reach the field, according to Melinda Costello, a civil engineer with Weston & Sampson. Instead of fixed panels, the solar panels would move to follow the sun throughout the day.
BlueWave Solar reached out to Boyden as part of its “outreach efforts” to farmers in the state following its “strong focus on agrivoltaics applications combining clean energy with sustainable farming,” Joel Lindsay, vice president of project development at BlueWave, clarified in an email on Tuesday.
Following requests from concerned residents and Fire Chief Christopher Herrmann at the first hearing, Lindsay and Kevin LaMalva, an engineer at Fire & Risk Alliance working with BlueWave Solar, outlined mechanisms within the battery energy storage system that are designed to prevent fires.
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According to Lindsay, the system is a SolBank 3.0 model stretching 20 feet long and 8 feet high.
“The [SolBank 3.0s] are very, very highly engineered systems that undergo stringent testing,” LaMalva said. “It’s not relying on a single system to mitigate the risk — it’s different layers of risk mitigation just in the container design.”
According to LaMalva, the lithium iron phosphate batteries sit within cells that each contain a “battery management system” and a “thermal management system” to prevent thermal runaway, which occurs when a battery overcharges, short-circuits or undergoes damage that heats up the battery and can cause fires or explosions.
In the case of thermal runaway, each cell includes a vent to relieve pressure and prevent the battery from exploding, along with a detection system to identify the runaway. If flammable gas is released within the container, a ventilation system then “maintains the concentration of vapors within the container to be so low that there’s no chance that it could ignite and cause an explosion,” LaMalva added.
“It’s a defense-in-depth approach, similar to the way that we design buildings with defense-in-depth,” he explained. “We don’t just rely on one system to keep us all safe. There’s different systems so that if one system fails, there’s another system behind as a backup.”
In response to Planning Board member Cheryl Case’s question regarding toxic ash left behind if the system explodes, Lindsay said BlueWave employees will develop a hazard mitigation analysis and emergency response plan and inform local firefighters about the proper responses to battery energy storage issues. Lindsay added that BlueWave’s contractors will also be “on call” for emergencies.
Devlin Selman, an abutter to the only solar array in town on North Poland Road, voiced concerns about electromagnetic field radiation from the proposed array and described a humming due to the existing solar array.
“In Conway, that’s our experience with a solar farm of this size,” resident Mary McClintock said, referencing the North Poland Road project. “In terms of perception and in terms of people being supportive, being able to speak intelligently about how that is different from what’s going to happen here, again, if I were on the Planning Board, I’d want to know that.”
Lindsay said he had never heard of a similar issue with BlueWave’s projects. Planning Board Chair George Forcier suggested that he connect with Nexamp about the cause of the humming that Selman described to avoid a similar issue with BlueWave’s proposed array. Lindsay described this request as “a little bit out of bounds” but agreed to ask BlueWave’s electrical engineers for their thoughts on the potential causes of the issue Selman described.
Selman also asked whether the power inverters in BlueWave’s solar arrays have malfunctioned. Lindsay described inverters as “sometimes notoriously finicky” and said he believes almost every operator of a solar array has seen an inverter malfunction.
“Our intent and our business is what they refer to as an ‘independent power producer.’ That means that we develop the project, but then we don’t kick it to somebody else — we actually operate it,” Lindsay said earlier in the hearing.
The energy from the solar array would flow into the local electric grid. Eversource would then purchase the energy through the state’s SMART 3.0 Program, an incentive program for solar power developers.
“If you’re the owner and you’re selling the power to the grid, what’s the benefit to Conway?” Planning Board member Phyllis Craine asked. “From my perspective, I do find it fascinating that all of this power will be generated by this array and none of that power will benefit anyone living in Conway.”
Lindsay pointed to the payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) agreement that BlueWave has paid the towns where its other projects are located as the “main monetary benefit” for Conway. He also described a “general collective benefit.”
“It’s creating a more distributed grid that has more green energy being inputted into it. … This is helping to address, for the state, the need to add capacity without having to add more fossil fuel plants,” Lindsay said. “It’s directly benefitting everybody in the service area in that it’s providing a more distributed capacity to meet the overall needs in the area. I can’t point to your house and say, ‘The power is going to your house,’ but it is a general collective benefit.”
In response, Craine said, “I understand that, but you do understand that right in front of where this array is going to be, there’s a sign that says, ‘This is a scenic byway?’ I’m sure the irony has not escaped you.”
“That’s why we want to work with the town to try to mitigate these impacts as much as we can,” Lindsay answered. “I’m not saying we’re going to do it perfectly in everybody’s view, but we’re going to do everything we can.”
The next public hearing will be held on Tuesday, June 9, at 7 p.m.
Aalianna Marietta is the South County reporter. She is a graduate of UMass Amherst and was a journalism intern at the Recorder while in school. She can be reached at amarietta@recorder.com or 413-930-4081. More by Aalianna Marietta
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