Texan councillor warns ‘blackouts will happen’ after city rejects application for battery on fire safety fears

A Texan city councillor has warned “brownouts and blackouts” will come as she reluctantly voted against plans for a BESS in the city of Katy.

Katy City Council members on Oct. 14, 2024, voted unanimously to deny the special usage permit required by Ochoa Energy Storage LLC to install a lithium-ion BESS, thereby rejecting a recommendation made by the council’s City Planning and Zoning Committee, on Sep. 10, 2024, to issue the permit.

Council member Gina Hicks said she would have to vote against the proposal, to reflect the views of voters. Referring to a public meeting about the application, held on Sep. 23, 2024, she said, “I feel like this is a mob vote that the residents’ forum blew up and it was very sad to see how people responded in our community.”

Adding the decision to reject the permit was “based upon fear, not data,” and revealing her husband works in the energy storage industry, Councillor Hicks said, “Brownouts and blackouts will happen … know that we, as a community chose this.”

Planning application documents stated lithium-ion battery containers would occupy 5.25 acres of a 24.26-acre site and would be connected to nearby Centerpoint electrical transmission wires.

Conditions

The planning and zoning committee recommended approval if the applicant met the requirements of the Katy Fire Marshall, who called for fire hydrants able to pump at least 500 gallons per minute for at least two hours on site. The fire marshall also required the battery containers to have venting and/or explosion protection.

Referring to a near-17-day battery fire in San Diego and to a separate blaze in Escondido which occurred a week after the city council had decided BESS did not bring jobs or economic benefits, council member Dan Smith said the 30 MW battery which caught fire in Escondido was 6% the size of the proposed facility in Katy, west of Houston. That indicated the BESS planned by applicant Ochoa Energy Storage LLC was 500 MW in scale.

Councillor Smith had moved to deny the BESS permit and was seconded by council member Janet Corte, who had “tagged” the application at an earlier meeting, ensuring it would be considered by the full council.

Councillor Corte said she objected to the “fairly new, unproven, and loosely regulated” battery storage industry and an applicant with “little or no experience in this field” as well as “safety concerns since the application is near to schools, residents, businesses, and Snake Creek.”

Experiment

She added, “Since 2022, with the introduction of the Inflation Reduction Act – which gives companies like this a 30% tax credit – the battery storage industry is experiencing a boom in the number of facilities being erected and I’m not willing to let Katy and its citizens be an experiment in this area.”

Council member Rory A. Robertson said he was also voting against issuance of the permit solely to represent his ward members, having backed plans for the BESS once the planning and zoning committee and local fire marshall had approved it.

Councillor Smith called for Katy to follow the example of Escondido by issuing a moratorium on new BESS applications.

Council member Chris Harris said Mayor William H. Dusty Thiele had promised to look at the city’s industrial ordinances with a view to potentially amending them.