Armidale Battery Energy Storage System

This project is not in the public interest.

It does not fulfil our energy needs as it will not be able to provide base load power at peak times.

This is a toxic waste of money and precious resources and will contribute to unaffordable and intermittent power.

Put the energy consumers ahead of profits for developers.

Submission objecting to the Armidale BESS Project being granted a planning permit or in any way proceeding to construction.
From Armidale BESS website. In the supporting statement as to why the Armidale BESS is required it is said.
“The battery system will store approximately 300MWh of electricity, which will power more than 20,000 homes”.
This statement is misleading Armidale Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) will ONLY store approximately 300MWh of electricity, which will power more than 20,000 homes. If a surplus of electricity from solar and wind farms is available. Solar and Wind farms are very unreliable electricity generators with solar only able to produce electricity for a maximum of nine hours each day. And wind because of calm periods and general variability the industry average is set at a wind turbine only producing 35% of its rated capacity. https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/wind-energy-factsheet
To explain why Solar panels will never be able to reliably produce electricity. Solar panels are powered by a weather fuel, Sunshine. At 12am, every day, the Solar fuel tank is empty and will remain empty for the next seven to eight hours, until the Sun rises at 7am or 8am. If the weather is fine there may be six hours of viable fuel (10am to 4pm) and a further three hours (8.30am to 10am and 4pm to 5.30pm) of less viable fuel available. For a total of nine hours of fuel availability. But even this is very uncertain, because of the presence of fog, overcast cloud cover and rain, the fuel tank can suddenly become empty at any time. The amount of fuel available may be reduced to four hours or even on many Winter days, zero, with no electricity being produced. Beginning between 5pm and 6pm, the Solar fuel tank becomes empty and remains empty for the next fourteen or fifteen hours. This means the fuel tank that supply the solar panels is empty for a minimum of fifteen hours of everyday and could even be empty for the whole day, with no electricity being produced.

The same situation applies to Wind Turbines. They are powered by a weather fuel the Wind. At 12am on any day, there is no certainty that the fuel tank will have any fuel available as the weather may be calm. Because they can only produce electricity, when the wind speed is between 12kms/hr and 90kms/hr. The industry reports that Wind Turbines only produce electricity on average for only 35% of their rated capacity or on average for eight hours per day. https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/wind-energy-factsheet Wind Turbines can be becalmed for days at a time, producing no electricity. Likewise, if a gale blows for several days no electricity is produced.
As for connecting the Armidale BESS into the Grid. Batteries alone can never produce any electricity. Batteries only take in surplus electricity and then release less than they take out.
The Armidale BESS could sit idle for days or weeks at a time without any surplus electricity to take in.
If the Armidale BESS did store electricity, to make a profit it would have to sell it at a much higher price in order to be profitable. Consumers can experience economic blackouts if the electricity price is so high it is uneconomic for the consumer to buy and shuts down production instead.
I believe it would be highly irresponsible to grant a planning permit or allow construction of the Armidale BESS Project, as rather than being able to make a positive contribution to the Grid, its inclusion would be totally negative and uneconomic.
Further points of objection.
1. Consisting of so much compact electrification, the Armidale BESS will create an extreme fire hazard to surrounding areas, particularly on a Total Fire Ban Day with the temperature at 43dC and a NW wind blowing at 50km/hr. Being so tightly packed together it would almost be impossible to contain a fire started within the Armidale BESS perimeter. The fact that burning Lithium batteries give off a very toxic smoke, fighting the fire would be very dangerous for fire fighters. The surrounding land owners should be very concerned about their welfare.
2. If a fire was to occur the risk of soil contamination, would be very great. With unknown consequences.
3. If it should be approved to be built, then it should be mandated that the Armidale BESS have a Public Liability policy to cover fire and other possible damage to surrounding areas of at least $500million to $1billion.

4. Unless the Armidale BESS puts up a restoration bond, there will be nothing stopping them from walking away and leaving the local Council and community with a very expensive noxious, Junk heap, that will desecrate the whole area.
For the above reasons I strongly believe the Armidale BESS should definitely not be granted a planning permit or proceed to construction.

I object to Armidale Bess because of the the extreme fire risk it poses to the area and the toxic pollution that will be emitted once that occurs. It is also an extremely expensive way to provide energy to Australians and will enforce energy poverty on the poorest people.

"The unsolved, and potentially unsolvable, challenges of energy storage in a grid predominantly supplied by intermittent generation are quite obvious. One does not need to be a highly credentialed scientist or engineer to understand the magnitude of these issues, or to see that solutions are critical if such a grid is to be made to work without fossil fuel backup. And yet politicians across the world have committed their peoples to achieving full decarbonisation without any demonstration project to show that the target can be met in practice, let alone at reasonable cost.
Historically, major innovations in provision of energy have begun with demonstration projects or prototypes to establish the feasibility and cost, before any attempt at widespread commercialisation. In the 1880s, when Thomas Edison wanted to start building power plants to supply electricity for his new devices, such as incandescent lightbulbs, he began by building a prototype facility in London under the Holborn Viaduct, and followed that with a larger demonstration plant on Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan, which supplied electricity to only a few square blocks. Only after those had been demonstrated as successful did a larger build-out begin. Similarly, the provision of nuclear power began with small government-funded prototypes in the late 1940s and early 1950s, followed by larger demonstration projects in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Only in the late 1960s, twenty years into the effort and after feasibility and cost had been demonstrated, were the first large-scale commercial reactors built.
But somehow our politicians have now become so filled with hubris that they think they can just order up a functioning wind and solar electricity system and assume that backup energy storage devices will magically be invented, that it will all work fine, that it will not be financially ruinous, and that all this will be achieved by some arbitrarily-imposed date in the 2030s.
There is today no such functioning electricity system based on wind or solar or a combination of the two that is free of fossil fuels and fully backed up by energy storage. There have only been two half-hearted attempts at delivering such a thing, both of which have been, and continue to be, abject failures, only serving to demonstrate how unlikely the whole Net Zero endeavour is ever to come to fruition.
The most significant of the two is a facility called Gorona del Viento on the Spanish island of El Hierro, one of the Canary Islands. El Hierro is a mountainous volcanic island with a population of about 10,000. The Gorona del Viento project consists of five large wind turbines and a pumped storage system to provide the backup. The wind turbines have sufficient capacity to fulfill 100% of the electricity demand of the island when the wind blows at full strength – the nameplate capacity is 11.5 MW, versus an average demand of 5.1 MW and a peak of 7.6 MW. When the wind blows and demand is low, the electricity can be used to pump water from a lower reservoir to an upper storage reservoir built in an extinct volcanic crater. The water then can be released through turbines to provide electricity at other times when the wind is not blowing.
The concept of the planners of the El Hierro project was that they would demonstrate how to do a 100% renewables/storage electricity system. The project launched in 2014, and on August 20, 2015 the Spanish daily El Pais reported that the island ‘aspires to energy self-sufficiency to provide light and water from 100%-renewable sources’. However, apparently nobody bothered to do the simple arithmetic to be sure there was enough wind capacity and storage to make it work. The project has consistently fallen far short of its goal, as anyone who had done the arithmetic could have easily shown before they started. Fortunately, the island retains a secondary backup system, based on diesel generators, with a capacity of 11.2 MW, and which is therefore capable of exceeding peak demand on its own.
The most important shortfall of the Gorona del Viento system is that it has only a small fraction of the storage capacity needed to get through frequent daily and seasonal wind droughts. Roger Andrews calculated that the storage capacity would have to be 40 times bigger to see the island through a full year without the diesel backup. Unfortunately, the existing reservoir is the only suitable site on the island for pumped storage, and it cannot be made bigger. Even if a suitable site did exist, it would be of little to no relevance to the rest of the world, where sites for pumped storage on the scale required are essentially non-existent.
A second problem is that, although El Hierro has wind turbine capacity to supply average electricity demand more than twice over when the wind blows at full strength, the wind does not often do so, and therefore the installed wind turbines are insufficient to keep even the existing pumped storage reservoir full for when it is needed.
Gorona del Viento publishes monthly data on how much of the electricity for the island came from the wind/storage system and how much from the diesel generators.21 The most recent data are from September 2021. These make clear how very seasonal the wind power is, with far more in the summer than the winter. Data for earlier years show that the Gorona del Viento system has produced somewhat more than 50% of the electricity for El Hierro in some years of operation, but then fallen back well below half in other years, depending on the weather.
The bottom line is that El Hierro has wind turbines for more than double average demand, pumped storage for more than double average demand, and also diesel generators for more than double average demand – three separate and redundant systems, all of which must be paid for, yet they struggle to get half of their electricity from the wind/storage system, averaged over the year. So the island must retain 100% diesel backup, fully maintained and ready to go, for the regular times, even in the windiest months, when the wind fails to blow. Estimates of the cost of the electricity produced by the Gorona del Viento system put it at around 80 euro cents per kilowatt hour, although most of that is subsidised by the Spanish government or the EU and thus hidden from the El Hierro ratepayer.
In summary, the El Hierro model, in return for electricity costs around four times the European average and seven times the US average, is not remotely capable of achieving Net Zero. It is a disaster that no other jurisdiction can or should attempt to follow.
After El Hierro, the next closest thing in the world to a Net Zero demonstration project is on King Island, part of the state of Tasmania, Australia. King Island is much smaller than even El Hierro, with a population of only about 1500 people. In fact, it never claimed that it was attempting to get all the way to Net Zero, but it did build substantial wind, solar, and battery storage facilities to attempt to get at least a large part of its electricity from these sources. However, like El Hierro, King Island retains 100% backup in the shape of a diesel generator system as well.
Roger Andrews did a detailed study of the results of the King Island system in a post on October 16, 2018.22 He concluded that King Island did not provide sufficient data to enable a precise calculation of how much of its electricity comes from renewables and storage, and how much from the diesel backup. However, he made an estimate of about 60% from the wind, solar and batteries over the course of a year. He also calculated that to attempt to get to all the way to Net Zero without the diesel generators for a whole year, the island would need at least 100 times more storage, in addition to more wind and solar capacity.
Thus, as a model for how to get to Net Zero emissions from the generation of electricity, King Island must also be rated a total failure. All that it has shown is that you can’t get much beyond 50% of electricity from renewables without vastly more energy storage capacity than anyone can afford.
Politicians throughout the developed world, urged on by environmental activists, talk with utmost earnestness about their plans for Net Zero, and have committed and are further committing their citizens and taxpayers to tens and hundreds of billions of dollars of spending to achieve this goal. Yet from their heads-in-the-sand approach to the energy storage conundrum, one would have to conclude that the entire effort is either wholly unserious or breathtakingly incompetent.
It is abundantly clear that no jurisdiction can get anywhere near Net Zero on the current path of just building more wind and solar generators and paying little to no attention to the problem of energy storage. Down that path one quickly comes to the current predicament of Germany, which has plenty of wind and solar generation capacity to supply its needs on a windy and sunny day, but almost no storage for when the night comes and the wind stops blowing. Germany has thus made itself dependent on fossil fuel backup, mostly in the form of Russian natural gas. And now, with the Ukraine war and the shutdown of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, it has hit the Net Zero wall. With winter approaching, there is no time to acquire batteries to serve as backup, even if any existed that could technically do the job. Moreover, fully replacing natural gas backup with battery storage is a multi-trillion-dollar project, likely costing a multiple of the country's GDP, and thus completely infeasible. Realistically, Germany will never build any amount of storage that is meaningful relative to the scope of its problem. It is only a question of time until it gives up its Net Zero quest, with the other fantasist countries shortly to follow."
The Energy Storage Conundrum - Briefing 61 - GWPF - Francis Menton

The agricultural region with its heritage towns IS NOT THE LOCATION FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY GENERATION OF THE TYPES planned for it.
Wind turbines should be located elsewhere. Solar panels should be roof top, not covering acres of prime agricultural land.
No battery storage in Armidale either. You don't store large amounts of energy in a heritage city surrounded by the wrong sort of renewable factories, wind turbines and solar panel factories.
It's staring you in the face! Nuclear generation requires NONE OF THIS NONSENSICAL CONSTRUCTION. JUST TURN THE FOCUS TO THE ECONOMICALLY SUSTAINABLE LOW CARBON GREEN ENERGY TRANSITION USING NUCLEAR GENERATION NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Project is not needed as there is not a climate emergency. see attachment.

The proposed project will negatively impact our energy and national security. The bulk of the components will be made in China, who is not only the world's increasingly higher greenhouse emissions country but has already used trade bans against Australia. This project will make Australia even more dependent on current and future supply of electricity components. Do not approve the project for the sake of our children and their children.

The proposed project is not "fit for purpose". It will not reduce electricity costs to consumers, as evidenced by not only the huge frequent increases in Australian NEM prices to date, but also the experience in every country where wind and solar are 30% or more of the capacity mix. Sweden recently dropped its target of 100% renewables as wind and solar generation do not work (unreliable and intermittent). Instead, Sweden is to build more zero emissions nuclear plants, as other countries are doing. Australia must do the same! The project must therefore be rejected.

Save Our Surroundings (SOS) objects to proposed BESS Works in this project because there are still so many unresolved concerns about risks and issues involved with Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), for instance:
1. Lack of research into the life-cycle of BESS
2. Resource intensive requirements
3. Involves slavery in mining and production
4. Environmentally damaging
5. Fire starting risks increased
6. Fire-fighting dangers increased
7. Local fire risks considerably increased
8. Expensive
9. Short life-span
10. Variable operation
11. Very little Australian content
12. Increased energy and sovereign risks
13. Roads and road travel are impacted
14. Electricity charging and air-conditioning requirements are high
15. Classed as hazardous goods
16. No certainty at end of the short life of a BESS
17. Increased dependency on intermittent electricity generation
18. Poor viability
19. Increase retail electricity prices.
Please refer to the attachment for details and responses required from the Proponent.

My opposition to this proposed 150MW/2 hours BESS project are many. In particular, I am very concerned about the use of industrial lithium batteries. They require many minerals to be mined, including in wilderness areas, that are toxic and, in some cases, require the use of slave labour to keep costs down. The recycling of thousands of tonnes of lithium batteries is not yet viable and, due to their short economic lives, will pollute our environments in a few short years. They pose fire and toxic smoke risks to fire-fighters and nearby residents and towns that will continue to occur despite the claims by the Proponent.

Despite decades of rolling out wind and solar plants in many countries the CO2 emissions still rise every year. Wind and solar projects, including this proposed standalone BESS project, just make no difference. This BESS will increase atmospheric CO2 and increase our NEM electricity system costs to me and other end consumers. I object to any project that costs me heaps for no benefit at all. Don't approve this useless project!

what is the cost of the battery storage
1. capex
2/ annual running cost

I am objecting strongly to any further developments involving renewable energy projects. There is too much evidence proving that renewables are not reliable, the cost is astronomical, the rare earth minerals needed for batteries are not readily available and will be depleted quickly. These renewable projects WILL NOT save the planet nor reduce the temperature - they will only destroy our beautiful landscape, deplete farmland and increase our power bills every time and send more people into poverty.

The concept of lithium battery storage is physically ecomonically and environmentally (seriously) flawed. Batteries will never satisfactorally facilitate facilitate renewable energy to be dispatchable. Industrial batteries are a total waste of tax payers money and are causing ecocide in the pursuit (mining ten fold that of conventional mining for fossil fuel) of the rare earths required in their manufacture. What we need is reliable affordable 24/7 base-load electricity generated by anthracite, natural gas and nuclear. Not geopolitically sensitive and environmentally unfriendly batteries made in factories controlled by the CCP, thus threatening our energy security and so our national security.