Penrith HV Battery Energy Storage System

Obnoxious Penrith BESS equals Strategic Vulnerability, Economic Harm, and the False Promise of Storage.

The Penrith Battery should be rejected on the grounds that it weakens Australia’s strategic, economic, and energy resilience while pretending to strengthen it.

Battery storage does not create energy security; it magnifies dependency—on foreign manufacturing, opaque software systems, complex supply chains, and continuous government intervention.
These are not attributes of a resilient national energy system; they are points of failure.

Large-scale batteries are intrinsically short-lived assets, degrading from the moment they are commissioned.
Their economic model relies on market volatility, not reliability—profiting from price spikes that are themselves a symptom of a broken grid.

In effect, this project benefits from instability, while households and industry pay the price through higher bills and reduced reliability.
This is the opposite of infrastructure that serves the public interest.

From a national security perspective, embedding critical grid infrastructure that can be monitored, controlled, or disabled through external systems is indefensible.
In an era of cyber conflict and geopolitical coercion, energy infrastructure must be robust, sovereign, and simple—not dependent on proprietary technology and replacement components sourced from adversarial jurisdictions.
Approving this facility entrenches vulnerability at the very moment Australia should be eliminating it.

The project also accelerates economic decline by driving electricity costs higher across the system.
Energy-intensive industries cannot survive on intermittent supply patched together with storage devices that empty in hours. Productivity suffers, investment retreats, and communities are left with stranded assets and lost opportunity.
This is not a transition; it is managed contraction disguised as progress.

Ultimately, the Penrith Battery is built on a false premise: that storage can substitute for generation, and ideology can substitute for physics.
Australia possesses abundant, reliable energy resources capable of delivering secure, affordable, continuous power with far smaller land and material footprints.
Choosing instead to impose a hazardous, short-term, foreign-dependent technology on an unaware and unwilling community is not leadership—it is strategic self-harm.

**”The idea that adding more & more renewable energy to the grid pushes power prices down has been comprehensively dismissed."*
10/2/25 4:48 minutes - Aidan Morrison
https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/peta-credlin/governments-insistence-on-renewables-amid-soaring-power-prices-lashed/video/86bd230860f5514d1e587239c6b913ab

**Energy Transition Masquerade: The $360 Billion You Pay - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0NKDozvO58

**Centre for Independent Studies Zoe Hilton discusses the Liberal Party’s recent move to ditch net zero as well as their choice to stay in the Paris Agreement. | Sky News Australia | Facebook - 14/11/2025
https://www.facebook.com/SkyNewsAustralia/videos/raises-a-few-questions-liberal-party-decision-to-stay-in-paris-agreement-dispute/1158866003084976/

NATIONAL SECURITY NIGHTMARE:
The Government has no measures to protect new energy sources from malicious actors!

**China-linked Belt and Road company involved in Australian net-zero projects sparks security concerns - TA NEA - 17/10/2025
https://tanea.com.au/en/china-linked-belt-and-road-company-involved-in-australian-net-zero-projects-sparks-security-concerns/

**China's Energy Dream - Patricia Adams
“Carbon dioxide reduction only makes sense for those China wishes to harm & supplant."
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2021/12/Adams-Chinas-Energy-Dream.pdf

**Chinese hackers are determined to ‘wreak havoc’ on U.S. critical infrastructure, FBI director Wray warns | PBS News - 2024
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/chinese-hackers-are-determined-to-wreak-havoc-on-u-s-critical-infrastructure-fbi-director-wray-warns

**Hacked Off: CyberCrims Attack Rooftop Solar To Bring Down Entire Grid
https://stopthesethings.com/2024/09/07/hacked-off-cybercrims-attack-rooftop-solar-to-bring-down-entire-grid/
Communist China is setting us up for solar panel-based disaster:
“Solar panels that make the electricity suitable for the power grid and which are usually connected to the web, can be “easily hacked, remotely disabled or used for DDoS [Distributed Denial of Service] attacks.” DDoS is one of the most common types of attacks, which basically try to overwhelm a system… Solar panels were outlined as a vulnerability in several scenarios, also due to the dominance of a single country, China, in the supply chain.”

**Rogue Communication Devices Found in Chinese Inverters
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/ghost-machine-rogue-communication-devices-found-chinese-inverters-2025-05-14/

**Beautifully Hackable - Irina Slav on Energy - 12/8/24
https://irinaslav.substack.com/p/beautifully-hackable?utm_campaign=email-post&utm_source=substack

**U.S Blacklists Chinese Battery Giant
“These batteries are used in electric vehicles here in Australia,” Mr Danby said.
https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/us-military-is-concerned-america-blacklists-chinese-battery-giant-over-military-links/video/765e12fec5e3b837a5e606e40371a7f9

**Australia’s Climate Ambitions have a Modern Slavery Problem - ASPI
Editors' picks for 2024: 'Australia’s climate ambitions have a modern slavery problem: examining the origins of our big batteries'
aspistrategist.org.au

**China's Sinister Solar Panels and the Plan to Black Out the World! - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqL0s18HXbY - 13:44 minutes

**Crying Shame inside the Demise of Australia’s only Battery Maker
https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/crying-shame-inside-the-demise-of-australia-s-only-battery-maker-20250901-p5mrl4

**Aussie expert’s chilling Chinese EV warning
https://www.news.com.au/technology/motoring/on-the-road/china-could-make-evs-explode-cyber-expert-warns/news-story/2d29b6e3474d85dc64e8bdcb0995fbec

Penrith BESS Monstrosity epitomises Fabricated Social Benefit, Omitted Fire Toxicity, Community Endangerment, and Systemic Credibility Failure

A. Invented Social Cohesion Claims Have No Evidentiary Basis
The Social Impact Assessment asserts that the Penrith HV BESS would enhance social cohesion and strengthen community identity.
These claims are non-sensical and made without:
Any social baseline study
Any community attitude research
Any mechanism explaining how a hazardous industrial installation can possibly produce social cohesion
This is not impact assessment.
It is delusional propaganda!
Social cohesion is not generated by infrastructure that people are excluded from, cannot interact with, suffer detrimental harm & severe economic ‘cost of living’ consequences from and will live in fear of.
A facility associated internationally with emergency sirens, alarming evacuation orders, unavoidable lethal smoke, and firefighter withdrawal does not foster belonging or trust. It creates psychological distancing, risk awareness, and conflict.
The claim that cohesion will arise because some residents appear to support an ideological concept of ‘decarbonisation’ is a gross oversimplification that erases parents, educators, carers, faith groups, performers, hospitality workers, and families who reasonably prioritise physical safety over ideological virtue signalling.

B. The Most Dangerous Aspect of the Project Is Entirely Absent from the Health Assessment
The documentation devotes extensive discussion to operational noise, fencing, and visual screening while failing to address the dominant public safety threat posed by grid-scale lithium-ion batteries:
Uncontrollable thermal runaway
Release of hydrogen fluoride gas
Dispersal of toxic metals and persistent chemicals
Long-term soil and water contamination
These are not rare or speculative outcomes; they are confirmed through multiple large-scale international incidents.
The absence of this information from the social and health assessment represents a fatal analytical omission.
A health impact discussion that excludes the principal mechanism of injury cannot be considered valid or complete.
No amount of noise mitigation or community engagement can compensate for the absence of a credible assessment of lethal fire by-products and off-site exposure risk.

C. Reclassification of Objective Hazard as “Perceived Concern” Is Misleading
The repeated description of health impacts as “perceived” reflects a deliberate reframing strategy rather than a scientific conclusion.
Hydrogen fluoride toxicity, heavy metal exposure, and PFAS persistence are not dependent on perception.
They do not become harmless because they are inconvenient to address.
Labeling legitimate concern as perception:
Shifts responsibility from the hazard to the public
Avoids acknowledgment of worst-case scenarios
Undermines informed consent
Anxiety in this context is not irrational.
It is a predictable response to credible danger, especially where impacts are life-threatening, emergency response capacity is limited and consequences are irreversible.
This language trivialises public safety and signals an unwillingness to confront the real implications of failure.

D. Extreme Human Exposure Density Is Treated as a Footnote
The Project site is surrounded by:
Early childhood education centres
Schools and tertiary institutions
Theatres and performance venues
Museums, libraries, and community centres
Churches and religious gathering places
Hospitality and retail precincts
Dense residential development
This is an environment characterised by children, large gatherings, and constant public presence.
Yet the assessment reduces this reality to a list of nearby amenities, without grappling with the core question:
How are thousands of people protected during a toxic battery fire when evacuation may be impossible and emergency services may be forced to retreat?
The answer is not provided because it does not exist.
Siting a high-energy chemical system in this context transforms a technical failure into a mass-casualty risk, a fact the assessment consistently avoids acknowledging.

E. Fundamental Measurement Errors Undermine the Entire Assessment
Throughout the documentation, distances to sensitive receptors are repeatedly stated in millimetres instead of metres.
["Museum of Fire located approximately 200mm to the southeast…..
Australian Institute of Personal Trainers Penrith located approximately 250mm west of the Project site.
There are also several ECEs, with the closest being Little Puma Early Learning Centre approximately 600mm southeast……
TAFE NSW Nepean Penrith campus located approximately 720mm southeast"]
This is not a cosmetic error.

In a proposal where safety depends on:
Separation distances
Hazard radii
Emergency response timing
Exposure modelling
Such mistakes demonstrate:
Inadequate professional review
Poor quality assurance
A lack of seriousness about spatial accuracy
If the proponent cannot reliably express basic distances, there is no rational basis for confidence in their fire modelling, plume dispersion assumptions, or risk classifications.
This level of sloppiness in a safety-critical assessment is not accidental
It reflects a culture of carelessness that thrives in a reckless, unregulated ‘renewable’ energy approval environment, where projects are carelessly, inappropriately and unjustly waved through under “green” branding and rubber-stamped by industry-aligned accreditation bodies with vested interests.
This is not independent oversight.
It is self-validation, and it has no place in decisions involving irreversible harm!

F. A Project Enabled by Narrative, Not Evidence
The Penrith BESS project relies on:
Asserted social benefits with no factual foundation
Omitted discussion of lethal hazards
Psychological reframing of real danger
Disregard for dense human exposure
Technically unreliable documentation
Together, these failures reveal not an isolated oversight, but a systemic breakdown in governance and duty of care so typical of the unregulated, Fake Green RenewaBull Rort - accredited by the Solar/Wind industry itself - the UNClean Energy Council - that’s akin to ‘Dracula in Charge of the Blood Bank’ - all promoted by their misinformation machine ‘RUIN ECONOMY.’

Approving this Penrith BESS plan would confirm that public safety has been subordinated to ideology, hasty experimentation, and that communities are expected to absorb catastrophic risk without honest disclosure.
That is not sustainable development.
It is institutionalised negligence, and it must be rejected.

References:
AER institutes proceedings against Predatory, Anti-Australian Transgrid following 2024 Broken Hill outages | Australian Energy Regulator (AER)- 17/12/2025
“Today’s filing of court proceedings follows a thorough and complex investigation requiring significant legal and technical expertise, and close collaboration with the NSW Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal,” said Ms Savage
https://www.aer.gov.au/news/articles/news-releases/aer-institutes-proceedings-against-transgrid-following-2024-broken-hill-outages

**Coastal Wetland Deposition of Cathode Metals from the World’s Largest Lithium-ion Battery Fire" (Moss Landing BESS FIRE)
According to independent Experts this is actually worse than a radioactivity spill.
A lot of this very toxic stuff is not easily located. Whereas, with radioactivity, one needs just a hand-held Geiger counter to locate the pollutant.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-25972-8#Tab1

“PFAS Contamination is a Serious Issue that Needs Immediate Attention”->

**COMMONWEALTH PFAS BAN
Some types have been found to be toxic to human health and the environment. In its most definitive regulatory action taken to date, the Commonwealth has effectively banned the import, use and manufacture of some of the more prominent types of PFAS (PFOS, PFOA and PFHxS) from 1 July 2025.
(21 Feb 2024)

**’Forever chemicals’ used in Lithium Ion Batteries Threaten Environment, Research Finds | Lithium-ion batteries | The Guardian 14/7/24
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/14/forever-chemicals-lithium-ion-batteries-environment

ECONOMIC LICENCE HAS BEEN FORGED!

**The 'Sunk Cost' Trickery That Makes Renewables Seem Cheaper Than They Are - 23rd July 2023.
https://www.fresheconomicthinking.com/p/the-sunk-cost-trickery-that-makes?utm_medium=web
AIDAN MORRISON
How CSIRO justifies the exclusions: “Sunk Cost”
But wait, this deception is so brazen and transparent…….
All of these tens of billions of dollars of projects are explicitly excluded from the cost of integrating renewables. 

**Fancy a Model? Wait Till She Moves In - by Chris Uhlmann - 1/12/2025
“The irony is, from the moment humanity first burned wood, we have used fossil fuels to protect ourselves from the fury of the weather.
Now, just as many warn the climate will become more extreme, we are rebuilding our entire power system on the whims of wind and sunshine.
It has the feel of an Icarus moment: a civilisation convinced it can defy gravity, only to discover the wax melts in real sunlight.”
https://chrisuhlmann.substack.com/p/fancy-a-model-wait-till-she-moves

This totally unnecessary, ridiculously expensive battery plan will never generate energy—it merely shuffles scarcity, either storing intermittent, unreliable wind and solar - that fails most of the time due to its pathetic capacity factor or SO DISINGENUOUSLY re-charging using our own FAR SUPERIOR, RELIABLE, SECURE COAL POWER - which the dodgy, deceitful Government pretends we don’t need.

ERARING WILL KEEP ON BEING EXTENDED WELL PAST 2029 because BLACKOUTS ARE LOOMING!
BUILD NEW AUSTRALIAN COAL POWER PLANTS YOU MORONS!!

This Public Health & Safety Disaster - Penrith Battery - will poison Penrith locals and would do nothing to reduce emissions globally—simply outsources manufacturing emissions to China, where coal use is soaring, proving CO₂ reduction only matters when it harms Western nations.

**China's Energy Dream - Patricia Adams**
“Carbon dioxide reduction only makes sense for those China wishes to harm & supplant."
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2021/12/Adams-Chinas-Energy-Dream.pdf

This toxic contaminating infrastructure will harm the Penrith people when the hazardous, dangerously toxic BESS bursts into flames and can’t be extinguished during thermal runway.
This is extremely costly, incapable, short-lived, failure-prone, rubbish technology!

It’s blindingly obvious that the totally flawed, Fake Green Swindle Factories are China’s Energy Dream and a BLACKOUT DISASTER FOR AUSTRALIA!
DUMP NET ZERO!
DUMP THE PARIS AGREEMENT!
💯 SUPPORT NEW AUSTRALIAN COAL PLANTS and NUCLEAR POWER.

Fire hazardous Lithium-ion batteries like this China reliant, poisonous Penrith BESS plan pose a chronic low-level contamination risk even without fires, through leaks, venting, corrosion, and degradation—slowly poisoning land and vital water sources like the Nepean River - without triggering any emergency response.

No one in their right mind would plan or approve such a toxic contaminating disaster like this Penrith BESS unless they had treacherous, evil motives to harm the Australian people and future generations.

This highly hazardous Penrith BESS entrenches energy feudalism, where citizens pay ever-higher bills for an electricity system that is increasingly unreliable, insecure, and deliberately overcomplicated to justify endless subsidies.

Stop prioritising our most hostile enemy by depriving us of our own, secure, naturally plentiful, Australian energy resources!
None of this toxic contaminating BESS/Solar/Wind rubbish is needed at all with far superior and sovereign, secure Australian Coal power - which is essential for a modern economy - as it’s cheap, reliable, efficient and works on demand 24/7.

By wasting billions of Taxpayer dollars on toxic garbage like this stupid, incapable BESS ‘bomb’ - just so predatory vested interests can continue to rip us off so obscenely, this Penrith BESS project is another deceitful part of the RUIN-A-BULL SCAM which misallocates capital, diverting billions away from proven, scalable solutions like high-efficiency coal and safe, secure nuclear power that would lower prices and provide plentiful, reliable, sovereign, Australian power supply that we must have to ensure National Security.

Penrith BESS is a deceptive and dangerous plan that is not one bit clean, isn’t sustainable, is extremely unhealthy and does not belong midst the Penrith community.

Even the claim that it supports “net zero” is intellectually dishonest, as it totally ignores all of its embedded emissions, shipping emissions, coal-fired manufacturing in China, etc.

Get back to commonsense Coal before the fake green vested interests, UNClean Energy Council and evil authorities irreparably stuff Australia!

Poisonous Penrith BESS plan represents Systemic Risk, Irreversibility, and Public Safety Failure.

This proposal represents a systemic failure of risk assessment, not merely a controversial infrastructure project.
The Penrith Battery introduces an industrial hazard class never before experienced at this scale in this setting, yet it is being assessed through planning frameworks designed for benign developments.

Lithium-ion BESS facilities are not passive assets; they are chemically active, failure-prone systems that can enter uncontrollable thermal runaway, generating extreme heat, toxic aerosols, and corrosive gases that cannot be neutralised once released.

The evidence from large-scale battery fires demonstrates that contamination is not confined to the site boundary.
Toxic metals and persistent chemicals disperse widely, lodge in sediments, enter food chains, and remain for years—often undetected until health or ecological damage is irreversible.
Unlike conventional industrial incidents, there is no practical remediation pathway once these substances are released. This makes the risk profile fundamentally incompatible with this thriving Penrith community - with thousands of people participating in a plethora of childcare/educational centres, community activities, entertainment and commercial centres.

Emergency response assumptions are dangerously unrealistic.
Fire services are not equipped to suppress lithium battery fires, and in many documented cases, responders are forced to withdraw entirely due to lethal atmospheric conditions.
Planning for evacuation or shelter is meaningless when smoke plumes are both poisonous and unpredictable.
Approval of this project would therefore amount to institutional acceptance of an unmanageable disaster scenario.

Critically, none of these risks are offset by any commensurate public benefit whatsoever, let alone the ludicrously claimed “social cohesion” and the cheap energy LIE.
The facility does not provide firm power, does not improve grid stability or lower prices, and does not reduce Australia’s exposure to sabotaging energy dependencies like the CCP - who are our most hostile enemy.

Instead, it concentrates hazard, externalises liability, and leaves the community bearing consequences that cannot be insured, undone, or justified.
This is not precautionary planning; it is reckless abdication of duty!

Social Cohesion Claims, Health Risk Mischaracterisation, and Reckless Co-Location of Community Infrastructure

1. The “Social Cohesion” Claim Is Baseless, Unsupported, and Internally Contradictory
The Social Impact Assessment asserts—without evidence—that the Penrith HV BESS will “enhance community cohesion” and foster a “sense of place”.
This claim is not merely speculative; it is fundamentally irrational.
There is no demonstrated causal pathway by which a high-voltage, high-hazard, extremely costly, industrial battery facility, fenced, secured, and inaccessible to the public, enhances social cohesion.

Penrith BESS:
Employs two operational workers
Is physically and socially isolated
Introduces fear, risk, exclusion zones, stigma and ever escalating energy costs not shared benefit.
Community cohesion is strengthened through safety, trust, shared spaces, reliable-affordable electricity services and social participation—not by imposing an experimental, highly toxic industrial hazard in the midst of childcare centres, schools, theatres, churches, hospitality venues, museums, and dense residential areas.
The SIA’s assertion is therefore ideological advocacy, not social science.
It selectively assumes that all community members “value environmental responsibility” in the same way, while entirely disregarding:
Parents of infants and young children
Educators and carers
Elderly residents
People with respiratory, neurological, or cardiac vulnerability
Visitors attending cultural, religious, or entertainment venues.

A project that introduces non-consensual, non-escapable catastrophic risk into daily community life cannot logically produce cohesion.
At best, it produces division; at worst, sustained anxiety, protest, and loss of trust in institutions.

2. Health and Wellbeing Risks Are Misrepresented as “Perceived” to Minimise Legitimate Harm
The SIA repeatedly frames health and wellbeing impacts as “perceived concerns”, focusing narrowly on noise and EMF, while entirely omitting the most serious and well-documented risks associated with grid-scale lithium-ion BESS facilities:
Thermal runaway
Toxic metal aerosolisation
Hydrogen fluoride (HF) gas release
Persistent PFAS contamination
Long-range plume dispersion
Secondary environmental contamination via soil and waterways

These are not perceptions - they are empirically documented outcomes of large-scale lithium battery failures.
Recasting rational fear as “perception” is a rhetorical tactic that:
Psychologises legitimate safety concerns
Delegitimises evidence-based risk assessment
Avoids addressing worst-case/high-consequence events

Notably, the SIA concedes that operational noise is expected to exceed criteria, yet still characterises health impacts as low.
This contradiction alone undermines the credibility of the assessment.

More critically, the Preliminary Hazard Analysis is relied upon to claim that “none of the potential identified hazards pose a risk to public health and wellbeing”, despite overwhelming international evidence that:
Lithium-ion battery fires cannot be reliably extinguished
Fire services are often forced to withdraw due to lethal conditions
Toxic releases cannot be contained within site boundaries
Post-incident contamination may persist for years
Health and wellbeing impacts from such events are not speculative, perceived, or hypothetical. They are systemic, irreversible, and potentially fatal.

3. Reckless Concentration of Vulnerable Populations and High-Occupancy Facilities
The Project’s own documentation acknowledges a dense concentration of sensitive and high-occupancy land uses within a 400–1000m radius, including:
Multiple early childhood education centres
Primary and secondary schools
TAFE NSW Nepean (major campus)
Performing arts venues (Q Theatre, Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre)
Community centres and libraries
Churches and religious gathering places
Hospitality and retail venues
The Museum of Fire (approximately 200m away)
Dense residential developments

Notably, there’s a plethora of vital errors - including the totally inaccurate, repeated use of “mm” instead of “m” ["Museum of Fire located approximately 200mm to the southeast…..
Australian Institute of Personal Trainers Penrith located approximately 250mm west of the Project site.
There are also several ECEs, with the closest being Little Puma Early Learning Centre approximately 600mm southeast……
TAFE NSW Nepean Penrith campus located approximately 720mm southeast"] which shows a clear lack of competence and accuracy pervading this dodgy EIS.

The totally inappropriate Penrith BESS location is not an industrial buffer zone.
It is a mass-gathering, multi-generational community environment!
Placing a 100MW / 200MWh HV BESS in this setting creates a single-point catastrophic failure risk with:
Limited evacuation feasibility
High probability of exposure of children and families
No practical shelter-in-place option during HF or toxic plume release
No demonstrated capacity for emergency services to operate safely.

The SIA’s attempt to normalise this context by describing Penrith as having “an abundance of social infrastructure” is perverse.
The very presence of such infrastructure amplifies risk, rather than mitigating it.

4. Environmental Sensitivity: Nepean River and Blue Mountains Interface
Penrith’s location at the foot of the Blue Mountains and on the banks of the Nepean River magnifies the consequences of any contamination event.
Evidence from major BESS fires (e.g. Moss Landing) demonstrates that:
Toxic metals and PFAS travel well beyond the site
Contaminants lodge in sediments and waterways
Detection often lags exposure
Remediation is limited or impossible
A release of HF, PFAS, or battery-derived metals in this location would not be a local incident—it would represent irreversible, downstream ecological and public health harm, with impacts extending far beyond Penrith.
The SIA fails to meaningfully integrate this regional vulnerability into its assessment, instead treating the Penrith BESS as an isolated urban installation.
This is a profound analytical failure.

5. Institutional Normalisation of an Unmanageable Disaster Scenario
Taken together, the SIA’s claims regarding social cohesion, health and wellbeing, and community impact represent deliberate, systematic minimisation of risk - ie. knowingly inflicting ‘Risky Moral Hazard Experiments’ on the public and gullible Councils - not a fact based, balanced assessment.

Penrith BESS:
Introduces an experimental, unregulated, extremely toxic hazard
Is sited amid highly vulnerable populations
Relies on unproven mitigation assumptions
Externalises irreversible risk to the community
Offers overwhelming harm and no commensurate public benefit

Approval would constitute acceptance of a disaster scenario that cannot be effectively managed, contained, remediated, or ethically justified.

This is not precautionary planning.
It is unsubstantiated policy and reckless planning, with a dereliction of duty by the Government to protect the public.
There is no reverence whatsoever for human life - with false claims and propaganda deceitfully cloaked in the fake green language of sustainability and social benefit.

*’Forever chemicals’ used in Lithium Ion Batteries Threaten Environment, Research Finds | Lithium-ion batteries | The Guardian 14/7/24
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/14/forever-chemicals-lithium-ion-batteries-environment

*Coastal Wetland Deposition of Cathode Metals from the World’s Largest Lithium-ion Battery Fire" (Moss Landing FIRE)
According to independent Experts this is actually worse than a radioactivity spill.
A lot of this very toxic stuff is not easily located. Whereas, with radioactivity, one needs just a hand-held Geiger counter to locate the pollutant.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-25972-8#Tab1

*Safety of Grid Scale Lithium-ion Battery Energy Storage Systems
“The scale of Li-ion BESS energy storage envisioned at “mega scale” energy farms is unprecedented and requires urgent review. The explosion potential and the lack of engineering standards to prevent thermal runaway may put control of “battery fires” beyond the knowledge, experience and capabilities of local Fire and Rescue Services. 
BESS present special hazards to fire-fighters….”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352158070_Safety_of_Grid_Scale_Lithium-ion_Battery_Energy_Storage_Systems

*Grid Scale Batteries & Fire Risk
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/656f411497ae14084ad8d03a/t/66fd2383b56dbc6906390297/1727865736681/Fannon-Batteries.pdf

*Disaster at Moss Landing: The Risk of Battery Storage - YouTube - 16/1/25
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuTaZFQA18E

*https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/02/20/massive-green-battery-plant-catches-on-fire-again-weeks-after-major-toxic-blaze/

*https://localnewsmatters.org/2025/02/13/environmental-tests-reveal-elevated-levels-of-toxic-metals-since-moss-landing-battery-fire/

*https://www.sfgate.com/news/bayarea/article/environmental-tests-reveal-battery-metals-around-20163514.php

*https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/elevated-levels-heavy-metals-elkhorn-slough-lithium-battery-facility-fire/

*Lithium-Ion Battery Fire Risks & Extinguisher Limitations
1.CSIRO ActivFire® Advisory Note AN‑004
CSIRO explicitly states it "has not and will not certify ..that any fire extinguisher can effectively extinguish a Li‑Ion battery fire."
Verification Services

*”There is a general lack of guidance and provisions in building codes, standards, and legislation in relation to safety to address the potential risks from these emerging technologies. Part of the problem is that we do not yet know enough about their probability of failure, their mechanisms of failure and potential consequences of failure.”
https://www.fire.nsw.gov.au/page.ph

Penrith Battery is all bad news!
Instead of reducing risk—it concentrates it, creating a single point of catastrophic failure with tragic, life-threatening consequences for the Penrith community - far exceeding those of sensible, cheap, reliable, efficient, secure traditional COAL power infrastructure which is absolutely essential for Australia.

Just look at the ongoing blackout disaster predatory TransGrid caused for the poor Broken Hill community and the implosion of the much hyped Waratah Battery!

What a non-sensical fiasco that’s destroying Australia and costing us long suffering electricity consumers a fortune!

The stupid NSW and FAILbanese Government have us heading for ‘RenewaBULL Ruin and consequential blackouts.

There is no social licence for this poisonous Battery plan.
It is being imposed against the will of the community - with the majority not even factually informed.
Transforming the Penrith area - with its plethora of community facilities - including multiple early childhood centres - into an unwilling toxic industrial sacrifice zone - for a speculative energy experiment is unconscionable, as it solely benefits greedy vested interests while having only extremely detrimental impacts for local families.

Please refer to the attached Sydney Water response and associated attachments.

Placing a lithium-ion battery facility on the banks of the Nepean River creates an unacceptable risk of chemical contamination entering a major waterway. Once toxic compounds reach flowing water, they cannot be fully recovered.
How can irreversible contamination be prevented rather than merely responded to after the damage is done?

The proposed site is vulnerable to riverbank erosion, which could undermine containment systems over time. Erosion is gradual, unpredictable, and often unnoticed until failure occurs. How can long-term land movement be guaranteed not to compromise safety decades from now?

Lithium-ion batteries contain metals that can contaminate soil at a microscopic level, rendering land unusable without obvious surface signs.
How will invisible contamination be detected before it permanently alters the land?

Most renewable installations ultimately rely on diesel generators as backup to maintain operations and safety systems. This includes turbines that are not connected to mains power. How does reliance on diesel align with claims of clean energy?

Even minor leaks may introduce toxins into groundwater systems that feed into the river. Groundwater contamination is notoriously difficult to trace or remediate.
How would responsibility be assigned if contamination is detected years later?

Construction near the river will disturb soil layers that currently act as a natural barrier against pollution. Disturbance increases erosion and runoff.
How can the original protective function of undisturbed soil ever be fully restored?