Residents have launched a flood of early objections to battery storage development bids for Forfar farmland worth around a combined £50 million.
Major applications from two separate companies for compounds with banks of batteries to hold electricity for release back into the national grid have sparked safety and environmental fears from folk in the east of the town and the village of Lunanhead.
The planning bids, which are at an early stage, are each sited near an electricity substation on the B9134 Old Brechin Road.
One would use land between the substation at the Whitehills area of the town.
The other is located on the opposite side of the road and covers a much larger site – the size of around four football pitches – beside the historic Rosie Road core path.
The stretch of road is already prone to flooding and there are worries that will be exacerbated.
Objectors have also raised concerns over the “catastrophic” prospect of a fire at any of the sites, saying their research has revealed serious incidents in the UK and abroad.
The lithium ion systems which would be used have been described as “compact, safe and reliable” by the company whose application is at the more advanced stage.
They say community response has already been “pretty positive” and are about to progress the Whitehills proposal to the next stage of a formal planning application.
Residents’ objections
Local businesswoman Jude Foster, whose farm shop is yards away from the sites said: “People really didn’t know about this and there has been a huge reaction since they found out.
“There have been dozens of letters of objection sent to the council already.
“People moved to the countryside because they wanted to live somewhere peaceful, not beside something like this,” she said.
“There will be disruption on this road for two years of construction, it’s not going to create jobs for the local economy and they have to prove the community benefit of building outwith the development zone.”
“There are brown field sites lying vacant within the boundary of the development plan that could and should be utilised before inflicting the industrialisation of the countryside onto the inhabitants of Lunanhead, Whitehills and Gowanbank.
“Not only will these storage units be extremely large scale, but they have been proven to be extremely unsafe.
“Lithium ion batteries have caught fire on numerous well-reported occasions including a Liverpool incident in 2020 and one in Arizona in 2019 which severely injured four firefighters.
“The area next to the substation has a football pitch, regularly used by young children and there is a children’s play park close by.”
Forfar resident Colin Smith, 76, added: “According to the plan for the bigger one, the site encroaches onto the Rosie roadie.
“That has to be maintained as a path which has been walked by people of many years. These sites are open farmland and it should stay that way.”
The projects
Gigabox Developments are behind the scheme for the westmost application site on almost a hectare of farmland.
The site for the Intelligent Land Investments Group scheme is around four times larger. It is a Lanarkshire-based energy storage development company.
Each would house up to 50 energy storage modules, based on steel shipping containers.
Energy from sources which could include windfarms – on and offshore – was well as solar farms, would be fed into the storage units and then released back to the grid when needed.
“Within the next ten years, energy storage facilities are expected to be commonplace and will form an integral part of the electrical grid’s provision and maintenance of a stable and reliable electricity supply within the UK,” say Gigabox in their supporting statement for the Whitehills energy plan.
Dan Grierson of agents The Energy Workshop said: “We have already had consultation with local community councils and it has been pretty positive as these things go.
“We have been engaged with people through a website set up for the Whitehills energy storage project, but would welcome any other comments.
“We looked at many locations but there are not many which have the 50MW capacity connection to the substation as we have here.”
Safe
He added: “Battery storage technology has moved on incredibly quickly and modern lithium ion systems are now compact, safe and reliable.
“A runaway fire in one of the units would, therefore, not be able to spread and would be limited to a maximum of a single container.
“Modern fire suppression systems would also be installed in each container which use an inert gas which is non-toxic and is not environmentally damaging.
“As far as we are aware, there are, to date, no instances of a modern, containerised lithium ion battery system catching fire although there have been some minor incidents relating to cable faults.
“Normal petrol or diesel motor vehicles present a significantly higher fire risk.”
He said additional planting and flood prevention measures would be put in place.
The other bid is not yet the subject of a full planning application, but Angus Council has said it does not constitute environmental impact assessment development.