Screw them. Let this be a lesson to any new business that thinks of investing in moving to the area. Kill any chance at a job in the area and let the community rot away.
A Toronto-based power corporation says it’s halting its proposal for an eastern Ontario battery storage facility after facing intense local pushback — including someone uttering a death threat during an open house.
The mayor of Elizabethtown-Kitley said while police were called to the meeting — and he regrets how it went down — Baseload Power ultimately failed to gain traction because it did not consult widely or early enough.
It comes as the Independent Electricity Systems Operator (IESO), which manages the province’s energy needs, is soliciting pitches from companies on how to help shoulder Ontario’s growing power demands.
Baseload Power proposed to build an eight to 10 hectare lithium-ion battery energy storage system with a maximum generating capacity of 300 megawatts in a rural northern part of Elizabethtown-Kitley, a township bordering Brockville whose southern boundary is more than 100 kilometres south of Ottawa’s core.
The project’s development would continue, the letter said, while community engagement — including providing reports from experts in the battery energy storage industry — would resume early in 2024.
Sandler said Baseload Power shared information and notices with the township and councillors well in advance of the Nov. 2 open house, where it did not get a chance to talk in detail about the project’s benefits.
The original article contains 825 words, the summary contains 187 words. Saved 77%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
What were the peoples concerns? Why did they hate the idea of this so much? It was surrounded by farms and not like it was a nuclear power plant or something… I’m a little confused by the people’s response.
I guarantee they were fed at least in part by conspiracy theories off of Facebook, spread by pro-oil groups. The article mentions something about older, more toxic battery systems which these were confused for.
Because it’s new and green, and green is for sissies!
Lithium batteries are complicated, and the article is not very specific. I assume this site was going to use LiFePO4, which is no more unstable than NiMH, but the other chemistries, like lithium-cobalt, tend to catch on fire when mishandled. Guess which is on the news more, and therefore which a group of people who weren’t interested in battery chemistries would have heard of? 🙄
Ya, thats probably true. I always hope there is some type of rational thought to this behavior that I havent thought of. But I doubt it here. Only thing I can think of is they wouldn’t like the look of it. Hardly a reason to go as far as dealth threats…
I’ve noticed the same people who always have a issue with batteries are ones who are Motorheads, whose only ability to get attention is by having the most powerful car (and the loudest).
Electric cars however don’t make noise, so they can’t simply spend money on a loud one to get noticed, and they probably can’t get a big one, because they don’t have as much capacity. We’re going to possibly see people such as in the new electric mustang who associate with new car communities.
The petrol car communities have seemingly created an echo chamber for themselves where they literally have even started to believe the nonsense they’ve been spouting, which includes the misconception that lithium batteries are blowing up all over the place. They aren’t…
I have always thought it would be incredibly easy for terrorists to shutdown oil pipelines if they tried. 1000’s of km of completely isolated unguarded pipeline. But Sabotage would be devastating to the local environment, even if it would save the global one long term.
It doesn’t have to be environmentally damaging. Years ago there was a group called “valve turners” who just closed emergency shut off valves all over the place.
I agree but I also wouldn’t call something like that terrorism either. Turning a valve can be reversed in seconds, some sort of destructive sabotage could take months to repair.
Now we’ve gone from seconds to fix to hours to fix. If you wanted better I’d say to target pumping stations. If you could cause some serious damage to the pumps that push the oil, you could take the entire line out of commission for a good long while.
Of course, the pumping stations are guarded, and it isn’t a good look for ecoterrorists to kill people. But maybe you could pull a Stuxnet.
Don’t you think it’s good for the company if the death threat is received before they’ve spent millions of dollars on construction/procurement? While they can still afford to shift locations to a welcoming community? Don’t you think the consultation process may have alerted the company to the threat of vandalism and sabotage to their project?
If I was building an industrial facility in a small town, I’d want to know the locals’ priorities re: noise vs visual aesthetics vs smells vs funding local community projects so that I could keep the electorate happy and not have to go head to head with a hostile local government making new rules to make my life miserable.
If I was building an industrial facility in a small town
You’ve never held a battery in your hands?
They make no noise.
They produce virtually no smells.
They would be inside featureless buildings.
I don’t know what grid storage you’ve been looking at, but battery storage is usually even more unobtrusive than distribution substations. We’re literally talking about some warehouse-looking building that is eminently forgettable.
Small cells and industrial plants are different. Charging some cells produces an off-gas of hydrogen, which requires you to change the air in the room with the cells, which means fans. You also have to ensure that the temperature of the room stays within certain bounds, which could mean bigger fans.
In terms of cells, batteries don’t really smell like anything I find. However, you need to top up the water levels which requires distilled or deionized water. Will they be doing water treatment on site?
All that being said, there’s more than enough room for a discussion about concerns. These yokels jumped right to death threats instead of progress. I wish nothing but rolling blackouts and a lack of jobs for them in the future.
The journalist got their two sources, quotes, and met deadline, but they didn’t explain what happened.
It’s weird the reporter didn’t interview opponents. There’s a tonne of interesting questions waiting to be answered:
Why the hostility?
What were the actual objections, from the objectors, not “locals had safety concerns, felt the process was rushed and that Baseload Power wasn’t providing adequate information” from a second-hand source.
Was there organized opposition? If so, who organized it?
How did people find out about the plan?
How did people find out about the meeting?
And some harder stuff from the company would have been good:
Don’t make threats (also don’t kill people, it’s usually wrong). It is too easy for Power to amplify and harness sincere backlash against your movement and whip it into counter progress outrage.
At a consultation stage don’t threaten lives and infrastructure. Ask how the company will protect against sabotage and vandalism.
Are they building infrastructure that is vulnerable to ecoterrorists? If an ecoterrorist were to attack their pipeline with a high powered hunting rifle would it be an ecological disaster?
If a saboteur spread diamond grit abrasives on the rail track the coal cars travels on, would that cause damage, a derailment, or just increase maintenence costs? What about grease?
If seepage from the tailings pond was spread onto the plant manager’s lawn, would he let his kids play there?
Hire a bunch of just-out-of-high-school kids, give them a bunch of training about the proposed solution, to go door to door in groups or two or three, telling the neighbours about it. Keeps the kids busy, and folks aren’t likely to threaten kids with death.
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Screw them. Let this be a lesson to any new business that thinks of investing in moving to the area. Kill any chance at a job in the area and let the community rot away.
Another win for idiocy. Great. Things are going just great.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A Toronto-based power corporation says it’s halting its proposal for an eastern Ontario battery storage facility after facing intense local pushback — including someone uttering a death threat during an open house.
The mayor of Elizabethtown-Kitley said while police were called to the meeting — and he regrets how it went down — Baseload Power ultimately failed to gain traction because it did not consult widely or early enough.
It comes as the Independent Electricity Systems Operator (IESO), which manages the province’s energy needs, is soliciting pitches from companies on how to help shoulder Ontario’s growing power demands.
Baseload Power proposed to build an eight to 10 hectare lithium-ion battery energy storage system with a maximum generating capacity of 300 megawatts in a rural northern part of Elizabethtown-Kitley, a township bordering Brockville whose southern boundary is more than 100 kilometres south of Ottawa’s core.
The project’s development would continue, the letter said, while community engagement — including providing reports from experts in the battery energy storage industry — would resume early in 2024.
Sandler said Baseload Power shared information and notices with the township and councillors well in advance of the Nov. 2 open house, where it did not get a chance to talk in detail about the project’s benefits.
The original article contains 825 words, the summary contains 187 words. Saved 77%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
That does sound just like the small town Ontario I know
What were the peoples concerns? Why did they hate the idea of this so much? It was surrounded by farms and not like it was a nuclear power plant or something… I’m a little confused by the people’s response.
It’s new, and they bought into the idea that because it’s new it’s bad.
I guarantee they were fed at least in part by conspiracy theories off of Facebook, spread by pro-oil groups. The article mentions something about older, more toxic battery systems which these were confused for.
Because it’s new and green, and green is for sissies!
Lithium batteries are complicated, and the article is not very specific. I assume this site was going to use LiFePO4, which is no more unstable than NiMH, but the other chemistries, like lithium-cobalt, tend to catch on fire when mishandled. Guess which is on the news more, and therefore which a group of people who weren’t interested in battery chemistries would have heard of? 🙄
Ya, thats probably true. I always hope there is some type of rational thought to this behavior that I havent thought of. But I doubt it here. Only thing I can think of is they wouldn’t like the look of it. Hardly a reason to go as far as dealth threats…
NIMBY ism
I’ve noticed the same people who always have a issue with batteries are ones who are Motorheads, whose only ability to get attention is by having the most powerful car (and the loudest).
Electric cars however don’t make noise, so they can’t simply spend money on a loud one to get noticed, and they probably can’t get a big one, because they don’t have as much capacity. We’re going to possibly see people such as in the new electric mustang who associate with new car communities.
The petrol car communities have seemingly created an echo chamber for themselves where they literally have even started to believe the nonsense they’ve been spouting, which includes the misconception that lithium batteries are blowing up all over the place. They aren’t…
Yeah. The story is missing a lot. I hope someone does a follow-up story where they actually say what happened.
It might have been small-town NIMBYism/Conservatives, but the journalist needs to tell us that, otherwise we’re just exercising our prejudices.
Huh, I wonder if it works on oil companies too, or does the threat of voilence only work on green projects?
They just call
securitythe Mounties on you.I have always thought it would be incredibly easy for terrorists to shutdown oil pipelines if they tried. 1000’s of km of completely isolated unguarded pipeline. But Sabotage would be devastating to the local environment, even if it would save the global one long term.
shut down
It doesn’t have to be environmentally damaging. Years ago there was a group called “valve turners” who just closed emergency shut off valves all over the place.
I agree but I also wouldn’t call something like that terrorism either. Turning a valve can be reversed in seconds, some sort of destructive sabotage could take months to repair.
Close the valve then weld it shut?
Now we’ve gone from seconds to fix to hours to fix. If you wanted better I’d say to target pumping stations. If you could cause some serious damage to the pumps that push the oil, you could take the entire line out of commission for a good long while.
Of course, the pumping stations are guarded, and it isn’t a good look for ecoterrorists to kill people. But maybe you could pull a Stuxnet.
Yeah, let’s spark up a welder next to a gas pipeline. Maybe we’ll go smoke at a gas pump or oil the brakes on my car too.
So maybe the valve turners accidently blow up a few sections
My solution: stop holding public consultations.
We are a nation of laws, not squeaky wheels.
Don’t you think it’s good for the company if the death threat is received before they’ve spent millions of dollars on construction/procurement? While they can still afford to shift locations to a welcoming community? Don’t you think the consultation process may have alerted the company to the threat of vandalism and sabotage to their project?
If I was building an industrial facility in a small town, I’d want to know the locals’ priorities re: noise vs visual aesthetics vs smells vs funding local community projects so that I could keep the electorate happy and not have to go head to head with a hostile local government making new rules to make my life miserable.
Why would you go through all that when you can just bribe the local officials instead
Because it can be really expensive and risky to bribe local officials
You’ve never held a battery in your hands?
They make no noise.
They produce virtually no smells.
They would be inside featureless buildings.
I don’t know what grid storage you’ve been looking at, but battery storage is usually even more unobtrusive than distribution substations. We’re literally talking about some warehouse-looking building that is eminently forgettable.
My comment was within the context of the person I was replying to suggesting companies should abandon public consultations all together.
Small cells and industrial plants are different. Charging some cells produces an off-gas of hydrogen, which requires you to change the air in the room with the cells, which means fans. You also have to ensure that the temperature of the room stays within certain bounds, which could mean bigger fans.
In terms of cells, batteries don’t really smell like anything I find. However, you need to top up the water levels which requires distilled or deionized water. Will they be doing water treatment on site?
All that being said, there’s more than enough room for a discussion about concerns. These yokels jumped right to death threats instead of progress. I wish nothing but rolling blackouts and a lack of jobs for them in the future.
The journalist got their two sources, quotes, and met deadline, but they didn’t explain what happened.
It’s weird the reporter didn’t interview opponents. There’s a tonne of interesting questions waiting to be answered:
And some harder stuff from the company would have been good:
removed by mod
Don’t make threats (also don’t kill people, it’s usually wrong). It is too easy for Power to amplify and harness sincere backlash against your movement and whip it into counter progress outrage.
At a consultation stage don’t threaten lives and infrastructure. Ask how the company will protect against sabotage and vandalism.
This just reeks of shortsightedness.
Hire a bunch of just-out-of-high-school kids, give them a bunch of training about the proposed solution, to go door to door in groups or two or three, telling the neighbours about it. Keeps the kids busy, and folks aren’t likely to threaten kids with death.