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Saturday, 15 February 2025 14:34

Sunbury BESS Application - A Further Update

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Readers will recall that we published an article in LOSRA’s 2025 New Year Newsletter concerning the late removal of the latest BESS application from the agenda of the December Planning Committee meeting, where no reason had been given at the time for this unexpected withdrawal. In an attempt to discover more, prior to the Spelthorne Partnership Assembly (SPA) meeting on 3 February, LOSRA had submitted a written question concerning the ongoing Sunbury BESS planning application as follows:

‘Why was the applicant (Sunbury BESS Limited) for planning application 24/01112/FUL (The construction of and operation of a Battery Energy Storage System…on Land To North East Of Eco Park Charlton Lane Shepperton TW17 8QA) permitted to withdraw the application from the agenda of the 10 December 2024 Planning Committee Meeting, just days beforehand (on the afternoon of Friday 7 December) and after the Planning Officer’s Report, recommending refusal, had already been published?’

 The agenda and documents for the SPA meeting included the following response to our question from the Council’s Planning Development Manager:

‘The applicants advised officers that they wanted to amend the scheme by reducing the size of the development and a plan was submitted to illustrate this. The amendment was in addition to seeking to overcome the objections by the Environment Agency. Legal advice was sought on whether officers should accept this request and officers were advised this should be the course of action. The deferral was sought and agreed by the Planning Committee. The formal amended plans are awaited and once received will be uploaded onto the Council’s website.’

 This response is interesting in that it not only confirms that the Environment Agency’s objections were indeed part of the reason why the application was withdrawn from December Planning Committee, but additionally that a smaller BESS development was being considered. However, to date there have been no ‘formal amended plans’ published in the application’s documents list on the Council's website, which shows the revised Agreed Expiry Date of Fri 02 May 2025 for the application. In the meantime we have submitted a further comment on the application to Spelthorne Planning, now published, in the light of January’s significant large-scale BESS fire in California. The text of LOSRA’s latest comment can be found here.

 

2 comments

  • Comment Link Nigel Spooner Wednesday, 26 February 2025 11:42 posted by Nigel Spooner

    Thank you in turn for your comprehensive comments. It is indeed apparent from assessing other BESS planning applications around the country that the level of knowledge and information involved their decision making is hugely variable. Yorkshire in particular has indeed made every effort to use the most up-to-date information and insist on consulting with the most relevant bodies, with the results you describe.

    Your reference to 'An unexploded bomb at the bottom of the garden...' resonated hard when I recently read reports of the challenges facing those tasked with clearing up the remarkable devastation that followed the Californian wildfires. Inevitably many of the abandoned vehicles were electric. Those that were not totally destroyed but nevertheless had damaged high-voltage lithium-ion batteries have been continuing to re-ignite days, if not weeks after being affected by the wildfires. The emergency service organisations involved in the clear-up have now determined that they do indeed need to treat them in the same way as unexploded ordnance!

    In the meantime we on the LOSRA committee will be continuing to monitor this particular application extremely closely.

  • Comment Link John Douglass Saturday, 22 February 2025 13:28 posted by John Douglass

    Thank you LOSRA for your letter and information concerning the BESS scheme, which is very well argued.
    In support of LOSRA’s case I would like to add further information. I have commented before on this application and would like to reiterate my view that a BESS is dangerously unsafe if located near to residential properties.
    There are a growing number of incidents of uncontrollable fire outbreaks, dangerous gas (hydrogen fluoride) and heavy metal pollution to soil and groundwater resulting from the battery energy storage system explosions. In an area such as Spelthorne with large open water reservoirs exposed to the atmosphere, the pollution of water supplies by such fires could render the affected area uninhabitable for some time. I think one can easily see the effects on the desirability of living in an area with the threat of outbreak of fire and pollution close at hand; why would you want to purchase a property in such an area? An unexploded bomb at the bottom of the garden springs to mind! But the effect on house prices and household insurance pales into insignificance in relation to the health risk that this development poses.
    It is thus more than disappointing to read the dismissive and poorly considered responses from the UK Health and Safety Executive and Surrey County Council Fire and Rescue body. It is these two bodies who should be standing robustly against such risky developments even if it can be argued that the safety risks can not be proven, why would these bodies expose the public to these risks if there is reasonable doubt as to the safety of the scheme.
    Information about the hazards of this scheme is readily available, which the council and safety bodies should have consulted. Baker Risk consultants (Bakerrisk.com) provide good information about the problems with these schemes. There have been over 30 recorded serious thermal runaways in Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) worldwide.
    There is a database readily available from Chickerell Action group (https://cagonline.co.uk/bess-fires) which provides detailed information on the incidents to date, including a detailed report by Merseyside Fire and Rescue service following the explosion and fire at Orsted, Liverpool in 2020 which is available via the database.
    A further extract from the planning inspectorate states as follows (reference http://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk: “A planning application for a 50MW BESS ( Leeds Planning Application, 2023) was withdrawn by the Applicant when Yorkshire Fire and Rescue raised objections (Yorkshire Fire and Rescue, 2023). Yorkshire Fire Brigade made a number of important points in their letter to the Planning Authority: • “The risks of vapour cloud, thermal runaway and explosion are unfortunately very real and are becoming more common as we see an increase in the number of BESS installations rise. “
    It is a great pity that our own Surrey County Council Fire and Rescue service did not take a similarly robust approach. As case histories grow and the industry wakes up to the risks associated with locating BESS schemes close to residential properties let us hope that Spelthorne council has the wisdom to throw this application out and avert the possibility that Spelthorne becomes added to the growing list of casualties.