Councillors back Newton battery storage plant

The development will include the installation of a 25MW ‘Grid connected’ battery energy storage (BESS) facility at a designated ‘brownfield site’ at the eastern edge of the access road to Stornoway’s Goat Island, close to its junction with Newton Street.

The neighbours are the Stornoway Power Station, the Coastguard Station on Goat Island, and housing on Seaview Terrace, and a new access track would be created for the site off of Newton Street, and another in front of the Coastguard Station.

The development will be ringed by a 3m high fence, and its north and north-east sides will see the construction of a 4m high acoustic shield.

A report before the Comhairle’s Planning Applications Board, stated that the applicant, Point and Sandwick Power, has asserted that the development will “provide stability services to the island Grid” and would enable more output from community wind farms, and a “blackstart” service that will work with the power station to restore the Grid in microseconds, if there are any outages. The location will enable it to provide these services more effectively.

Planning staff informed the meeting that there had been a total of five representations submitted on the application, all of which opposed the plan. These included a representation from the Stornoway Community Council, which raised concerns including the location of the development, fire safety and noise pollution.

In terms of fire safety, planners told the meeting that each of the component batteries met international standards in terms of fire and health and safety, but added that at present, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service were not statutory consultees on such developments and had not submitted a response to the planning application.

The planning report concluded that “overall,” the benefits of the proposed development “outweigh” the likely harms, “when the significant weight offered by national and local policy to green energy and de-carbonisation of the Grid is taken into account.”

The planning report added: “While BESS technology will have some health and safety risks, with appropriate design and mitigation, the likelihood of occurrence is low.

“Further, a regulatory framework will develop over the next few years due to the number of similar projects coming forward across Scotland and the UK at this time.

“BESS is still an evolving technology, and it is most likely that a range of other permits and consents, including those relating to health and safety, will be required to mitigate such risks to negligible before the BESS could become operational.”

The Board granted its consent for the development subject to conditions “that will mitigate effects and secure finalised details of layout and management plans prior to the commencement of development.

“It is also recommended that a consent be granted for five years duration given that the development type is still new and may take longer than three years to be ready for implementation.”

The decision of the Planning Applications Board was ratified by the Comhairle, when the full council met last Wednesday (4 December).

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