Prevention is better than damage control
By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff
On Aug. 11 the Town Council is scheduled to hold a public hearing and potential vote
on an ordinance that would prohibit both types of projects from being proposed
and built in Charlestown. The ordinance was unanimously recommended for
adoption by the town planning commission in July.
Data centers, even in little Rhode Island, have made waves
and stirred controversy. Smithfield made headlines earlier this year when
Revity Energy, a renewable energy developer based in Warwick, showed interest
in potentially building a data center on the site of Hanton City, an abandoned Colonial-era village that to this
day is still relatively untouched forestland.
Smithfield banned data center developments in early May, but
the Hanton City development could still squeak through, since Revity Energy
filed its application for it the day before the Town Council approved the ban.
“We have a lot of concerns about what’s going on in other
towns,” said Deborah Carney, Charlestown’s council president, in a phone
interview with ecoRI News. “We’d rather, and I’ll be blunt, nip it in the bud.”
Carney said the town is a poor choice for a data center. The
massive computer facilities require huge amounts of electricity and large
amounts of water to cool the systems. Charlestown, said Carney, relies mostly
on septic systems and private wells.
“We have no public water, no public sewer, it would be a
massive drain on local resources, the environment, the noise, the increase in
utility bills, all the stuff that comes along with these data centers,” Carney
said.
Included in the ordinance scheduled for consideration
Tuesday is an additional prohibition on utility-scale battery storage systems.
Battery storage, to date, is a little-used technology at utility scale in Rhode
Island. The state only has a single 3-megawatt (MW) facility operating in
Johnston, and state regulators have only recently begun drawing up regulations
and tariffs to make the projects economical.
Like data centers, battery storage has found itself at the
center of public controversy. It works by drawing power from the grid when
people use less electricity, like at night, and discharges power back into the
grid at peak times, like in the afternoon and early evening.
Earlier this year, Green Development LLC, a Cranston-based
developer of ground-mounted solar arrays, proposed building a lithium-ion
phosphate battery facility that could store up to 208 MW of power in North
Kingstown.
The project was proposed on 10 acres on Callahan Road in the
Quonset Business Park, a commercial and industrial development area operated by
the Quonset Development Corporation (QDC), where state officials often exercise
more control and authority than local officials.
Residents of North Kingstown have expressed repeated
concerns over developments in Quonset, including an active asphalt plant that
began operations last year. Residents also expressed concerns about the
battery-storage facility and the possibility of fires from the lithium-ion batteries themselves.
Carney had originally floated the idea of banning battery
storage systems back in May, after a resident sent her some information on the
systems, and after another council member suggested the data center ban, the
town solicitor merged the two bans into a single ordinance.
“After reading it, I said yeah this is something we should
look at prohibiting in Charlestown,” Carney said.
The ordinance excludes batteries used by consumer products,
electric vehicle batteries, and the battery packs that often come along with
rooftop solar panel installations. If passed, it would be the first-of-its-kind
ban for battery storage in Rhode Island.
The Town Council is scheduled to meet Tuesday at 7 p.m. at
Town Hall.
