New Nipomo battery plant owner provides tour of facility, says ‘the community should feel safe’
Dave Alley
NIPOMO, Calif. – The owners of the new Nipomo battery plant provided a tour to the media and county officials on Thursday morning, giving an inside look at the much-discussed facility that has drawn a lot of attention over the past few months.
During the 90-minute tour, leaders with Houston-based Alpha Omega Power, which owns the Caballero Battery Energy Storage Site (BESS), answered questions from media members about its operations and safety features.
“The community should feel safe because these assets has undergone a battery of real life tests,” said Guillaume Dufay, Alpha Omega Power Co-Founder/Chief Technology Officer. “It has undergone a battery of inspections directly from CAL FIRE (San Luis Obispo County Fire Department) that came to the site here during the commissioning and it has also complied with all the latest regulations and all the strict requirements from the National Fire Protection Association. We have done simulations. We have done real life tests to prove that a fire event or any kind of emergency situation is extremely unlikely, and if it ever happens, it will be contained. It will be managed and it has been proven to not cause any risk for life and safety and property around the area.”
The Caballero plant is located on Joshua Street in south Nipomo near Highway 101 and has been in operation since April 1.
“It’s a power asset that connects to the to the power grid of California,” said Dufay. “This has 33 battery energy storage systems that produce a 100 megawatts. We are providing power for about 100,000 houses for about four hours. It’s injecting power into the grid on a daily basis. Batteries are here to act as a buffer on the larger electric grid. They provide power when it’s needed the most and they absorb power when there’s excess power available on the grid, so for these reasons, we call them reliability equipment. They provide reliability to the grid.”
The battery storage system is adjacent to the PG&E Nipomo substation and began operating less than three months after a battery plant facility in Moss Landing in Monterey County caught fire.
In the aftermath of the Moss Landing incident, many in Nipomo community and surrounding areas raised concerns about having a battery facility located close to their home.
However, the Caballero operators point out the two facilities are entirely different in their design and safety features.
“Compared to Moss Landing, this particular system was built compliant with the most recent version of California fire codes for the 2021 version of the California Fire Code,” said Nick Warner with Energy Storage Response Group (ESRG). “In addition to that, there are a number of UL product standards and other requirements that were either imposed as best practice from the industry or by, Cal Fire and other local authorities, to ensure safety with the site.
They added the company is hoping to provide transparency about the Nipomo plant through the media tour and a town hall meeting that was held on Wednesday night.
“There’s just absolutely no risk for anybody who lives in the vicinity,” said Dufay. “This is one of the safest industrial developments that you can have in this country. The more interest from the public is better for our industry. We are proud of what we’ve done. This is very safe. We want to share that. We want to bring that out to the community. We did an open house to to share the same message. We are here. This asset is safe. This is what it does. There’s no mystery. There’s no magic here. We charge lithium ion batteries and we discharge them and we have all the fire and safety equipment and all the analysis that have been done to comply with all the latest codes.”
Columbus, Ohio-based ESRG operates the safety planning and has established the safety protocols that are in place for the Caballero site.
Warner, a co-founder of the company, was onsite for the tour on Thursday and pointed out the plant has gone through meticulous planning ahead of its opening to ensure the site meets the highest levels of industry and government safety standards.
“We’ve gone through large scale fire testing of the system,” said Warner. “We’ve done heat flux analyzes. We generated emergency response plans and other engineering assessments, in line with these codes and best practices, or in some cases in excess of these practices. Part of why ESRG is here today is because we’ve contractually agreed to provide 24/7 subject matter expertise and services to the site for the lifetime of the operation.”
Also on hand Thursday was San Luis Obispo County Fourth District Supervisor Jimmy Paulding, who represents the entire Nipomo area.
His office has fielded a number of questions, comments and feedback about the plant since it gained widespread attention earlier this year following the Moss Landing fire.
“I understand that the community is really concerned, but there was a lot of misinformation about this project,” said Paulding. “This project meets a set of safety standards that weren’t in place when, the Moss Landing facility was approved and constructed for example. I think everything has risks, right? I can’t stand here and say that this facility is a 100% safe facility. You look at Diablo Canyon, you look at the Phillips 66 oil refinery that used to operate here in my district. This facility is held to a set of standards and those standards have been adhered to and they’re operating in a safe way. We have an emergency response plan should there be an incident and it certainly gives me more confidence. I hope that the community can rest assure that plans are in place should there be an incident.”
Also happening Thursday, as well as a day earlier on Wednesday, and scheduled for this coming Monday, is specialized training at the site with the San Luis Obispo County Fire Department/CAL FIRE and several neighboring agencies.
“The intent of the training is to familiarize all of our firefighters with the facility and orient them to procedures and talk about what we need to do in the case of emergency,” said Ryan Grebe, SLO County Fire Department Public Information Officer. “We’ve invited other agencies like Santa Barbara County Fire, Santa Maria Fire, Five Cities Fire, and all these other people who are going to be responding in the event of a large emergency, so we want to make sure they’re getting the training and that they’re familiar with the facility as well.”
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