HARLINGEN — City commissioners are holding back on allowing a four-acre battery storage site to open in the city’s booming west side, giving the company time to meet with residents standing up against the proposed project.
Earlier this week, commissioners gave SMT Energy a chance to qualm residents’ concerns over the project proposed to be developed on Tucker Road at Lincoln Avenue, aimed to back up the local electric grid.
During a meeting, David Spotts, the Colorado-based company’s co-founder, requested commissioners grant a special use permit in the area zoned for homes and retail business, arguing the project was safe while offering the city a back-up energy source.
The battery energy facility storing lithium-ion batteries would be comparable to an electrical substation, he told commissioners during Wednesday’s meeting.
“Harlingen’s growing,” Commissioner Michael Mezmar said. “We need substations to store electricity for when storms come through, whether they be tropical or from up north.”
However, Commissioners Richard Uribe, Frank Morales and Rene Perez expressed concern about the project’s risk in the growing residential area near a shopping district in the booming west side.
“We also got to listen to the constituency,” Uribe told Spotts. “I myself got phone calls from people who live down the road and are very concerned about having a battery storage of any kind in their neighborhood.”
The project
As part of the project, SMT Energy plans to install three 20-foot shipping containers with crystallized lithium-ion batteries which would help back up the local electric grid, Spotts said in an interview earlier this week.
The monitored, unmanned so-called stand-alone battery energy storage facility would store lithium-ion batteries, he said, adding the batteries wouldn’t be electrolyte-filled.
Spotts said the storage site, which would follow federal standards, would pose “extremely low” fire and thermal runaway risk, or cases in which batteries overheat, adding “there are multiple redundant on-site emergency fire suppression systems.”
