Green Energy Experts Call Proposed Battery Regulations ‘De Facto Moratorium’

Passing San Diego County’s proposed rules to make large battery storage systems safer would have the same effect as banning them, green energy builders and experts say. 

In response to fears over recent fires at a handful of battery sites, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors directed county fire officials to come up with some new rules on how close developers could build batteries next to residential buildings. Instead, the Fire Protection Control District produced sweeping changes on how battery projects could be built anywhere in the unincorporated county, which could go into effect as soon as Tuesday when the board votes on them.  

Batteries are key in California’s transition to 100 percent renewable energy by 2045, a goal set in 2018. The idea is that, eventually, batteries would replace fossil fuel-fired power plants and store power from the sun and wind for use in the evening when both of those energies aren’t available. And while state lawmakers are hellbent on streamlining permits to get batteries built faster, it seems to battery developers that San Diego County is trying to block them from being built at all. 

The new rules are “a de facto moratorium” on all battery storage projects in the county, said Jason Anderson, president and CEO of Cleantech San Diego, a renewable energy business association. 

“(It will) negatively impact our ability to meet our regional renewable energy and resiliency goals while also negatively impacting our regional economy,” Anderson said.  

The new rules require batteries be spaced 10-feet apart from each other, and that the entire assemblage maintain a 100-foot buffer on all sides from the property line. That worries battery developers most because it means they’d have to downsize how much energy storage they could build or purchase a lot more land to accommodate additional spacing which adds costs and could render the project infeasible.  

“That (10-foot rule) is not something to our knowledge that’s required anywhere in the world or consistent with (national fire protection standards for batteries,)” said Scott Murtishaw, head of California Energy Storage Alliance.  

Murtishaw says the rules read like the fire district was rushed and he wants the county to slow the rulemaking down. 

“The fire district didn’t have adequate time to talk to state or national experts and fully digest this complex and technical issue area,” he said.  

Large- or grid-scale battery technology hasn’t been around that long. Batteries built even 10 years ago are considered antiquated technology and standards rapidly change. The National Fire Protection Association, a U.S.-based organization, sets the global standard for battery safety every three years. Those rules inform California’s state fire codes which most local fire districts would follow. But local fire chiefs can pass regulations that are stricter than what the state requires. California’s fire code requires batteries to be spaced at least three feet apart and maintain a 20 to 50-foot property buffer, for instance. San Diego is proposing to double that.  

Three high-profile battery fires in San Diego since 2023 triggered calls for a moratorium on new batteries in the unincorporated county. It amped up a fight some neighbors started against a proposed 1,280 megawatt-hour capacity battery called Seguro just outside of Escondido.  Instead of an outright pause on battery building, Democrat Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer asked its fire department to come up with these rules.  

JP Theberge, of the Elfin Forest-Harmony Grove Town Council, which voted to oppose the Seguro project, called the rules “a good compromise.” Joe Rowley, a former Sempra executive and an associate of Theberge who opposes the project, told Voice he thinks large battery projects like Seguro should be 1,000 feet away from homes. The company building Seguro, AES, said battery projects wouldn’t pencil under such an immense buffer. 

Michael Huynh, AES’ stakeholder relations manager, told Voice the proposed 100-foot setback would still “unnecessarily impede battery storage development and jeopardize achievement of local and state clean energy goals.” 

The fire district says the new rules would ensure firefighters could have safe access to a battery if it burns and prevent dispersion of toxic gases, according to a board letter. (The region’s alternative energy emergency response expert, Rob Rezende, told Voice of San Diego that car batteries are more toxic than battery fires. Any toxins battery fires do release don’t travel that far, he said.) 

Though the new rules are considered temporary, they would immediately apply to five battery projects the county has in the application and development stages now and any proposed future projects, confirmed David Sibbet, with the fire protection district.

A recent report by the Electric Power Research Institute showed the rate of battery fires or explosions dropped considerably given the enormous amount of batteries being built in recent years to support renewable energy demand. Between 2018 and 2023, failures of grid-scale batteries (the kind we’re talking about in this article) dropped by 97 percent.      

Renewables and clean technology spending, including on batteries, in San Diego County is about $630 million annually, according to the fire district’s report to the board. But fire district staff wrote that more regulations were “unlikely to substantially impact spending on energy projects.”