Jupiter Power hosted an informational meeting Dec. 10 at St. Luke’s Parish Hall to address community concerns about its proposed Oyster Shore Energy Storage unit.
The proposed storage unit, a 275-megawatt battery energy storage system, has caused concerns from residents about safety, environmental impact, and community welfare. The storage facility would replace the current Global Petroleum terminal at the corner of Glean Head Road, Shore Road, and Glenwood Road.
Jupiter Power representative Hans Detweiler gave a presentation to try and ease concerns by talking about the benefits of the battery storage facility, including the speed in which batteries can operate and the cost.
“The main driver for this is cost, renewable energy sources have become very cost effective compared to the previous natural gases that were being used,” Detweiler said. “Another great benefit of batteries is that they are very fast active. They can go from powered down to fully engaged in a fraction of the second, which helps with the increasing energy demand.”
Detweiler also addressed community concerns about taxes, stating “Current taxes on the site are around $320,000 a year. If during the operating years of our project, for whatever reason, taxes were less than that, we will make a voluntary payment to the North Shore School District for the difference.”
Sean Kelleher, project engineer with Jupiter power, also addressed residents safety concerns. Kelleher detailed fire safety and how the safety process to make sure batteries has tightened over the years.
“The Electric Power Research Institute released a report back in May that states that there has been a 97% reduction in the rate of incidents for battery projects from 2018-2023,” Kelleher said. “We actually have done classroom and on-site training with the Houston Fire Department, and they said that we would be the model for all developers going forward.”
The presentation also featured Paul Rogers, a member of the ESRG fire safety group, a third party that has come in to look at the project from a fire safety view. Rogers said that they have been talking with fire departments across the state to ensure they have the proper training for these situations.
“We just want to make sure that they know that they can manage these types of systems. One of the reasons that we feel confident is this large-scale fire training system that Sean just mentioned because it is a game changer,” Rogers said. “This is something that was near and dear to our heart. We wanted to make sure that if this thing were to actually fail and it did go on fire, that it wouldn’t continue to go throughout the whole facility itself.”
After the presentation, audience members were invited to write questions or concerns that they had and have them read aloud. Some residents, however, were very vocal about their concerns with the project, highlighting conflicting statements made in the past by Jupiter about fire safety.
“You said let it burn in regards to the Otay Mesa 250-megawatt plant in California, which burned for two weeks with an estimated eight million gallons of water used,” said Christine Panzeca, a Glen Head resident who has been an advocate against the plant. “So how can you say that water is not used when we have an incident with eight million gallons this past May, and how would you prevent something like that from happening at the harbor.”
Many residents also voiced their concerns about fire safety procedures asking about staff on sight, fire protocols in case of emergency and where the batteries will be made. Detweiler took time to address each residents’ questions which received mixed reactions from some audience members.
“Our batteries are overwhelmingly manufactured in Asia, primarily Korea and China, and there is a fair amount produced in the United States as well,” Detweiler said. “Also just to be clear we not proposing a building, this is an exterior structure. There is no roof, there is a perimeter wall and if there is a fire, the likeliest scenario is that it is in one module and as we discussed previously it is unlikely to spread past that one module.”
The Town of Oyster Bay has kept the moratorium period for this project open until April of 2025, and Jupiter will continue to try and ease residential concerns about the project during that time.
