Op Ed – Mutiny on the Battery? Not the Seattle Times’ Finest Hour.

[By Peter Lugli, Director of Snoqualmie Valley for Responsible Energy, a citizen-based 501(c)(4) non-profit corporation based in the Snoqualmie Valley. Views expressed are those of the author, not the Living Snoqualmie website. You may submit letters to [email protected].]

In its July 12 editorial WA’s clean energy transition will fail without giant batteries, the Seattle Times makes a series of sweeping statements about batteries and mutinous municipalities – and commits a journalistic faux pas.

The giant batteries issue is increasingly relevant in King County, which now, by our review, has more moratoria on them than any county in the nation.

Noisy mutinies from the plebes? Or signal?

The editorial’s central argument is misleadingly simple. Washington needs batteries to maintain reliability and achieve clean-energy goals; sooo…communities opposing projects like Jupiter Power’s proposed Cascadia Ridge battery facility near Snoqualmie are standing in the way. Off with their heads!

The Times editor addresses one of the community’s major objections with reassurance from a fire safety expert, one Noah Ryder, “a fire safety expert who studies the risks of battery storage systems.” A link is posted to Fire & Risk Alliance’s website, where Dr. Ryder is chief operating officer. The Times reportedly quotes Dr. Ryder who says even if fires occur, “they would be isolated to small, shipping container-sized pockets of the overall system.”

What the editorial doesn’t say is that FRA prepared four reports here, here, here and here at Jupiter Power’s behest, about Jupiter’s giant battery project in Snoqualmie.

Did Seattle Times readers deserve to know this, to assess the expert’s potential bias? Or was the writer simply unaware of the connection?

Yes readers should have been told. Times readers were ill-served at best – and misled at worst.

It doesn’t stop here. Turns out, FRA documents are materially more cautious about fire risk than the editorial itself.

The Times relies on FRA’s Ryder that a fire “would be isolated.” But in its report, FRA states that the facility is designed to “lower the risk of container-to-container propagation”. The project’s safety features are intended to ensure that fire growth will “likely result” in a contained event.

The Times’ “[w]ould be isolated” is an assertion of non-risk. FRA’s use of terms like “lower the risk,” and “likely” are certainly not negations of risk.

Words matter. Had the editorial dug deeper, it would have found a much more concerning reality. FRA states that the proposed battery cabinets have no automatic or manual fire-suppression system; that water is intended for exposure cooling rather than extinguishing a battery undergoing thermal runaway; that firefighters generally should not attempt to suppress such a fire; and that responders should establish exclusion zones and allow the event to run its course. FRA’s plan also contemplates flammable-gas releases and explosion hazards. It directs responders to monitor air downwind of the facility and evacuation should be considered if abnormal readings are detected.

Huh? The good people of Snoqualmie and neighboring communities questioning these risks are… clean energy mutineers? What’s next? Accusations of messing with the primal forces of nature?

The editorial’s second fundamental problem is that it materially overstates what lithium-ion batteries can accomplish for regional reliability.

Battery storage may be valuable. It can absorb electricity when available and discharge it later. It can help cover short peaks and provide important grid services.

But batteries do not generate electricity. And short-duration lithium-ion batteries cannot solve the Northwest’s most difficult resource-adequacy problem: extended periods of extreme winter demand coinciding with low hydropower or limited renewable generation.

That is the conclusion of E3, a respected energy consulting firm whose Northwest resource-adequacy study was sponsored by a broad coalition that includes Puget Sound Energy itself.

E3 puts it plainly. “Planned solar, wind, battery and demand response resources provide clean energy but limited RA value.” “RA” means resource adequacy: the ability to supply enough electricity when customers need it most.

E3 found that short-duration battery storage is ineffective at addressing multi-day reliability events caused by extreme cold weather and very low hydro conditions. E3 found that new natural-gas peaking capacity for backup use during low-hydro or low-renewable conditions remains a robust long-term reliability strategy. Off with their heads too?

Perhaps the communities are not mutineers at all. Perhaps they are the ones still minding the bridge, checking the charts and asking whether the captain has lost the plot, giddily shaming people from a teeter-totter perch.

Peter Lugli
Snoqualmie, WA