The Application
The Full Planning Application for a lithium battery energy storage site in Frome has been active since June 2023. Comments can still be made on the Somerset Planning Portal. Please do add your voice, it very much counts. Reference 2023/1070/FUL
Frome Town Council (as a Statutory Consultee) has unanimously rejected the scheme, but Somerset Council is the decision-making body. The Planning Officer can decide to reject the application, or she has said if she is minded to Approve it, it will go to the Somerset East Planning Committee. We have no date as of November, 2023.
We are obviously mindful of the urgent need to expand the renewable energy programme and are not anti-battery energy storage sites, but we are strongly opposed to sites within towns.
Trina Solar Hold Co Ltd plan to site a 30MW Lithium Iron Phosphate battery energy storage site in Frome, in a small cul-de-sac, just 32 metres from houses in Styles Close. It is adjacent to a SSE electricity sub-station, next to Rodden Brook Stream, which flows into the River Frome and very close (within 250 metres) to a primary school, nursery and care home.
Even though the location for the site is at the bottom of our gardens, the plan does not even conform to basic fire safety guidance from the National Fire Chiefs Council (See Links page). It's a very small cramped site of 2.2 acres that will be crammed with 32 battery units accommodated within 16 containers. Just one tight access point on a sloping site against the prevailing westerly wind and to be remotely monitored from Bath.
This site in Frome, with its population of 28,000 is wholly inappropriate. We are a small rural town, with a retained fire service - comprising just two fire appliances.
The whole town (and possibly further afield), could be affected by an exclusion zone in the event of a fire or explosion releasing highly toxic gases, as well as potentially contaminated river system.
Planning permission should be denied by Somerset Council on the grounds of potential impact on Health and Public Safety, loss of amenity, unacceptable noise levels and inherent fire risks that the public should not have enforced on them by a company and a landowner whose sole motives are that of profit not concern about well-being of nearby residents.
There have been 60 fires on similar sites over the last 5 years (and some of them also using the same, allegedly 'safer' technology, Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries. BESS Failure Event Database
Several Fire Chiefs in the UK are raising their concerns over the fire risks as related to BESS applications in their areas - eg West Yorkshire, Hampshire, Leeds, Norfolk and Merseyside.
The map shown here is based on the experience at Moorabool, Australia, in July 2021, where a BESS fire resulted in
residents within an area of approximately 31 sq km being advised to 'shelter in place' i.e. remain indoors
and bring animals indoors.
