Battery storage facility plan rejected by planners

The BESS would have been built on a plot of land off Barnsdale Road in south-east Leeds.

Plans to build a battery plant on greenbelt land in West Yorkshire have been rejected.

Harmony Energy had wanted to install the battery energy storage system (BESS) on a plot near Allerton Bywater, in south east Leeds.

However, Leeds City Council rejected the scheme, saying it would "represent inappropriate development" in the Green Belt.

Hundreds of locals had objected to the plans on fire safety grounds.

A battery energy storage system (BESS) site was recently created in Cottingham, East Yorkshire.

In a written ruling on the case, the council said: "The proposal would not safeguard the countryside from encroachment, which would prejudice one of the five purposes which green belts serve."

It added that the design and materials would have introduced "a highly incongruent development" of an "industrial scale and character into the open high landscape-value countryside setting."

Battery storage facilities take in power from renewable energy sources and then release it back onto the National Grid when demand is high.

But although supporters champion their green credentials, opponents cite concerns over the risk of fire linked to such sites.

A BESS fire in Liverpool in 2020 was thought to have been caused by the overheating of the lithium in the batteries.

Harmony had insisted its site in Allerton Bywater would have been safe and said it would have used "different technology" to that used at the Liverpool site.

A separate application for a BESS, submitted by Banks Renewables for a plot less than a mile away from the proposed Harmony site, has not yet been determined by the council.

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