Wakefield: Battery storage plant opposed amid fire worries

There has been strong opposition to the plans from local residents

A proposed battery storage plant would be a "bomb waiting to go off", say residents who oppose the plans.

Harmony Energy has applied to install 60 containers near Heath, Wakefield, to capture excess energy created through renewable sources.

The company has said the technology is safe, but resident Colin Daley says the site is too close to homes.

"If it did go drastically wrong it will impact a lot of people from an explosion point of view," he said.

On a sunny or windy day, the country can create more electricity than it uses and the technology proposed for Heath is designed to store energy that is not immediately consumed by homes and businesses.

Battery storage sites aim to release the energy when demand rises and energy creation falls.

The storage site is currently farmland but could become home to up to 60 battery containers

In Heath, the containers would hold lithium-ion batteries and be placed on what is currently farmland.

Mr Daley said while local residents did not oppose the practice in principle, Heath was not the place for a 100MW site to be created.

Colin Daley has said local residents are worried about the possibility of a fire at the site

Mr Daley said: "We're against the appropriateness of the development. The site that they've chosen couldn't be worse. There's far better places than next to a populated area to site this.

"This is a bomb waiting to go off."

Peter Kavanagh from Harmony Energy said the technology they used was safe

Harmony Energy said it needed to create storage areas next to powerful substations, like in Wakefield, to power homes.

"We're building this without any subsidy to help drive down energy costs long term and we need to be next to or very close to this substation to enable the economics to work," chief executive Peter Kavanagh said.

"In terms of fires, there's been one in Liverpool which was totally different technology. The technology we're using here, we use Tesla batteries which is the gold-plate of the industry."