 No, yeah, I'll let him in. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And we should be, we are recording. Great. Thank you. So let's get started. For the solar. Working by law. Solar by law working group. Meeting of. Friday, January 6th. 2023. And thank you everybody for rejoining. And hope everybody had. Nice holidays, a restful break. And some regional. Revigoration for the, for the coming year. So happy 2023 everybody. Hope everybody's well. Let's get, get started. I think first order of business is to. Okay. Did the people just hear that? No. Okay. You didn't. Okay. There's like. My building at UMass. Is somewhat under construction. I haven't heard. Or reconstruction, I should say. Though. And I've heard that noise. Many, many weeks ago, but it's the first I've heard it in the last few days, but like, like drilling through cement somewhere in this. One of the ceilings or something. So. It lasted just for a second. I couldn't hear anything. I'm surprised you didn't hear anything, but if that happens again, I'll. There it goes. Okay. A little bit. Hopefully it won't. Persist. We're not hearing it. Okay. Not sure why it's really. Okay. And yeah, so my first order of business was to. I'm going to ask for the, the minute taker. And first. We can hear it, but it's very faint. Yeah. So it's not bothering me. I can't hear. I don't know. I can't hear any drilling, but I can't hear Dwayne. Or did you just stop talking? I stopped talking because it. This is a bad beginning for the year. I can't hear myself speak when I, that drilling happens. It's like. In the floor underneath me, I think, but hopefully it's just, it's not going to, it's going to go away. But anyhow, I thank you. I think it was Janet who took the meetings last, the minutes last time. I think it was Martha. No, no, it was Janet. No, Martha. Martha, we have, do have minutes to approve from Martha. Two meetings ago. Yeah. If I recall, and then Janet. We still need, need the minutes from you. Yes. Get to those next meeting. I'll get them out next week. I've been working on them. Okay, great. And then, but then that it does look like. Laura's on tap today, but I think she's in the car. Somewhere between New York city. I don't know if that, if someone could switch with me, that would be great. I'm actually on the train and then the train will be in the car in about 10 minutes. Okay. Okay. Well, okay. Good. Yeah, I wouldn't. It's enough to be. To be driving while on the cell phone. I wouldn't want anybody taking minutes while driving. So I do wonder if. It does bring us back to. Bob. Yeah. Okay. If you're so willing. Thank you. Great. And I'll make note of that. Okay. So then thank you, Stephanie for getting us prepared with the meeting packet and so forth. And the agenda. First order of business would be to review. And, and vote if we're wanting to go forward. On the meeting on the. Minutes. From December 2nd meeting. Which were in our packet. Didn't have a long time to review them, but I looked at them this morning. And I'm wondering if people have any comments or, or edits to offer on those minutes. Yeah, I didn't get a chance to look at them, but. I'm sure they're good, but. Probably should read them. Do you want me to, I could display them Dwayne and just sort of scroll through them quickly. If that would make people comfortable for sure. And then if we are comfortable voting on them, that would be great. If not, we can table it for the next meeting as well. Yeah. Because that was the, I did the minutes. And that was when we had the representative from KP law. And I, I went through the, you know, listen to the recording and tried to be pretty faithful in recording everybody's comments, but I think it is important that people look at the, the minutes and, and feel comfortable like Jack, I quoted you a couple of times. So, and I think it would be good for people to just look and make sure that they're comfortable with how I quoted them. Okay. Can you all see them now? I had missed the meeting, but watched it. And I thought this, these were a good set of minutes. Yeah, they've all been good. Yeah, I would concur with that. And I would agree with Martha, these minutes are a good record of that conversation that we would might want to revisit as time goes on. And we get into these issues, but also obviously the written responses from KP Laura in our, in our packet as well. Not today's packet, but a previous packet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're a director rather than coordinator, right? Right. Yes. Yes. Sorry. I think I copied it from a, you know, minutes. No worries. Pre promotion. It all. That's okay. No worries. And I know you won't be able to read sort of everything, but just to sort of get a sense of. What was captured here. Okay. Just as you do that, I'm going to actually move myself physically to another room in my office suite here. Which I think will be further away from this drilling. Yeah. Do any of you back with us now? Yes, I am. Yeah. Okay, great. I'm going to stop sharing. Great. So. Any comments or though on those? Or any proposal to. Either accept the minutes or to postpone. Discussion on the minutes and our approval of the minutes until next time. If people want to look at them in more detail. I didn't see anything glaring. And again. Janet says they're okay. That means a lot. There's a lot of weight. I'm the keeper of the minutes. Okay. So do I, is there a motion to accept the minutes? I'll move. Is there a second? I'll second. Yeah. Okay. I think you have to. Verbally say it. Thank you, Janet. Okay. We'll need a voice vote. No particular order. Brooks. Yeah. Jim sec. Yes. McGowan. Yes. Hannah. Yes. Breger. Yes. Corcoran. Yes. Paglia Rulo. Yes. Okay. The minutes are approved. Great. Thank you. Okay. And then so next week we'll try to catch up with. The minutes of December 16th and then if possible, the minutes for today as well. Okay. Next agenda item is staff updates. So. I'm just wondering if we can actually move those two items so that captain Bascom isn't absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Apologize for that. Here for too much longer. Okay. Until the bill rings at least. Okay. Great. Okay. Very good point. Yeah. And, and that way we can get through this. This afternoon and to talk to. The fire chief. Fire captain, I should say. And so let me just. Thank. Captain. Thank you. The, the fire chief. A fire captain, I should say. And so let me just. Thank captain. Vascom for joining us today. Certainly also for your service to the community. And. We really appreciate your, your, your joining us as you know. We're working on solar bylaws for the. for the town as a as a town committee. And part of part of our charge in addition to solar installations is also what is often comes with solar or set or independent of solar, which I'm sure you're familiar with is battery energy storage as well. And it's it's emerging throughout the country and probably the world with regard to these these new this new technology, fast changing technology and advancing technology. But, you know, does promise to be a really important part of our energy infrastructure, growing in scale and size and prevalence across the Commonwealth and the, and I suspect the town. And we're, as we look at the zoning issues with regard to storage siting specifically the issue of safety, fire safety. Issues is something that we're trying to get our heads around both in terms of sort of the, the, the, the technical issues as well. Technical issues involved, as well as how well prepared communities are in Amherst in particular in understanding the safety issues and the, and in the case of a fire or other types of incidences with these batteries and the technical issues involved, how the fire departments are sort of understanding this situation now and, and, and prepared to take on this, these new technologies and so forth in your, in your work and how you thought you have for us with regard to the issues that we're facing in terms of zoning and so citing and zoning. So, thank you, Captain for joining us. And I'm not sure I presume Stephanie or Chris have sort of prompted you a bit in terms of what we're interested in hearing from you but I guess I'll turn it over to to to you. Unless Stephanie or Chris you want to say anything before the captain starts. Don't have anything. I don't have anything. Thank you. Thank you to Stephanie and Chris for inviting me to be here with your working group. I have a personal interest in solar as well so I'm excited to sit and listen to what you have to say after this as well. Let's look at the presentation that came through from a couple minute page as well. And so there were a few solar related zoning issues I had no no idea about until I watched that presentation so that was, that was very helpful so thanks to Chris or Stephanie whoever sent that That was very helpful. So I'm Chris Bascom fire captain, and I am also the fire inspector for the town of Amherst. In 2019 is when the fire service started to look at energy storage systems. I think initially our issues were mostly with electric vehicles, scooters and smaller electronics that had the lithium ion batteries and the different lithium technologies and chemistries in them. So I think that kind of came to the forefront masters had some codes, initially in 2019, but the biggest changes just came last month, December 9, we accepted or we got the new fire code came into effect, and that is the 2021 version of the system. So it really is up to date on what's going on out there with the multiple installations of energy storage systems, either attached to PV or standalone. As a fire department we don't just deal obviously with the utility scale like seems to be probably mostly what you're you're focused on but we also deal with residential as well. I had an interest in solar so I have a PV system on my house. I actually also have a battery system that I purchased in 2020. So it's 17.1 kilowatts and in my basement and a little room there. I'm kind of very interested in the in the technology so it's one of the reasons that I, I purchased it and it's also one of the reasons that I'm kind of excited to be in this as things develop around energy storage systems and photo of takes. So as a fire department are, you know, initial concern is always life safety. And one of the nice things about the outdoor systems is if, if done properly. They're, they're going to be outside of hopefully about 100 feet from any type of exposures. Sorry, I don't know what's here again. Also, so remote outdoor locations are considered any battery storage systems that are more than 100 feet from any building a lot line that can be built upon or any public way. Ideally utility scale systems are going to be fall under that definition of remote outdoor location so 100 feet anything that's within 100 feet from a building a lot line or any public way is considered a location near exposures. And those are going to have size limitations. They're going to have a lot more distance required between the actual battery enclosures themselves. Once they get into that definition of remote outdoor locations, they're allowed to go to much larger systems. Ideally, the manufactured systems don't have actual enclosures that people can get inside of. So our biggest concern life safety is kind of a move point at that point and no one's going into the actual battery systems we can keep people away from them with gates. So we kind of limit, you know, who's actually going to be exposed to these type of things on the utility scale outdoor systems. So mostly it's going to be the maintenance personnel, someone who's there to fix it or to investigate a problem. And then of course my coworkers in emergency response type of situations. So we have to build these. So construction and maintenance are going to be times when people are going to have tendencies to get hurt, and the fire department is going to have to go out there and make some type of access to the site. So fire department access becomes very important to us, although it's not going to be very common or very often that will make it out to these systems. So we need to be able to get out there first off with the ambulance being able to get there with the ambulance and make sure we can transport patients to the hospital and a reasonable period of time would be top of our list. The second reason we need access is if there is some type of a thermal runaway or a fire type of event, so that we can get apparatus out there bumper truck a fire engine, so that we can put water, either on the vegetation that are around the energy system or to actually cool the system to prevent the thermal runaway from propagating from container to container. And like I said, with the remote outdoor locations that the containers are going to tend to be closer together, because the separation distances are going to be that separation distances are going to be manufactured dictated at that point. So whatever the manufacturer can prove the distance required so that the fire doesn't propagate. That's what that's how close to be able to place them. Same thing with size on those remote outdoor locations, whatever the manufacturers have specified as an acceptable quantity of either energy or standalone units would be what was allowed for those. When you come within the 100 feet of buildings and lot lines. That's when you start looking at basically 10 feet becomes the standard separation distance between the batteries and any type of egress from a building. So they're going to put a battery in an alleyway or something along those lines. The battery system would need to be 10 feet from any building egress 10 feet from the from the side of the building unless the building had the proper hour rating for the wall on the outside of the building. Two hours is generally but what's commonly used but if it's a big enough system they may have to go to three hours so other concerns would be using water on the systems to cool it. Obviously, we have a concern about our runoff and whether our runoff is going to be detrimental to the environment to the water table and that sort of thing. So if the fire occurs in these we kind of have a situation where we need to decide do we let these burn, or do we actually put them out and pull them. And so we would really look to the manufacturers to provide us with an emergency operation plan on how best to operate around their equipment. We have some general parameters SOPs as standard operating procedures or guidelines that we use when approaching energy storage systems. We're trying to increase some of our training here in the department so that we can get our newest members up to speed on exactly how to deal with energy storage systems but they're all pretty well trained on how to deal with live electrical sources so they will treat them in that way. So I discussed access, water supply, discussed separation distances a little bit, life safety. One of the new thing that's in the fire code is they actually do now a permit is required from the fire department for the construction and operation of energy storage systems. That is new that is not something at the fire department here that we've gotten up and rolling yet, but we're going to work with our IT department to get that put into our open government system. A lot of it mirrors what the building department is going to look for when they pull a building permit to build the system. We're going to look at what kind of plans we want. We're going to look for the full construction plans where it's going to go on the site, what type of separation there is from vegetation separation from other from the panels themselves and anything else that might be on the site. We're going to look for them to give us a hazard mitigation analysis. We're looking like most of the manufacturers are going to produce the hazard mitigation analysis for their own equipment. A lot of it in the new NFPA standard which is National Fire Protection Association standard 855 in that it is requiring for them to decrease separation distances they'll need to actually do live fire events. They'll need to burn their equipment and see how it reacts to thermal runaways and under fire conditions. And once they know how it reacts under fire conditions they can better dictate how their equipment should be installed. So that's going to be a requirement. They'll need to produce that document for us if they're going to ask for any type of variation from the NFPA standard. That's the separations. Some of the manufacturers manufacture their enclosures so they can actually go back to back, allowing them to have more energy in a smaller period of smaller place smaller space. And for them to do that sort of thing they need to produce one of these hazard mitigation analysis with the live fire test showing that it is acceptable their systems will not propagate the thermal runaway. And because the enclosures are substantial enough to prevent it. We'd want to see equipment in operation and maintenance manuals for all the equipment on on site. And in the fire code and in the NFPA standard it's required for those to be kept on site in some type of enclosure for us to access when we when we arrive, so that we do know exactly what type of equipment or we're unfortunately we don't always get there first it's possible that a mutual aid company could arrive and a mutual aid company from North Hampton won't be as familiar with the system so having that kind of documentation on site for the emergency responders and for the responders from the from the contracting company also is important. We also want to copy of their commissioning plan. And at the same time we want to copy of their decommissioning plan and it's actually requirement that we have a copy of the decommissioning plan. Before the system is is up and running reports actually commissioned. So, I'm working with zoning and conservation everybody on the Port River solar project of Hickory Ridge. So that's one of the things that that we've discussed so they they already have a plan for when it's going to be decommissioned, you know how many trees are going to be planted that sort of thing that's exactly what we want to see we just want to know when you know when it's this system hits at the end of its life cycle, what what's going to happen it's not just going to be, you're obviously it's concerned that it's not just going to be abandoned in place, sort of thing. That's on our list of documents to require. And then the last document is is an actual emergency operations plan on how to mitigate different types of incidences with their systems which include things from brush fires that that start impinging on their outside sources and or thermal runaway and whether it's better to put water on or to let the system burn and whether or not these systems are equipped with some type of fire suppression system. So some some of them, some manufacturers put clean agent systems in in order to suppress fires inside of the cabinet itself the enclosure. We have no. We're not for or against it necessarily. It seems like we would like to see more or hazard get mitigation analysis is on these on these incidences to see what is the best course of action because putting, you know, 10s of 1000s of gallons of water onto one of these enclosures and then creating some type of dangerous runoff is not ideal it's not what we want to do. So if it's better to let these enclosures burn and let it go to atmosphere then that's what we would do. We of course would, like I said before life safety is our first priority and in those situations, we call in the state hazmat team. Well, four of us on the fire department are all members of the regional state hazmat team and we have air monitoring capabilities so we bring in our air monitors and we would strategically place them around around the area. In order to get ideas about what type of gases and what type of air quality concerns we may have. There are the same devices that the DP has. We actually can integrate with Department of Environmental Protection. When we do air monitoring. So we would, we would work with them, and we would do air monitoring while we let something like that burn. It wouldn't just be something where we're just letting it burn and not taking the proper safety precautions and for the neighbors and any other type of exposures in those situations. So in the new fire code. As far as spill containment goes there is a requirement that spill containment should be about 10 minutes of fire flow. So that's a calculation we would do based on the number of enclosures that are on fire and how much water we would put on those enclosures and then basically we just do the math times time 10 minutes per the gallons per minute. And we figure out how big the spill containment area may need to be. And as far as neutralization goes they consider from what I've seen most of the lithium ion technologies used in immobilized electrolyte. So in the fire code neutralization isn't required for immobilized electrolytes a gel or a more solid type of electrolyte. Anything that has a full liquid electrolyte is required to have some neutralization have required to be on site for those but those would not be a lithium ion technology. Signage we'd require signage both on the gates and on individual enclosures. We have very specific wording and pictograms that are used on the signage and that is dictated and the fire code and in the National Fire Protection Association standard. What we look to are the underwriter laboratories. 9540, which is the standard for the for the batteries themselves, and then you will 9540 a which is a testing standard where they that's that's the fire test that's where they set the systems on fire and see how they will behave under those conditions. And then you all 1973 is a little bit of an older standard, but it is the kind of the standard for standby battery systems in a general sense. So they also fall under that. Great. I think those are most of my general comments on where we're at with the fire department and the energy storage systems, as far as outdoor and utility scale go, we have some more very specific stuff that someone's going to put it in a one or two family hall. But that I don't believe is quite your interest at this point. Thanks. Thank you captain that was really a helpful rundown of sort of your knowledge base of storage and fire issues, really helpful and actually great to hear that you're very much on top of this issue. I had one question that I know. I think Jack and then Stephanie in that in that order and then we'll, if you have time and ability will have some q amp a. That would be great. I guess I might my first question leases, you mentioned is as sort of a risk with the response to a potential fire event would be either to let it burn in place, or water suppression. And I guess I want to get are those the only two options that I'm thinking particularly of the water I just, you know, have heard about other foams types of thing because obviously it's an electrical fire so there's probably protocol to isolate, isolate the system from the from its electrical interconnections and so forth. In terms of safety for water suppression, but is there potential use or consideration that might have other concerns with regard to foams and so forth I thought that's how they were fighting fires like it in vehicles more so than water. Right so they do use some foams. The other agents that we use that are a little bit better than the foams foams have. It takes a lot of water and a lot of time to create the foam. We have to have the foam concentrate on hand and we need to mix it properly. Things like dry chemicals and agents wet chemical agents and then clean agents are all, all used in different systems by different manufacturers the clean agents are probably the more popular one of common kind of name is FM 200. It's kind of a common agent that's used. And it seems that most of the manufacturers built them in initially, not really knowing one how the batteries are going to behave and also not knowing where the fire and building code we're going to kind of go with the whole thing. So a lot of them initially it seemed to have built it in from what I'm hearing. It's 2023 and and supply chain issues is always always the answer. So from supply chain issues I'm told you can't get a lot of the FM 200 actually the brand name stat X, which was what they want to put into the Fort River. And the free ridge system isn't even available. So they came back with a telling us it wasn't available and what other options are there. If one of these systems are going to be in put into an office building into an apartment building or that's where we would start insisting that you had some either type of a clean agent system or if the building was fully sprinkled and you had a sprinkler system that was able to go and fight the fire in there. These systems because they are, you know, like I said the remote outdoor location. When they did the formal runaway initially begins in one of the cells, it will get warm enough it will probably start the wiring on fire and any other types of plastics or combustibles inside of the enclosure is really what will be on fire at that point. FM 200 the clean agent system will fire and it will basically stop the chain reaction of the fire and remove the oxygen from the from the enclosure, the fire will go out. It's not cooling the thermal runaway and the battery cell though so that will continue to occur continue to warm up and prop possibly and probably will start to perpetuate to to the other cells as well. So the only thing in those enclosures that burn is using the wires other plastics and other things associated with the battery management system and running the batteries. So unfortunately the clean agent systems or the foams would put out the fire, but they wouldn't provide the cooling to keep the propagation of the thermal runaway from continued. So that's why water has become the more favored fire suppression. I don't just because you get the cooling along with putting out the fire. So with with regard to the foams or the clean agents or do they themselves have chemical chemistry is associated with them that if they got loose into the environment in runoff or up in the air, then they themselves would be hazardous. So the foams is exact that's exactly one of the reasons we don't use the foams and PFAS and a couple of the things that occur in the foams. A lot of most we we've never used them traditionally because we don't have a lot of exposure to those sorts of fires and air moist. Most of ours is just class a class a is anything that makes ash so would paper those sorts of things. So those are our buildings and those are our major contents of buildings. So we don't have a lot of experience using those type of foams we don't have them in town, we've never really use them. The FM 200 is actually was invented to replace Halon and Halon is a very difficult chemical dangerous chemical causes cancer couple other issues so FM 200 does not cause cancer does those same environmental issues and it was actually invented for that purpose to replace the more dangerous chemicals that are out there. And our dry chem is sodium bicarbonate so it's a it's a right relatively inert item, I wouldn't, you know, put it anywhere in large quantities, but in the quantities we generally use it to suppress the fire it's relatively inert does not cause huge amounts of damage so we use our sodium bicarbonate the clean agent systems and the reason they call them clean agents is because they do dissipate on their own into the environment and don't leave. They don't leave residue, which is ideal for cleanup in those situations, and then they do go off into the environment and they are not supposed to cause cancer. I'm sure, you know, like many things they have not been out there for very long. So in 2020 years we'll see what the actual long term effects are of them but that's why they were invented because they were safer alternative. Thank you, Captain. Yeah. Okay, so let's. Great. I think some folks eager to ask a question or speak so let me start with Jack and then Stephanie and then Chris and then Laura and then Janet I think is the order that they came in. Great. You know, I'm happy to have, you know, Stephanie and Chris leap frog me, given their role. I'm happy to answer everyone's question. I'm sure I don't. I mean, I think, Jack, you probably have a very valid question so I'm fine to let you go first. Alrighty. So, so you when you mentioned you got around to those to the water. You know concerns with the application of water to these facilities, I, I'm not sure. Did you see the white paper that the water supply protection committee put together, we did have a section in there. Anyway, we kind of envisioned that water would be used sparingly, if at all. And so like, you know, from a bylaw perspective, there's a question of, you know, do we need to have a fire hydrant and and water coming in right and we were thinking that, you know, let's not, let's not do that and let's not, you know, create runoff with regard to these storage facilities and, and that was stemming from my understanding is that some of these battery storage, you know, with the evolution of the technology is that they're equipped with sensors that thermal sensors that they sense the heat. And then they're so there's actually shut down before there's a chance for the thermal runaway. I would, I was thinking that that had become much more sophisticated but perhaps that is not your, your understanding. I'm not exactly sure how far the sophistication of the battery management systems have come. But yes, you're correct it the battery management system once it sees it's running outside of its parameters, it's supposed to shut down that that battery cell, and yeah that's supposed to stop it. But it seems like throughout the country, if there's manufacturing defects, something else is wrong with the cars are the big ones that you know get in a car accident you damage some of the cells. And so it's it's it's kind of hard even with the battery management system shutting that cell down if it has some sort of damage, it could still propagate heat and continue into runaway. That was the big issue. Like, I think it's important that we separate the, you know, the car type batteries versus what we're looking at here, because I think the sophistication, you know, much higher for these, you know, energy storage systems but quality manufacturing, I think, and having good battery management systems will prevent the majority of the issues with these. I think when you run into low quality manufacturing where the cells aren't as aren't as good and the quality assurance at the factories aren't as good. That's where we're running into the issues with the mobility stuff with the scooters and stuff the fires in larger cities is is pretty significant the wire has in New York, New York City is putting up quite a bit of information on the scooters and things in their buildings are having a lot of issues. But I think with the utility scale stuff where it does have a higher quality manufacturer and more robust battery management systems, you should be in a better place for that. I'm kind of up on the air and whether we need a fire hydrant at the at each of the energy storage systems. We're down and we decide that you know we want to use as little water as possible on this. That's, that's a fine, fine decision, I don't I don't really, I can see the argument for that. The fire trucks going to show up with 750 gallons of water in it. It can do a pretty good job with putting out spot fires and grasses and things that are around the system as we let it. The other things we often do when things are burning as we can use our whole streams to push gases and push smoke because they, you know, they entail a lot of water when we push. I'm sorry, a lot of air when we push water out of our whole streams. So we can push smoke and gases and insert directions. So, even if we weren't pouring water on to the actual batteries. We may be using water streams to keep the smoke from going towards apartment complex, things like that, you know, my, my, I imagine, you know, mill valley right because the, the four river system is is kind of fresh in my mind. So just set up a hose stream between between the apartments and the battery management system. And that would hopefully prevent any smoke from traveling in that direction. So we may not just use the water to pour it onto the enclosure. And certainly if the manufacturer says no, don't and we wouldn't do that. But I think that we should look at each individual system and determine whether we think a hydrant would be appropriate or not appropriate for it. But river is going to be tough, like we don't have a water supply out there, there is no running water out there. The river is high enough we could actually draft right out of the river and use the river water. But we're not going to have a hydrant out there, we'll need to bring it in on a factor. Thank you. And just so, so with regard to the Fort River, do they, how far along is the design for their BSS 90%, I think 90% believe that was the last plan said I saw with the 90% Yeah, it'd be interesting to take a look at that I think for our group here. Jack, can you just say what BSS is just in case people on the public aren't clear systems. Battery energy storage system. Correct. And then so off the batteries, I was curious since we have you with regard to, you know, all these solar fields are going to be over grass. And there was a question that came up with a guard to a grass fire and the amount of heat generated by, you know, six inch long lawn grass is the heat. It seems like it would be short lived number one, and that the heat generated would be fairly mild that it wouldn't really be able to compromise solar panels. That was our would be my opinion. Okay, all right. Yeah. Okay, thank you younger days I did do a little wildland firefighting and one of the things they train us to use is an emergency shelter. The fire is moving quickly through high grasses. Actually, it looks like aluminum foil and you basically look like a little big potato when you pull it over yourself, and you're actually just laying it and the fire will move through the through the high grasses, relatively quickly, and the amount of heat that's put out is survivable. So basically you lay in that and the grass fire goes right over the top of you and then once it once it passes you get out of it. The people have survived in those emergency shelters over the years so I would imagine it would be the same sort of thing underneath the panels where the fire would move relatively quickly, and it would have a limited amount of fuel. Yeah. The real concern is it gets towards a standard trees or something along those lines it can really, really get some heat going. Thank you very much. Absolutely. Great. Let's return to Stephanie then. Thank you so much Chris really appreciate your taking the time and this is really informative. My question has to do with you brought up that either cooling or letting the, the unit burn, you know would be sort of the approach to how to deal with that is that. I have a couple of questions based on this is that based on the size. Is it based on the manufacturing, and how do you ascertain whether you need to apply some cooling method. Is that also based on the manufacturing so does it vary from system to system, and how would you know ahead of time if you're going to the system, what you might, what approach you might need. So it is going to vary based on manufacturers if the more robust they make their enclosure, the better it protects the stuff inside but the better it is at keeping the water from actually cooling on the actual battery cells. At that point we're just basically putting a cooling water stream on the outside of the box and that's not very effective at cooling the actual cell itself. So putting the water on the actual battery is what actually removes the heat from it. So a lot of manufacturers say it's pointless to put water on our enclosure because you're not going to cool it significantly enough to stop the propagation from one battery to another within that enclosure. If their enclosure is that substantial the idea is that fire or that heat and propagation won't leave that enclosure. So it won't go to the next one and so when you have 25 enclosures next to each other, it's only going to stay in that one. That's the idea of making a more robust one but the more robust it is the less you can use water on it to cool. So that would be the big thing. So we would also like a as far as the documentation goes we want the documentation on site. So some type of a tube or some type of just a little doghouse sort of thing, where they could have the documentation for us to pull out if we need it. There's sign there should be an 800 number 24 hour someone standing by 24 hours to answer that and to provide us with information and an emergency response from the company. There is also it's called chem track it's another kind of clearing house for chemical information, but they're a 24 hour hotline that we would call and in place of the manufacturer providing us with information they would provide us with some guidance on particular manufacturers emergency response. And then, finally, we would like training. So, each system that gets put in we would like to be trained by the manufacturer or the installer on how their system works, where their shutdowns are, whether using water on their enclosures will actually cool the batteries or whether they won't have our best option in those cases is just to protect exposures and let it burn. The follow up question is just pertaining to the difference between these batteries storage systems versus things like electric vehicle batteries because I know that there's maybe been some concern around, you know, are these likely to have an explosive nature. Or to what potentially might happen with like an EV or some other kind of battery storage technology. But if you could talk about maybe the differences and how one is more likely than the other or whether they are equally as likely. Yeah, from what I understand it is this the cell size, the actual what the cells look like and the size of them vary from utility scale to vehicles and then I believe a lot of the manufacturers use different size cells as well. The explosive concern for us is once thermal runaway starts, they're going to start the batteries themselves release toxic and flammable gases. Those toxic flammable gases are allowed to build up anywhere, either whether it's in the car, whether it's in the battery cell itself, or whether it's in the full enclosure for the battery system. That's what can cause an explosion so it reaches what we call the lower explosive limits, the LEL of that particular gas, and then we could have a situation where it explodes. The enclosures themselves are supposed to have HVAC systems, and they should have battery monitoring systems, the battery monitoring management systems should kick on the HVAC system. Anytime the temperature gets out of range or anytime the gas meter that's built into the enclosure, which is usually gas meter for hydrogen. The gas is probably the easiest one to measure some of the more exotic gases we don't necessarily have meters that can measure for them so they kind of use hydrogen as a stand in and if hydrogen gets to 25% of its lower explosive limit. The HVAC system should kick on and start venting the flammable gases outside of the enclosure themselves. And then we have those HVAC systems attached to their batteries. So, wherever pockets of hydrogen build up whether it's in the little cells themselves or in the actual, you know, vehicles. That's where you could lead to explosions. So ventilation super important with lithium ion technologies just getting those flammable explosive gases, or keeping them from from building up to that that lower explosive limit. Thank you. Thank you Chris just a very quick follow up on on that. Like these HVAC systems and so forth they're supposed to kick on is there protocols or is it the normal procedure that those are tested on a regular basis. Yep, so the, all of these systems should have the manufacturers will specify but almost anything and as far as the fire department is concerned we want to see annual reports on everything. They should be maintained on an annual basis someone has come in a third party or the manufacturer themselves says it yes this is operating the way it's supposed to it's all within normal parameters. So yeah that's what we would look for look for. Yeah, this has been great. Christine. Hi. Yeah, I have a number of questions. I hope that I can ask them all in a row. One of the things has to do with proximity to trees. So you've mentioned that these batteries should be 100 feet from structures, but what if the battery is in a forest and should it also be 100 feet from surrounding trees. So the code says combust as far as combustibles go. The separation distance is supposed to be 10 feet. It also says general combustible shouldn't be in the same. It says fire area, which generally a fire area is considered a room or a section of a building. So that that part of the code really is trying to talk about systems that are inside of buildings, more than than the outdoor locations. The only number I can really grab out of there I think is the 10 feet. But I think that's something that, you know, a bylaw or zoning or you all should definitely dictate a little bit better, specific more specifically, because yeah I would think we need 10 feet from from a large tree. And certainly we wouldn't want it overhanging the top of, you know, once it grows up it's canopy coming over the top of over the top of the fence or even to the energy storage system. Yeah, because of those distances I think ideally we'd like to see a 10 foot, a 10 foot, basically a path around where the enclosures are themselves to the fence line, and then nothing should grow in that 10 foot radius to the fence line. And then however you treat the fence from the outside generally would mow once a year whatever the whatever the decision is around the fence line that'll create that'll prevent any smaller trees from coming up in that that one year period. But anything larger than that I think as part of your initial site plan. You should look to keep them as far as possible. And of course you know you still want to, you know, some of the shading and keeping people from seeing it as well. And yeah you don't want to take down too many trees but I would still try to keep it in reasonable distance away. Okay, and then as we go through our solar bylaw are you willing to help us to review what we're saying in terms of distances and different things like that that's great. So, I know that when the zoning board or the planning board gets an application for anything, a building or, you know, anything else that's that requires a land use permit. We send the applications to the fire department. And, and you're the fellow who reviews them. Most of the time I think that Mr. Olmstead. Chief captain Olmstead I think it is. Yeah, assistant chief Olmstead. Yeah, assistant chief Olmstead. So he reviews them too. But you would scrutinize applications pretty carefully to see if the fire department equipment could get to a battery system. And whether there would be enough clearance for your equipment to get there whether the steepness of the slope of the driveway would be adequate. There would be different kinds of things and then you would report to our department and we would pass the information on to the zoning board of appeals or the planning board about your review. So I just wanted to confirm that. So you would have your own review because you said that you would be requiring that the fire department issue a permit for any battery storage and that would include battery storage that's either associated with an array or battery storage that stand alone, right? Correct. So you would have your own set of requirements that you would go through for your review. And would there be an opportunity for the zoning board or the planning board to see that fire department review? Yeah, my fire department review would probably be very similar to the review that I provide to zoning and planning. It would be more specific on the Chapter 52, which is the energy storage system. Maybe then the planning zoning review, because like you said, the planning zoning review often focuses a lot on fire department access, making sure my access road is, you know, ideally 20 feet wide, minimum 10 feet. You know, with 12 just because that's actually how wide my fire trucks are. It always has to be 13 feet, six inches maintained. You can't let anything grow down below that so that our apparatus can get in. And then the roads have to be able to handle the 40,000 pounds of the fire engine with water on it. And if those, you know, fire department access road requirements are met, our ambulances can easily access those areas as well. So, yeah, those are definitely something that I look for in those reviews. And when we build out the open government thing, I'm happy to put a notification step in there. We'll put a notification step in there for planning or zoning and it will notify you that there is a fire department permit for an energy storage system. So I think it'll probably end up the will merge residential and commercial in that case so you'll just have to, we'll maybe we can put in something that so you don't necessarily get notified on on all the residential ones because there, there's a lot. I'm not sure that you necessarily want to or need to see. I think we did a 22 of them last year, something along those lines so there's a whole bunch of small batteries going into people's homes all over town. But yeah, no, we can absolutely do that. Okay. Another question is, if you didn't use need to use water. We've thought a lot about the tension of storm water in these facilities. And that's calculated, you know, there's a certain way of calculating that. But how would we calculate the need to store run off from the fire department using water to put out a fire and, you know, to, to what is it 750 gallons, is that what you said. That's not very much right that's not a lot and you probably need to have that and then you'd have another truck and then you maybe have another truck and so how would we be figuring out how much storage there might be needed to store that kind of run off which may be contaminated. Yeah, so the actual number is really hard to come up with the fire code came up with the 10 minutes of of fire stream. So we could get you the number based on the basically the nozzle and the hose that we'll be using to create that stream so I can get you gallons per minute on what we'll be putting on onto that. And 1000 gallons a minute isn't an unreasonable gallon flow for trying to cool something off like that so yeah 10,000 gallons over it would be what it is over over 10 minutes. So, yeah, that is a rough estimate but I would like to actually have a meeting with the Department of Fire Services next week where hopefully we'll discuss this a little bit more. So I'd like to see what other fire departments are doing around the state with trying to figure out the run off situation. And as you mentioned, we've discussed this in meetings before with Aaron from conservation. And yeah, we're still kind of got a nail down a good number. And unlike I don't have the best answer for that one. So I just wanted to say one more thing, unlike storage of storm water. I actually want the storm water to infiltrate into the ground, but this type of run off, maybe contaminated and so you wouldn't want it to infiltrate so you'd actually want some kind of aligned container to carry that contractor to be coming and be able to come in and pump it off. Yep, putting it to usually into drums and take it away, which is expensive and difficult. Yeah, we would want it contained. So it could be pumped off. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. Sounds like we have some things to talk to you about and we'll keep in touch. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Thanks, Chris for those questions and Chris for those answers. Laura, if you're able to speak with. Hopefully I have good connection so let me know if you stop being able to hear me. So thanks so much. That was really valuable. Here how you guys are looking at this and I definitely appreciated the desire to be trained and look at manufacturer instructions. One thing I wanted. I haven't talked to the public yet, but I know that obviously, you know, my expertise is certainly or my, you know, industry knowledge is around the battery storage units that are commercial in nature, not attached to a building and typically go alongside solar. And I know that some of the larger companies like the next era than the AES is of the world fluence have done some some test burns in conjunction with some of the larger installations in California and Arizona like the really large 200 mega lot battery storage projects that come in like boxes and multi know many of them. One of the things that this was done about a month and a half ago that they found was that the fires. In fact, the instruction was not to even touch the battery itself because I think the point was raised before that the containment unit itself. In fact, opening it up or putting water on it or even put foam on it was ill by is in that the main point of the test was to see if the fire went to there was that thermal runoff runaway and went to other units and they found that it didn't. So I think I think just like anything else and I certainly heard this in your in your presentation. The technology certainly continues to evolve. But when I'm hearing, you know, largely in the industry is that certainly no water from the types of unit that are on my mind. And to see if there's any of those, you know, I would, they start to publish these light papers of these control burns. And I think that is those as guidance as well. Yeah, absolutely. Um, I did have a question about the firm. So they're creating berm around the entire energy storage system, so that that would hold the line. Yeah. So, yeah, so. Yes, no, no, so they're saying no water at all what they did is they actually created a fire inside of one of the battery units to see what it would because you know there was a there was a terrible incident in Arizona where there's a fire with a fire in the fire fighters opened the door. And actually, in opening the door and introducing oxygen there was a massive explosion and firefighters got injured. So in response to that they actually did a control burn situation. And to test like, you know, what will will other better units catch on fire will the fire leave that contain storage area. So they found that is that it didn't, as long as you basically don't touch it, like you don't add water, you don't open up the doors, which is counterintuitive I would imagine for any, you know, typical firefighting situation so I think exactly. Yeah, no, totally and I think just like it just like anything else I think it's a matter of not only training but like, you know, what is what specific technology are we putting in and what are the specific recommendations and manufacturers that no one gets injured. And that there's not this environmental situation, in addition to, you know, potential health issues. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, after that Arizona incident under writer laboratory put out a really good training program and that was really one of the big things is that if we don't need to go touch the container, open doors open shutters, then we start introducing oxygen into those containers. If there is enough hydrogen, it may be too rich to burn. And as soon as we open one of those containers it drops down into its explosive range. And that's where you get what happened in Arizona and the fire captain they're blown back through through the fence and across the desert. He had to tell the tale. He does do pretty good training programs explaining. Yeah, if you especially if you're connected with that group I mean they're the ones that have the information on the control burden that was done. And I think, I think those are, you know, that's certainly leading technology right now. So, that's great. I'm glad to refresh it know you guys are talking to them. So we are definitely going the direction of no water. We've had energy storage systems here in Amherst long enough though. I want to say 2018 or 2019 is when you mess, put in their system down by the central heating plant. And it was early enough. It was long before the Arizona incident that they we actually built in a stand pipe system and actually has a external pipe about 30 feet outside the fence. Actually it's attached to the fence but it's about 30 feet from the fence line to the energy storage systems and we can actually attach to it and pump directly into the enclosures themselves. That was the manufacturers recommendation at in those years. And it's pretty clear that we've gone far away from that. We have a second system on campus that's on off and North University Drive near the parking lots. And that's a Tesla system. And that one actually is manufactured without any fire suppression at all. And their recommendation is just as we we just discussed you let it burn. You don't, you don't engage with their equipment. If you if they can remotely shut it down remotely shut it down. And then we just isolate the isolate the Tesla Tesla boxes and let them do their thing. And as you know they've done enough testing that they do believe that it won't or they believe that won't propagate from container to container. Yeah, yeah. And like I was saying before the more robust those containers are to keep it from propagating from container to container. The more likely water won't really cool or do anything other than make a big mess. Yeah, those seem water is becoming less, less of the agent of favor, but water as far as grass fires and other fires in the vicinity that could be set off as a result of the, you know, the thermal insult from the, from the battery itself, then we would still use water and water as opposed to those situations. Great, thank you, Laura for that and Chris for that response and it sounds like Laura I guess it you know if you can keep track of any of that work that you're very familiar with and bring that to us that would be great as well. All right, Janet you were next. Thank you. Thank you Chris. This is super informative. I wondered if we could go back to sort of fire batteries and fires one or one. Could you just describe the difference between thermal runaway and a fire in a battery like really graphically for a lay person. Not very well but I'll try thermal runaway is going to be. As I understand it, it would kind of an imperfection in the battery itself that causes some sort of short to occur. And the battery continues to take on electricity and take on power, and it kind of does. Yeah, gets into a feedback loop between heat and energy, and it just continues to get warmer and warmer. A fire. Does it look like a fire? Is it a chemical wire? Right, it is a chemical reaction but a little bit different right so the other kind of fire we're thinking of the enclosure would just be from a plastic heating up the outside of the wire, the coating of a wire maybe that wire itself gets a short and has nothing to do with the battery at all. And then the insulation on the outside of the wire could catch on fire. And that would be a fire in the enclosure that had absolutely nothing to do with the actual battery chemistry or technology. I think those are the two big differences between a fire that involves a battery system and thermal runaway. So if something was on fire inside that battery system, it would, you know, it could just whatever is burnable burns and it goes out, right, or there's not enough oxygen so it can't burn in thermal runaway. I just had this idea that it just can go on and on and on. It doesn't need oxygen. They've put lithium batteries into underwater and they'll continue to run away. Yes. So burns at a really high temperature until it's sort of exhaust itself somehow or you and you're trying to cool it down to cool down the reaction. Okay, right, and keep it from spreading to the other cells that are next to it. Yeah, because they found, I know we're not necessarily talking about vehicles, but when, once they actually cool the vehicle enough they've put them into, you know, the tow company has come and put them in their yards and 24 hours to two days later. The battery that was, you know, had the insult managed to warm itself up enough that it really goes back into runaway again. The fire departments had to come back to the back to the site and cool the cool the vehicle one more time. But it seems like that is common with vehicles. Haven't heard much about that sort of thing with the utility scale. So this always makes me happy now that I don't have a garage. And so, can I just ask a follow up for that Janet real quick. I get it in my own mind as well so if thinking about it more in a container, if there is this thermal runaway in a cell or a few cells, and it's in this feedback group of heating up and heating up. I mean what, what's the worst case scenario there is that everything in the box basically melts down into a chemical mess but it's all well contained and just stays there. It doesn't make sense that you can't really cool it down because it's all contained and you don't want to open up so is the worst case scenario sort of that it just like all melts down as maybe a pretty chemical mess but it's all contained. That's what we would want it to be. Yeah. Most of those containers the base portion of it is actually supposed to, you know, contain the contents of it if it was to start melting down. Maybe that's what it is. I mean, most of those are pallet sized, and you know you can come in with a forklift and pick it up. And the idea is one of those melts down all the contents basically consume itself. Big mass of plastic at the bottom, they come in with the forklifts they pick it up they take it away and they put another one in its place, they plug and play type of situation and off they go and it's still still able to function. You know that the enclosure was substantial enough that it didn't affect any of the other enclosures around it so I think that's their idea. And so if there's cracking in that enclosure that could induce air and that's the potential for explosion then right or. Okay, right. Hopefully the containers are made so that there are some relief areas. And if it wouldn't necessarily, they would, the top would come off and allow the products event as opposed to the entire container failing and some catastrophic fashion explosion is the common common term to that but it may not happen quickly it may happen slowly as well. Okay, that helps me a lot and so my next question is, has had the firefighters trained, like, I know you train on regular fires all the time. Have they trained like watching like in a thermal runaway situation or a better like is that part of your training. So it's slowly becoming part of our training. Some of us like myself and the fire chief and a couple of the other captains are on the state has met. So I actually have my certificate right next to me that says that I just just did my, my eight hour training on energy storage systems. So we actually do a quite a bit of training on all types of chemical hazards that exist for us as firefighters. But we're slowly getting to the point where we'll get to get get everyone here trained up and understanding and all our line officers understand how to operate in and around these areas, all I believe everyone has seen the Arizona incident so we all know better than to enter the gate and to start opening containers and flipping switches and things like that so they will stay stay stay far away call the 800 number on the outside of the gate and get some type of other responders coming from the manufacturer contractor at that point. But that's one of the things that as these systems get build up, we have that requirement. Every time we get a new system will get more training from that manufacturer. Depending on how we want to do it, I think continuing training, you know, on an annual semi, you know, every two years or whatever they come back out and tell us what's new with their with their system or if nothing is new just reiterate the training that we got initially. We have a lot of plenty of plenty of new people coming and going so always providing some some training for our younger folks is great so updated training is also something we'd like. So, um, so you were also like talking about like control systems like, you know, you know, information from how the batteries are heating and you know, ostensibly that would go back to the manufacturer in real time the way. You know, like the way information from a lecture, you know, a battery bus goes back to the manufacturer my Toyota is always talking to me and Toyota. And so, so those systems rely on electricity, right to. Um, so which, you know, I kind of think of something, you know, electricity goes out so is a backup generator needed on site for to keep those systems making sure the battery is being cooled, not getting too hot. All the chatter that goes on between the computers and stuff like that so is that one of the requirements. I don't I have not seen anything about a requirement for that. And I would think if you had other battery systems that were intact or you had PV, you know, panels connected to it, you would have plenty of sources for for power. You know, my inverter for my system one of the one of the three reasons I don't, you know, have as much power coming out of it is because the inverter itself takes, takes some of that, that power to power itself initially before you know, putting it to the battery or sending it back to the grid or giving it to the house to use. So then the system at the battery system itself is regulating itself, hopefully. Correct. Yeah. Yeah, that's the battery battery management system. It's supposed to be regulating its provides its own electricity, and it manages temperature gasses. So there'll be a smoke detector in there. There'll be a hydrogen detector inside of the container, and it'll be reporting back to a fire alarm panel somewhere within the gate there. That will notify us if there's a fire but also notify the manufacturer if the temperature starts getting outside of parameters, or the gas detector goes off or something along those lines. Yeah, but some type of infrastructure failure where you lose the IT, or the IP, you know, you lose the internet to that site. Then, or, or they're using cellular depending on where it's located but either way if they lose that ability to monitor the site and that's one of the things we'd like to see them come out with and you know 12 to 24 hours to kind of fix that situation. Hopefully they would put that into their emergency plan and let us know if they had a failure of communications with their devices what are they what's their action going to be how long to come out and remedy that situation because that's where obviously could get dangerous if they had some type of communication failure and then an actual thermal runaway and no one no one knew about it. Keep other safe. Okay, and then I have a very simple question. How many 750 gallon trucks do you have. How long can you keep that going if you need it. Right. So one of the problems is the bridges there only can only hold so much weight so we have all of our friends in the surrounding towns who don't have as many higher higher hydrants as we have, they have tanker trucks. So they have trucks with, you know, 3000 gallons of them. So we call them they come and provide us with plenty of water for locations where we may not have hydrants. So we have an engine ball most of them have three or four of them have 750 we have one with 1000 gallons in it. Okay, very varying amounts. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we're back to Jack. I just wanted to circle back some questions, but I think with regard to what Janet was saying I think that they think that it's probably still going to require 120 but some of the sensors and things like that they're very low voltage sort of thing and probably can just, you know, keep on going and doing their job but I'm going back to white paper that the water supply protection committee prepared. We borrowed segments from a mass DP paper with regard to energy systems near public water supplies like within the zone one within 400 feet of the public. I will, and they just they mentioned a high pressure fire extinguishers containing Novak 1230 or equivalent must be located outside what is that the dry chemical. Yeah, no that's a clean agent system. Yeah, that's similar to the FM 200 but I spoke up before. What is that again. It's called a clean agent system. So it comes out and it's comes out into their an aerosol or a gas form. And the idea is that the product of the chemical is light enough that it doesn't actually come out of the air and doesn't believe a residue. And it actually will just dissipate into the atmosphere after it hangs in the enclosure for a certain period of time. Different products will stay suspended in air for some of them will stay suspended in air for an hour and will actually stay inside of the container and continue to stop any type of fire from starting. What's the chemistry of that. Not exactly sure I'm out on. And then I just want to read. Okay, so if this is on our paper just want to make sure this is fairly accurate and reasonable to you. But we could I ask real quick. So this is the water supply protection, white paper. Right. Yeah, I just want to look at the read it myself. Yes. Yeah, it's on page nine. But the suppression system isn't successful the procedure. It would be allow it would be to allow the container to burn. They would suppress vapors contain runoff and take steps to ensure the fire doesn't spread to other containers. And clearly PFAS cannot be utilized within a firefighting chemical agents. And then we mentioned a new fire suppression technologies being implemented. And we mentioned stat X, but you're saying that that isn't available. Yeah, that's what we were told. Yeah, the manufacturer said that amp amp energy came and told us the manufacturer said that was not available until 2024. Yeah, and then I still get advertisements in my email every week from them time to sell it to me though so. Yeah. And then, and then just like you said you would make sure all the fire suppression chemicals, you know, don't have, you know, a significant toxicity to them. We do have MSDS sheets so the safety data sheets on all the chemicals that are on site and any industrial situation so we would like that for this too. So we would we would want to have the SDS sheets related to both the electrolyte solution and any fire suppression agents that they were using so that would give us health hazards environmental hazards. Mitigation of spills and fires. Thank you. Great, great presentation. Thank you. I have one more question. As long as captain you have a little bit more time. Yeah, great. Okay. And then it looks like Janet may as well and then we'll try to wrap things up but so mainly what we've been talking about for good reason is sort of the state of the art batteries now and as we see in the next coming coming into the market in the next years, a few years. The difference is that is that the chemistry is are constantly changing new to chemistry's are coming forward in terms of battery technology and there's also, especially as there's maybe more and more interest in longer term storage, longer duration storage, this concept of these flow which are others may know better than myself I'm not a chemist at all but in my understanding is there's really two fairly substantial volumes of liquid agents that are sort of trading the energy back and forth with each other, which is a very different situation. And then lithium ion batteries, in terms of just the way they're structured and and and the chemical issues. I'm wondering whether any of the fire trainings and certifications are addressing these different technologies as well or what your expectations are in terms of how the fire departments will become familiar and prepared with with maybe a never ending portfolio of battery technologies and coming forward. Yeah, I think as far as the line firefighters go there's not a lot coming out about the alternative technologies. We've discussed them with on the hazmat team as we've had some subject matter experts come in NFPA 855 actually has chapters on capacitor energy storage systems fuel cell energy storage systems superconducting magnetic energy storing systems and flywheel storage systems, all of which are, you know, emerging technologies are most of which are emerging technologies. Which one of the electrochemical I think is where flow falls, it does mention flow batteries in there it does not have a doesn't address a lot of the safety features, but they leave it pretty wide open so that will every two years when they add a standard they able to add new chapters and new information so my guess would be on the 22 addition when it comes out later this year they may have more on that but definitely by the 2024 edition. They'll continue to add more information and requirements for standards as they become more popular. I've heard of them but I'm not very familiar with the flow battery yet. Thank you. And then we'll, we'll go with Martha and then hopefully try to wrap up. So, I, this is, I'm a little, I remember reading in some minutes or maybe the last set about the possibility that the state would preempt Barrett battery storage with its own regulations. Is that what you're talking about when you talk about this book of 2022, or are we still waiting for the state to come in with like agency regulations and I'm a little, I don't know if you can answer this but I'm a little confused about like the layers of state government or manuals and manufacturer recommendations like what, like, could the state just say this is how we want battery storage to go everywhere or have they said that or will they say that, or. The fire code like it came out in December. Well the original one was 19 and they addressed some of the issues of battery storage but the big one came out in in December and that's where they accepted the National Fire Protection Association standard 855. And that's the kind of the big standard that nationally addresses all of all of the issues. Prior to that, Massachusetts in 2019 it added some some material, but they didn't the 855 wasn't fully prepared yet. So they weren't able to accept that National Fire Protection Association standard as Massachusetts code, but as of December they were able to accept it as code. So I think that's what people mean by saying that the state is going to have codes on this. And so waiting on the 10th edition of the building code at some point that's supposed to also come our way. And I almost positive that that will have mirroring and or more stringent requirements than the fire code. The state building code. Yeah, the state building code. 780 CMR would be the state building code. And then the 527 CMR one is the comprehensive fire code for the state. 532 is the is the specific chapter about energy storage systems of the fire code. And a lot of that though references directly back to NFBA 855 because that document is much more robust. So, and then usually towns can be more strict, but they can't be less strict. So the preemption would be this, the state saying, this is it you can't get more strict but no one said that so far. I thought when I did that couple minute page training I thought that was the watch the presentation did the watch the PowerPoint there. I thought that was interesting that it's almost like the state doesn't want towns to be more, more stringent on the on the PV installations and they really want them to be more popular more, more of them. I thought that was kind of interesting but no I don't believe the state has any intra has any issue at this point I could set it run everything by the fire State Fire Marshal's office and get their opinion, get their, their attorney's opinions from our fire services on whether local bylaw can be more stringent but it seems like they usually are. So make more sense for us to make more, more stringent and or very specific. So recommendations or rules in our bylaw. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Martha. Yes, just just to summarize thank you very much for this very informative session and. And so what I'm hearing it sounds like that in our solar bylaw we may want to put a few of these sort of general requirements that that you've brought up. And then perhaps refer either to an appendix or refer to a document that the fire department would provide that wouldn't specifically be part of the bylaw in the sense then that auxiliary document then could be continually updated as new technology comes around on and the bylaw wouldn't have to be changed. But the bylaw would have enough information that developers would would know where to turn and and have enough information that they know what they're having to propose is that is that a decent summary of. That's one of the reasons that the state fire code often refers back to National Fire Protection Association standards is because those standards tend to be more specific. They have a lot of subject matter experts that stand that sit on the boards for those, and they're able to adjust those quicker. So Massachusetts will just say reference, you know, NFBA 855 and instead of going through all of what Massachusetts wants so that as the technology changes and as the 855 committee changes their code, Massachusetts kind of stays up with that. So yeah, in a similar way, we would make references in the bylaw to other codes and standards, which would be continually updated. And that we stay up to date with, with our requirements. Yeah. So it sounds like Chris and Chris really would need to get together and decide which requirements need to be in the zoning bylaw as a close to. Yeah. I think things like, you know, your separation distances you require documentation. Some of those things are, you know, just making sure they're in there so that when someone says, what do you want, we say this is exactly what we want and there's no real question that if they didn't provide us with something and there's an issue we already, you know, got someplace to turn like this is what we needed. This is why we need it. Thank you. Thank you. Just very quick. I just wanted to let Chris know that I sent you the white paper so that you have it in your inbox on the ease of access on the water supply protection committee. So thank you. You're welcome. Appreciate that. All right, I see no more hands up. So this is great. And let me thank captain for your time today and your expertise and your willingness to continue to work on these issues with with with us and with with Chris. And planning particularly for your interest in support of solar generally personally. And just thank you for free for, you know, talking to our group and taking taking the time today it's been really, really insightful these are these have been this issue of battery storage has been sort of an area that we've been always talking about for the for the duration so far that we really wanted to to get more insights and and it's actually pretty quite reassuring at least from my perspective to know that we have a captain that's well on top of these issues and familiar with these issues. So thank you. Thank you. Thanks for inviting me. I enjoyed discussing this with you and talking about a lot of people you can talk, talk about this issue. You will get kind of bored. Okay, great. Yeah, have me back anytime. Appreciate getting touch. Okay, great. And thanks to Stephanie and Chris for setting for setting it up with you. Okay, and you're welcome to stick around but we'll carry on. I'm actually going to sign off and another inspection to do but thank you. It was nice meeting you all be well. Okay, very good. Thank you. Take care. Bye. Any thoughts on that before we go to the next agenda item or circle back. If you want to take public comment on I think people are probably most interested in this and we could wait till later but I wonder. I was thinking about that I didn't necessarily want to keep the captain around to know who's appropriate for him to address public comments at this point. But I'm not opposed to that but at the same time I'm wondering we have, we have, you know, only about 20 minutes left. You want to reserve some of that for sure for public comment. I'm pleased to see that we have quite a few public attendees today. I'm wondering whether there's anything on our agenda that we want to get through today. Obviously, I think the presentation on the draft bylaw sections that Chris had provided to us in the packet. My senses will wait on that for the next meeting, because that's going to be more than a 10 minute conversation. But to the extent that people have the opportunity to review that before the next meeting would be great. So there is some at on the I forget which document it is but the one that sort of provides our mission and so forth and purpose. There is some items at the bottom that suggests that Jen and I think you were going to add some draft some some language to add to that document as well. I see that I was just wondering, my idea was to wait till the end to figure out what we're regulating. Um, do you know what I mean so if we're if we have an overlay district explaining that or I make a draft up language for anything so I just wondered like we clearly that's what we do as lawyers but um so um but I just I always thought that you know we could we need it's it's clear from listening to the Jonathan the attorney that we need to have a justification and some reference and I was thinking you know like a long whereas clause or stuff like that but I kind of don't want to do it until I know what our recommendations are for like where it goes, you know, you know, why we chose certain areas and things like that does that make sense to Chris. May I respond. Yeah, I think that's totally that totally makes sense. You need to come up with language to back up what we say in the bylaw and we haven't said anything in the bylaw yet. Yes. Yeah. Okay, good. Good. Yeah, good point. Okay, great. Okay, so was there anything else we wanted to touch on quickly. Before we maybe open up to public comments. Anybody. Anything else on the agenda we want to cover. We had staff updates and committee updates but if you want to do public comment first and those at the end. So let's do that to see how much engagement, the public wants to have at this point so. And I really appreciate that we have. I think eight eight nine. Sorry, it's hard to tell eight, I guess and I think there were even more a bit bit ago so yeah let's please let's move to that. So if anyone would like to comment on the presentation or has any questions that we could follow up with Chris Baskerman, please electronically raise your hand and I will allow you to speak. Okay Mike Lepinsky. You can unmute yourself. Hi. As I've been listening to I've heard many references to AMP's Hickory Ridge solar project. And I know obviously the solar bylaw study group is not in charge of that project, although you seem to be talking about many issues that are related to such an endeavor. My understanding is that the construction of this project was supposed to start last spring, and then was postponed to starting this month. But there's no sign of any activity there. And I thought I heard a reference to their battery storage plans during the meeting today, but it's still being incomplete. And I was wondering if there's anyone, especially the staff members or committee member who has any information about what's going on with this project. Chris, do you want to address that. Well, it did receive its zoning board of appeals special permit. And so it's clear with the zoning board of appeals I think it's just about ready to begin construction. I haven't heard of any hold ups at this time. So I don't really have, you know, state of the art or state of the minute information on that but I haven't heard anyone speaking about it, you know, in with great concern related to that. Are there any existing plans I know I've looked through the ZBA plans when they were going for their special permit, but I haven't ever seen any detailed plans about how many batteries are they going to have where the battery is located. Anything in detail. And it just seems like before they got a building permit those kind of plans would have to be created. And is there a source where someone can actually find that information. If you email me and ask that question, I can find out if I can get a link or a set of drawings for you. So you can email me at the planning department email. Copy me as well, because we may have them in conservation of planning doesn't have them. And I don't want to be off topic here but just one of the reasons why I bring it up so I know one of the major issues there is access across the river and the shaky nature of the bridge and I know that in the plans they're supposed to do something about that bridge. So I was just wondering if there was any delay that was related to, say, fire protection. And I thought Jack mentioned something about the battery plans being only 90% of what the fire captain was speaking about today where he's talking about the huge weight of emergency vehicles and fire trucks filled with 750 gallons of water. I can imagine they'd be a little tentative about crossing Fort River on a shaky bridge with something like that. And I thought Jack mentioned something about the battery plans being only 90% complete or something like that. And it just seems to me like you don't start a project until your battery plans are 100% complete. So that's why I have questions and certainly there's zero sign of any activity down there so just curious and there's. I appreciate any information you can give to the public. I could maybe. So my understanding is that the battery storage component came in after the initial array was proposed. And so I think maybe, and this is speculative on my part but I used to be the wetlands administrator so my guess is that because they came in later that they're still under review. And so it may be that there's no construction because they're still reviewing that additional component. So, but I could find out more, and you could reach out to Aaron Jacques who's the wetlands administrator who works for the conservation commission. And if you want you can just reach out to me and I'll get the information to Aaron. Right, like the issue that Chris brought up about containing a runoff from a from a fire or something and, you know, is there a plan to do that with this particular project I know you guys are dealing with future projects. But here's a project that supposedly has been approved. And I'm wondering, you know, what is there, what is their method of dealing with many of the issues that you brought up here. I know that they are looking at that as part of the Hickory Ridge project for the battery storage, again, because there are significant wetland resources on site so that is being looked at carefully. And I think, again, that's likely the hold up and why you're not seeing construction is because they are specifically addressing this very issue. Okay, that's that's what I was wondering. Thank you so much. Thank you. Any, any other people from the public attendees want to offer any questions or comments. I don't see any Stephanie. I don't see any yet sometimes it takes people a little bit but No, I don't see anyone from the public with additional questions. Great. Okay. I think before we end and run out of time. I do want to make sure we have our next meeting on the books and I'm trying to recall how we left things, which I don't. At least on my calendar I don't see any further meetings. January 20th Dwayne, we did actually say that for that one. I think you wanted to invite Aaron Jock to that meeting. Yes, the wetlands administrator but also I was going to give my update but I can quickly say that I think Adrian because this is specific to agenda setting. Adrian dunk from Gza is planning on presenting the revised survey after everyone's input to the committee and also will be addressing the initial protocol for community outreach and engagement at that meeting as well. And you all will get that information prior to the meeting that you can review so that you can bring questions to her on the 20th so I don't know if you want to maybe put Aaron off another meeting I mean this might be. I don't know how much time I mean you also have Chris on the agenda as well so Yeah, and thank you for that Stephanie I did know that they were on Gza was on tap I didn't know that was scheduled with the date already but that's great so that'll be the 20th and are we sticking with the 1130. That was my understanding. Okay, I think we did decide that that was at the end of the day it seemed to work for folks so that would be great. And what do people think about having Aaron Jacques the wetlands administrator at that meeting as well or should we. I do want to, I do feel like I want to catch back up with the, with the drafting that Chris Chris is done from planning to obviously that's at the end of the day that's what we need to do. I want to make sure we have sufficient time to get caught up on on on what planning has come up with so far so my inclination would be to spread out the love with our guest speakers and and put Eric. Eric, sorry, Eric, Aaron, Aaron, Aaron, Aaron, offer another if she's available for the next for the two weeks later. That would be February 3. The meeting after that 2023 is marching on. Yeah. Okay. Martha, Janet, do you have comments on this. Yeah, I kind of. Well, let me go with Martha first. I would vote for the doing the survey questions next time because it's my understanding that that Stephanie wants to get started on actually conducting the survey with the right in February so I think we need want to hear about, you know, both the survey and how the survey will be carried out, which I think is interesting that I learned about, and then I would say that that also important is to is to then get going on what Chris Brestrup has about the, the actual writing of the document. I have a very quick question along that line, following up from Michael Lepinsky, you know the fact that that all these questions come up makes me want to ask, and this would be relevant for our bylaw. There's going to be a some stipulation as to who in our town, then follows up with with a developer on a project that's undergoing who would, is there a stipulation as to who is the point person that everybody can turn to for information and that would be responsible for making public the status of things. I guess maybe Chris, you're looking for an answer. Dwayne. Yeah, I guess it's open to have the purview of the working group but but yeah, I mean, if there's any response to that that'd be great. So, first of all, it would be either the zoning board of appeals or the planning board who would grant a land use permit for one of these installations. The inspection services department inspects projects while they're being constructed. Either one of those land use boards can require third party review from an outside consultant, either during construction or afterwards. They can also require reporting uncertain, you know, at certain intervals. So, those things are all could be part of the bylaw that we require these things to happen, the monitoring, we can require that to happen. We don't have any ability to tell inspection services how to do their job but they would ordinarily inspect projects as they are going along, but the zoning board of appeals or the planning board whoever is the land use board would have an ability to require third party review on a specific case so that wouldn't necessarily be written into the bylaw. It's already in the zoning board and planning board rules and regulations that they can require that and that would be on a case by case basis where they would say, we really feel like this project needs monitoring third party review during construction and also afterwards so does that answer your question. Yeah, and I think from the, the Green Ridge, I think that our assistant town manager Dave Zomek is the is really the person who's been following it and I think the answer to Michael Lepinsky might be that he might want to inquire to Dave Zomek if he has concerns about the project. So, okay. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. Yeah, Janet. I completely admire that these meetings really end in time, but I'm beginning to wonder if we might need to have, here's my unpopular suggestion. I think it at a half hour. So, I'm sure Aaron jakes could have just talked for 20 minutes or, I think our workload is going to get heavier. And through the spring. So, I know people look really enthusiastic, but I just, I just want to put that out there, not to decide now but we might, you know just to get things moving along because I'm interested in hearing about farmlands and forests and, you know, things like that and I need the content but we also need the bylaw. I'll just chime in real quick and say that my, you know, I vote for being more efficient, it's going to be very hard for me to take more time out for these meetings so I think two hours every other week should be good if we're doing reading in advance and coming with questions but, you know, I just for me it's going to be very difficult. Also, just a hope to get information earlier I know Stephanie you're, you know, post holiday and under the gun but you know the week before be fantastic but a few days before it is helpful to but I send it when I get it though Janet and I sometimes I'm waiting on information so and the holidays did really set us back quite a bit. So, yeah, I know I'm not I'm not criticizing I'm just kind of like, I know I know I'm just I mean that's partly on all of you as well. You know that if you are assigned something that you do need to get it to me ahead of time because, like I said some of this information I literally received yesterday. So, I'm not getting you know, and again I think the holiday holidays always set us back that that's always just a common frustration that unfortunately we get the items very short notice. I'd be inclined to let's stick with the two hours I think as we get into crunch time, we can reconsider if we want to go longer. I didn't quite catch that, but let's we have three minutes left so with was there any final thoughts or comments will. We'll meet and absolutely Martha the the the the the priority was for GZA to to review the survey and the and the engagement activities. That was a sure thing. I think the idea of postponing Aaron for another two weeks will buy some time will work efficiently and get into into the language that Chris has drafted. For today as well as anything else that might be available for next time. We'll spend time on that as well. Okay. Anything else before we adjourn. Great, well, enjoy the rest of the day. I don't have a window in this room, but I don't know if it's still snowing or not, but enjoy that. It is snowing. Okay, well, I don't have a window here either. Okay, well, enjoy and we'll see see everybody back in two weeks. Thank you very much. Bye.