 All right, good to go. All right. Hold on a second. I want to get Chris's name. All right. The chair knows the time is six o'clock. I call this meeting of the Amherst zoning board of appeals to order. My name is Steve judge as EVA chair. I want to welcome everybody to the meeting. We'll begin with a roll call of the ZBA members. Steve judge is present. Ms. Tammy parks here. Mr. Dylan Maxfield. I'm here. Mr. Craig Meadows. Here. And Ms. Sarah Marshall. Here. A quorum is present. I also also attending this public hearing tonight. Is Rob Wachilla, the planner for the town. And Chris Baskham, captain with the fire department in Amherst. We will have a restaurant and Mr. Mora join us later in the on the meeting. Presumed to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 extended by chapter two of the acts of 2023. This meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to observe the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted. But every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access. The proceedings in real time via technological means. The zoning board of appeals is a quasi judicial body that operates under the authority of chapter 40 a of the general laws of the Commonwealth. For the purpose of promoting the health safety convenience and general welfare of the inhabitants. Of the town of Amherst. In accordance with provisions of Massachusetts general laws chapter 40 a. And article 10 special permit granting authority of the Amherst zoning bylaw. This public meeting has been duly advertised. And notice thereof has been posted and mailed to parties at interest. All hearings and meetings are open to the public and are recorded by town staff. And may be viewed via the town of Amherst YouTube channel and the ZBA webpage. The procedure is as follows. The petitioner presents the application to the board during the hearing. After which the board will quest will ask questions for clarification and for additional information. After the board has completed its questions the board will see public input. The public speaks with the permission of the chair. If a member of the public wishes to speak they should so indicate by using the raise hand function on their screen. The chair with the assistance of the staff will call upon people wishing to speak. When you are recognized provide your name and address to the board for the record. All questions and comments must be addressed to the board. The board will normally hold public hearings where information about the project and input from the public is gathered. Followed by public meetings for each. The public meeting portion is when the board deliberates and is generally not an opportunity for public comment. If the board feels it has enough information and time it will decide upon the application tonight. Each petition is heard by the board is that is heard by the board is distinct and evaluated on its own merits. The board is not ruled by precedent. Statutorily for a special permit the board has 90 days from the close of the hearing to follow the decision. For a variance the board has 100 days from the date of filing to file its decision. No decision is final until the written decision is signed by the sitting board members. And is filed with the town clerk's office. Once the decision is filed with the town clerk. There is a 20 day appeal period for the agreed party to contest the decision with the relevant judicial body in superior court. After the appeal period the permit must be recorded at the registry of deeds to take effect. Tonight's agenda public hearing on ZBA FY 2023-13 BWC Eastman Brook LLC. Request for a special permit under section 3.340.0 of the zoning bylaw to construct an 18.87 MWAC flash 75.48 MWH battery storage facility. With associated site improvements including stormwater management systems. Access road 6 foot 16 foot high sound barrier wall. Vegetative buffer at 515 Sunderland Road. Map to a parcel 34 RO residence outline. RLD FC residential low density and farmland conservation zoning districts. After that we'll take general public comment period on matters not before the board tonight. Other business not anticipated within 48 hours and adjournment. The first order of business is ZBA FY 2023-13 BWC Eastman Brook LLC requesting a special permit under section 3.340.0 of the zoning bylaw. Are there any disclosures. I should say. Yes, Craig. Some years ago, maybe 10 or 11 years ago, I did have some interaction with blue wave on a project that we had. Nothing came of it. I don't feel there's any conflict. But I that should be noted. Great. Thank you, Mr. Meadows. I want to note the presence of the planning director of Chris Breastrop is here. We held a site visit on Tuesday afternoon. A lot of questions were asked and I'm going to run through those questions. And if this was compiled, the list of questions was compiled by staff. It's very helpful. And if there's any other that we did not, I did not mention, feel free to fill in. Questions included, will an updated project schedule be sent to the board? Secondly, well, where are the underground electrical lines being laid for the be for the best units? And could this be included in the site plans? Could the board get a copy of the degradation plan for the best units? Did the stakes to the state flags currently on site represent a budding wetlands? Would it be engineer walk the site with the board to explain this design layout stormwater runoff management and location of utilities and the access road on site? Will batteries be removed once they reach the life? Would you consider eventually replacing the battery components with a sodium ion based composition? What happens to the battery storage facility or system after it hits a 20 year mark? Will blue wave be owning running the site immediately after the best is operational? Would blue wave continue to run the site after 2030 or even 40 years? Who from blue wave will be responding to any site emergency or maintenance issue? When the board gets the individuals or the company's contact information and where will they be located? Has a Sunderland fire department been kept in the loop on this project? Will there be a second exit egress point on site? Will the existing well on the property be capped? Where does all the stormwater get funneled into after it leads the whole leaves the holding tanks? How are the tanks empty? Is there a level of protection that the sound barrier will provide from intruders, wild animals, etc? Will the site have lighting? Will cameras present on the site? Would it be possible to have someone stake the project area on the site to the extent of the perimeter sound barrier? Is there a proposed fence in addition to the sound barrier wall? Will the apple can be providing a decommissioning plan and bond to the town prior to the issuance of a building permit? How often will the site be maintained? How do you deal with attacks on energy facilities such as has recently been seen in other states? Can the board get more specific details on the barrier wall? This could include the wall depth, the specific materials and methods or reinforcing of the reinforcement of the wall. A lot of those questions were answered on site. Many of them needed we needed to get more information from the applicant. Does anybody have anything to add to the questions that were raised on site? I guess the only thing I would add is that the report of the site visit is that as much as possible we walked the site. We tried to figure out where the sound barrier wall would be and where the pads would be of the battery storage facility. We did get a chance to look at where I think the drainage facility would be and where the demarcation is for the farmland nearby. In addition to that, I think that was about a pretty good description of the site visit. I do want to run through the submissions that we received from the applicant. We've received a cover letter, an application, a management plan, a certified list of the butters from Amherst and Sunderland, equipment documentation including equipment specifications, installation guides, more equipment specifications for a specific storage unit or battery equipment specifications for a transformer and a sheet. We saw the least we received least option agreements that are executed in September of 2020, visual renderings of the site, an emergency response plan, an operation and management plan, an anticipated project schedule, or we have an old project schedule, but we anticipate an updated project schedule, test pit report, storm report, operation and maintenance plan and long-term pollution prevention plan, a noise assessment dated November 4th, 2022, written by Laurie Morrell, a senior scientist at Epsilon Associates, Inc. one line electrical diagram, a test report for the effectiveness of the battery storage system. I guess it's a United Laboratories 9540A test. We have received site plans prepared by WSPUSA, E&I stamped by Andrew Varticus and Jerome Watts. Sheets 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, which are existing conditions for post-site sediment, site details and also site details, as well as an extension request for a 65-day deadline. They asked for an extension of the existing 65-day deadline signed by Mike Zimmer, the managing director of energy storage at Blue Wave. That would bring the date till today to allow us to have the hearing on today's date. Planning staff submissions include an order of conditions from the Conservation Commission, a public hearing closed on January 11th, 2023 and the OC was issued on 12623 FEMA flood zone map and the FEMA flood insurance map. Rob, is there anything else that I missed for submission? There were some questions asked at a supplemental meeting with the wetlands administrator, Aaron Jack, who couldn't be here tonight, but those questions are pertaining to stormwater management on the site and pretty much most of the points you hit, Steve, from the questions that are raised during the site visit. But of course, if people want to see a copy of those specific questions from the wetlands mystery, I can always forward them to you after this meeting. Right. Okay. So if there's no other additional, I mean, there's no public comment that we've had no submitted public comments on this particular matter. Okay. So, I guess what I'd like to do is turn this over to the applicant to make their presentation. And what I would like to do tonight is to limit our questions during the, this is a complicated long application that contains a lot of things that I am not as familiar with. And I think it'd be helpful if the applicant can pretty much run through the application and we ask the fundamental of the substantive questions at the end of his or her presentation. If there is something that is just confusing, such as what is MWAC slash 75.48. And so just for clarification, you can raise your hand and we can get that done so you understand what he's talking about. I might do that now and then because there's some of this stuff that just is Greek to me, but I think it would be best to let the applicant make their case. And then write down the questions that you would have either on the project application report or on a piece of paper. If that's all agreeable to members of the board, that's how I would propose to proceed for tonight. Great. All right. So for the applicant, who's going to be here? Who's representing the applicant? Please state your name and address. And who you work for for the record. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Josh Flaherty. I'm a senior director of the resource involvement blue wave energy. Now resident of Amherst currently reside in New York City actually recently from Boston. I, again, representing blue wave here we've got a few other folks in attendance from blue wave. You mentioned one Mike Zimmer manager director of storage development. He also had Andrew Vardakis from WSP who's the civil engineer on the project. And we do also have Nick Warner principal and co founder of ESRG and attendance as well, who could be called upon to help answer questions or get more information before. So yeah, so I have a, I can share my screen and, and join a presentation and thank you. That was a very excellent summary of all the materials and locations today. And also just before I jump in the presentation, I'd be happy to after the presentation, go back through the list of questions that you ran through that were proposed on the site visit and give some additional answers. Questions and that would help or and how are the board would like to handle this. That'd be great. Please do. So, let me know when you can share my screen and then if also if you could also Kimberly Coon who was on the site visit with the board on Tuesday, do you know my Megan her presenter as well so I can can hand things to her as well for our presentation. Okay, so I, again, this is a proposed development as is mentioned, 18.87 in WAC, which is megawatts AC of energy storage at 515 center on the road and hammers. We just give a brief introduction of blue way of our history and development and what we're currently working on and where. Energy storage just very briefly going over what it is. Why we're proposing a project and the benefits it has to both Amherst and the commonwealth. And then just go over the site layout specifically here. And again, the dream or DAC is from W speaking so answer questions on the site plan, and then just go over some various considerations of design features specific to the storage and this, the system which is a little sort of system, and then just touch on a few, you know, closing items in regard to timeline, other items we're working on and schedule. So, blue wave was founded in about around 2010 and with the mission of developing community solar energy projects. We're one of the companies that led the way with some of the first projects in the state, working in a variety of jurisdictions and types of projects whether the landfill solar greenfield rooftop solar, and then kind of more recent projects, you know, advanced as well into solar plus storage projects so co located directly with with battery units such as these that were frozen on this site, as well as pushing the batteries with things like dual use projects where we're both have solar and farming on the same parcel. In 2020, we started to work on the locating potential sites for standalone energy storage. And that was fairly co co linear with the state releasing what's called the clean peak program for energy storage which we'll get into in a moment. In 2022, blue wave was acquired by a group on accident infrastructure, who also has experienced phoning and operating other large scale or energy infrastructure projects such as energy storage projects. And, and through that transfer acquisition and transformation blue wave long term it will be an owner operator of these projects, including this one. Just some highlights again the amount of projects and the work we've done, especially Massachusetts where we were founded 150 plus megawatts over 55 community solar projects again a number of those co located with energy storage. And one of those products we've done a lot of impact both local job creation, working with line owners. And most importantly, which is the end on mission of blue wave, working to combat climate change and offsetting carbon emissions that are generated through a traditional generation. Just briefly go over some of the benefits of storage that are present to the town and just generally. And financially so obviously we do we do work with the land owners in this case the Chang family trust. So many of all the winners we work with we typically enter into long term leases which provides benefit and in some cases allows property owners to, you know, maintain their land retain it may continue ownership. The project would generate tax benefits to the town of Amherst for the life of the project. And then again we would look as much as possible you as local local labor and construction of project in operation environmentally projects such as these, the main, the main focus of energy storage and way it operates is to reduce primarily peak or plant generation which reduces carbon emissions. And it does that primarily through shifting of energy, and specifically renewable energy that's generated intermittent points in time. And my colleague can really can touch on that a little more on the next slide. But typically Massachusetts has been reliant. When it comes to peak low generation on things like liquid by natural gas paper plants, and by adding more storage to the grid at both the distribution and the transmission level. So that would be the distribution level, connect this sort of project at transmission level, maybe connecting directly to a substation. These projects can charge when there's higher times of renewable energy on the grid, and it just charge that energy when they speak the man typically Again, also we worked with as was mentioned the conservation commission and we haven't worked conditions, and we designed a site to minimize impacts environmentally to the land itself and nearby environmental resources. And additionally, the portion of the property that's currently being farmed will also be left untouched and continue to be farmed once the project is in operation. So if my colleague cameras on I'll let her take the take the range here for a moment. Yeah, thanks Josh. Um, so yeah as Josh mentioned. Just give your name and address. My name is Kimberly Coon work at Blue Wave with Josh. Yeah, so back in 2020, the state passed the clean peak standard. So the purpose of this legislation was to incentivize the deployment of battery and storage facilities. So as Josh mentioned right now Massachusetts were pretty reliant on peaker plants to supply energy during high demand hours which are typically later in the evening but those hours don't necessarily coincide with when solar and wind facilities are generating the most electricity. So, as you'll see, on the table on the bottom right the shows hours that do you are outlined in the clean peak standard when solar and wind are being generated most so we are charging we'd be charging our batteries during those hours and then discharging them during high demand hours. Later in the evening when people come home and turn on their lights and their stoves and whatnot. So the DOER has projected that through the deployment of the clean peak standard over the lifetime of the amount of battery storage that it's in tending to deploy that it would save the state energy consumers 710 million net dollars as well as reducing carbon emissions by 560,000 metric tons. So briefly just going over the project design. So specific to this site. So the proposed battery energy storage system that we are currently proposing on the site is the Canadian solar solar bank system. Again, as I mentioned, this is an 18.7 megawatt DC system for our duration, which means that the batteries at full charge can can discharge for up to four hours. And that totals to 75.48 megawatt hours in total energy capacity. This system again is a lithium ion system. It uses what's called lithium iron phosphate battery chemistry or LFP for short. So to be aware, there's a number of battery chemistries in NC and sodium batteries, which are kind of more nascent and just it just emerging. So, but all kind of within that family of lithium ion batteries in terms of the industry. And then this is also a picture of a project that's operated by Axiom again required live. They utilize this system. So I'll give a brief just overview of the site. The layout and then also all handed to Drew as well for filling in additional details. But as you can see here, this is the layout of the battery containers themselves. There's again 34 to be proposed initially installed day one. There will be an additional 17 units space for 17 units, I should say reserved for future augmentation needs, which we're happy to discuss more in depth. Six additional pads for inverter and transformer power convergent systems, so that we can convert our input energy, step it up and then put it on the distribution grid to the line ever source online along the road. And then drainage system and then sound barrier and additional to plan skating so with that I will just hand it to Andrew or that is just to fill in the gaps and speak a little bit more to the project specifically the drainage design and other aspects. Thanks Josh can everybody hear me. Yep. Technical difficulties getting to my desk here for the record my name is Andrew Vardakis. I'm a registered professional engineer in the Commonwealth. I work for WSP. We are located at 100 Apollo Drive in Chelmsford. So I'm the engineer record on the project apologies couldn't make the site walk had some scheduling conflicts this week. But like Josh said I'll try and talk off the phone site plan here but as you saw on the site walk off Sunderland road is an existing entrance and gravel road. As you enter and loop around so we're looking to preserve that that existing entrance gravel road and extend it. That's shown in the gravel patching as you head up to the north north being up on the site up to the top of the page and then extending to the east. So that'll be the gravel access drive there. And in terms of storm water I look through a lot of the comments. Like Josh said we had a lot of great back and forth with the conservation commission and the wetlands administrator on this project. Had some good solutions coming out for storm water management so essentially what we do for every development project is we look take a look at the site. The existing conditions and we run an analysis of storm water management across the existing site conditions. Gather existing site run off the way things are in their current state. And then we take a look at our proposed development and see what kinds of impacts we have from the development and take a look at our post construction develop and run off. We compare the two and design storm water best management practices also be MPs in order to reduce case what we did here. So as you can see those rectangular boxes in the center of sight are the better units. I mentioned the gravel access road it's kind of an L shaped extension as you head north into the east and with a hammerhead turn around there. So what we developed for storm water management on the site, where several things but around the perimeter, we had some infiltration trenches. Generally, the site is pretty flat is a little bit of a crown in the center so there's about three drainage areas we looked at one sheds off to the northwest area, another to the east. And then we came off to the east there, and another to the south. So we developed these storm water infiltration trenches to basically surround the site to capture any additional run off. And really there's very minimal increase in storm water to the development. So the concrete pads for the equipment, and that's generally the, the, the majority of the increase in impervious area there will be gravel in between the concrete pads inside the fence area. The roadway will also be gravel. So those areas will infiltrate storm water, and the concrete pads are really only impervious services. So those in, in, sorry, infiltration trenches will capture any additional run off from the development. And then also the question came up on, on containment so we developed a piping system that will each have a drain pipe with a lip around the concrete edge to capture in the event of a leak capture leak, and will pipe that storm water to those water tanks underground. Most of the time that will be clean storm water that will just be continuously pumped out. I think those were the questions we're essentially going to have a sump pump in those water tanks that will pump that clean water out into the perimeter infiltration trench so that clean water will just continue to drain out off the site, as it normally would have before. But there was questions about containment and potential leaks so we developed this piping system so that in the event of the leak. We could close off that tank and things would be kept in the tank. So I think that was it on storm water general site design I think there's questions on wetlands flag as part of the site design and no why we flag wetlands on the site. I think there's a question on a budding wetlands we did not flag wetlands off of this property. The flags that you saw where wetlands on the property. And then also we worked with a surveyor. We stamped the plans for the civil design and our professional land survey or Jerry Watts stamp this the survey plan we did an altar survey as part of this to identify property line setbacks, all those sorts of things. So we also went out and staked the limits of work around the site so happy and those question to walk the site with myself I'm happy to go out there and meet anyone that would be interested in another walk through to take a look at the storm water features, the limit of work wetlands, any of those types of things. And I think I'll leave it at that I know there's more questions but I'll try and be as brief as I can. But that's it for me from the moment. The items I'd like to addition to what you stated, a few features on the northwest section of the site. There's an existing drainage ditch and easement operated by mass duty. We are proposing a small amount of story flood storage within that area. It's currently being reviewed and approved by mass duty. And with the preview as a result of the previous theme of blood maps which has the face blood elevation of the nearby flood plain at 166 feet that has since been revised down to 165 and recently updated female flood plain map so we do expect that that let's start flood storage area may not be needed. Additionally, we also as part of the conservation commission process we agreed to replace the culverts that under underneath the existing driveway. They're kind of in a slight state of disrepair. So we want to make sure those are repaired up to stop and can make any handle any any water drainage and going to that that ditch. And there's, you know, as has been called out so we are proposing a sound wall around the printer system that sound wall will have entirely encapsulate the printer system with no gaps. And there will be two access points one on the gate gate on the northwest side where the access road comes in off the turnaround. We also have a call out in the southeast corner. If you can see on the plan I'm happy to pull up as well and more detail plan if that's with help but or one I can zoom in but there's also another proposed date on the southeast corner of the site. We obviously aren't having the access road all the way down there but there is another means of of egress and exit from the site. That again that barrier based on our sound analysis, we would have the 16 feet tall, and we provided a cheat of the representative sound barrier material. We could speak to that more in depth once they go through the questions from raising the site visit. Again, the vegetative landscaping, mostly for entirely for visual purposes was also discussed with the concom and we have a list of native species and plantings that will pose on our plans that I know for the conservation as well. So, that's a high overview of the site and the site features and what again will continue to the presentation happy to come back to any questions. These are just. Go ahead. Okay. Go ahead. We provided for the site that depict, you know, parcel the equipment, sound wall and the electrical poles as well. Nothing I would necessarily caught here apart from just a couple things. The growth shown here is would be the estimated growth after five years. So not day one, but in terms of the vegetative planes. And then that wall again is currently representative of what we expect the final sound barrier material to look like. So, it would be different colors or different finishes. If that's something the board would have preferences on our way and on as well. This is a picture of a site that we developed in North Brookfield it's a solar co located energy storage and solar project. And we wanted to just include this is kind of helpful visual reference for what things actually look like on the ground. So, in the rear of this picture here is the actual battery energy storage container. And the more in the foreground you have the power conversions equipment, inverter, transformer switch here. Again, all concrete pads with the crushed stone in between. And so, this isn't the King's or soul bank system. I just want to include as a helpful visual reference of, you know, what it looks like what it would look like on the ground with the system footprint. So I'm going to go over just energy storage technology considerations and design features. What typically comes up as concerns for battery systems is literally my own systems. Obviously one concern that gets a lot of attention due to past events has been fires, and what causes them and how, how are they prevented and also how do you respond to them. The underlying cause of lithium on fires is a process called thermal runaway that's inherent to any with my own chemistry, where the batteries, once they reach a certain temperature will just continue to increase in temperature without adding a necessarily additional heat. And then the concern in the past has been how that thermal on away my propagator spread throughout a larger set of battery cells that might be present in the large field system. That again can better cells will heat up there could cause a fire or battery cells also as part of the design off gas as they eat up and there's potential concerns in the past over build up a gas, you know, cause a potential explosion conditions. So, what that has led to over, you know, the last, you know, five plus years as battery storage is really quickly emerged as a deploy technology is the development of very detailed and rigorous standards and testing for systems that are installed, you know, out in the world. To icon particular is an FDA 55 national fire, fire code specific to large scale stationary energy storage. That's a standard that has undergone a tremendous amount of review. The picture on the right is actually the technical committee and informed 2020 standard. And that standard has everything from specific sites facing setbacks to the kinds of things systems and inter storage products need to become certified and fly within a day by five. Additionally, you will standards. Most specifically you all 9540 a that's the testing standard for thermal runaway fire propagation. So this is a testing center developed specifically to address that concern I mentioned primary underlying concern regarding from a runaway as a cause of fires as part of the testing. So really an individual cell is caused is forced really to enter into from a long way. And then there's testing the cell level, the module level and then what's called the unit level, the unit level being really you can do that as a single enclosure. And then you look at the test results to see what happens in each of those cases does the runway propagate. And then you look at that informed design features for any system that blue wave is looking to back across our energy storage sites, including the canades solar solar bank system. We, you know, are only going to look to utilize equipment that shows no from around my propagation module module and minimum. That those thermal conditions aren't spreading throughout models within a single enclosure. And by extension aren't spreading between adjacent enclosures that you know as you might have on site where they're like, where they're next to each other. That means that we feel comfortable that there were conditions that caused a thermal event inside of a single enclosure. It's going to be limited to that enclosure. And, you know, should not spread and cause a larger scale. I think so. There's also a few others I mentioned reference here you all 2973 another you all standard for general design on battery cells and FBA 69 which looks at standard for explosion prevention systems, which plays into the design features that these most looking on systems have in the form of typically in the form of gas ventilation to avoid the love of potentially flammable gases. That's directly into what the soul bank system has in terms of fire prevention and safety features. So this is a diagram depicting the various components of the system that contribute to fire safety. So all systems will come up with redundant eat smoke and gas detectors. Those are critical for monitoring conditions 247 the containers and typically can also catch conditions that are escalating before necessarily from where it was happening or before a larger from early event could happen in the unlike the event. You'll also see here there's noted, you know, fire stroke so there would be physical on site fire alarm strobing and orange, as well as remote signal sent out to the fire department and which remote operation center in any event alarms triggered. Additionally, there's again active ventilation within the system for me for the activates in the event any gas flammable gas and concentration detected at a certain threshold. Typically, you know, well below the threshold for the lower explosive limit to the gas. And there's also a passive ventilation that bases that basically just utilizes the natural buoyancy of those gases. So if there's a bill of those gases they will naturally vent out even if the active ventilation system can act it. Additionally, there can be put on this on the system air and aerosol based gas suppression agent. Typically that gas pressure agent is, you know, could be useful for helping to put out any source of an electrical fire within the system so some wiring or conduit within the unit that might somehow catch fire. Those aren't necessarily used to are going to help stop a battery with my own cell from entering from a runaway, or for main those fires to be just because of the annoying cause being from away and what that aerosol based agent does. Again, just reiterate here, the, the UL test report which we provided the board and they are a fire department and highlighting the results that and that show that this whole thing system doesn't have module module propagation or external flaming in the test results. So, and, and again, you know, I encourage you to look through that report and see, you know, the kind of testing methods to use again typically to initiate them for all I open the cell. They can use one of a variety of methods in this case to use external feeders. And again this this report plays directly into this the features and the design of the system to ensure safety, and also directly into compliance with an FDA about five. All these things combined lead to another key component of site safety which is your emergency response plan. And really the this is standard I would say nowadays for energy storage systems if you're going to deploy a system of the field you need to have an emergency response plan. We worked with a group called energy safety response group. They're extremely experienced group of ex firefighters engineers consultants who have a lot of experience both with fires and with energy storage systems, specifically with the line. And they do a lot of work not only with helping prepare emergency response plans but they also do a lot of training with towns fire departments, as well as test active testing for manufacturers a lot of manufacturers will typically go to ESRG and say hey test our unit or system. You know, basically they'll say set it on fire and see what happens. And they did a lot of that. And the response plan emphasizes a draft currently, it will go undergo more iterations, based on additional feedback from the town and fire department or Amherst force underlin. And again it contains recommended procedures for response in an event, what we be for first responders should be worn, if any emergency contact information, and generally just what hazards maybe present on the site. But in the immediate vicinity of a say unit that might have an issue. So again that will be undergo iterations and it won't be finalized until the system's built and ESRG would actually visit the site and coordinate fire department and with the town with fire department would need to sign off on that plan for the system is allowed to operate. I have again I have Nick Warner on the call from ESRG. Nick if you're there, if you want to speak up and just, if there was anything I failed to mention here or if anything you want to touch on regard to fire safety. Oh, I'm sorry I apologize but I think you might need to be made a presenter Nick Warner. I just sent him me a panelist invitation. Yeah, thanks Josh. I think you captured the safety overview. Nick, can you just just identify yourself for the record, and where you name your live. Yeah, my name is Nick Warner. I'm one of the co-founders and principals of energy safety response group, I reside in Columbus, Ohio. Thank you. Go ahead. Josh, I think you captured everything at a high level fairly well. I think you also kind of alluded at the beginning or perhaps one of the council members did at the beginning that there are a lot of nuances and this is relatively complex technology. Rather than try to get down into the weeds of additional aspects of safety, I'll make myself available for any questions that may come up either tonight or I can provide answers in writing. Following the meeting but we've been involved in the deployment of energy storage systems. All over the US actually around the globe. We have a range of projects going on in Massachusetts throughout the greater New England area, New York, in particular, we're well versed in the response capabilities of the area. I look forward to continuing to work with communities and Massachusetts to get these in safely. And the last thing I'll mention before moving on is, as the board is aware, the fire department didn't review our application and provide comments. We appreciate the council fire department and agrees with all the recommendations in that comment letter, as well as the required compliance with the standards mentioned, all of which overlap with the ones here. And just final there's additional maybe more general storage and site safety components to consider beyond from a fire perspective. There are questions about site security, you know, what happens, you know, based on recent events when there's been people targeting substations or electrical infrastructure equipment. Again, all of this battering closures are housed in steel containers. They're locked 24 seven, they can only be opened by certified technicians or personnel. Again, additionally, there'll be this 16 foot sound wall around the perimeter of the system that will fully close the footprint and also have a lock gate, they'll have a Knox box for fire and police department access. Again, site plan reviewed by the fire department for safety and accessibility. The electrical safety perspective, of course, it is an actual electrical site medium high voltage. So there is redundant grounding and also plenty of signage of the morning on the equipment and will be present on site for access to make sure people are aware of that risk. Public components undergo additional testing certification for this general electrical code and safety. And then another key point to mention is the system is always monitored 24 seven remotely will be by blue wave and likely also maybe monitor redundantly by the manufacturer. It's monitoring temperature, voltage, any conditions in the site. If the door on one of the enclosures opens, we will know about it immediately. And the system is automatically triggered to shut off remotely on its own with an alarm triggered or anything. Any abnormal conditions are detected and blue would also have to be able to shut off the system remotely at any time. I'll pass it back to my colleague Kimberly to go over sound implications of the system. Yeah, so we worked with a group called epsilon associates to conduct sound measurements and analysis. In the state of Massachusetts the Department of Environmental Protection has sound guidelines where at the property boundaries new developments can increase ambient sound conditions by more than 10 decibels. So epsilon went out to the site and measured over a seven day period, the sound levels at that site to collect data on the ambient sound conditions there. And from their analysis. So our battery storage facility, we have inverter pads inverters on on pads as well as better units that have HVAC systems in them that generate some level of noise. So in order to mitigate that as we've discussed, we're proposing a 16 foot tall sound barrier that's going to surround the entire system. In addition, we're going to be implementing some operating restrictions that would restrict that the hour so that not all batteries are operating at once. So that is done in order to make sure that at the property boundaries we're still in compliance with the DEP sound regulations. So we're going to take a couple of quick things as well so going back slide so here. The sound graph again this shows those decibel levels over Sunday periods, I mentioned, interesting to note so as far as some might say logical center lines a busy road. So typically the site does get actually fairly loud, and then drops off a lot at night. So typically is with most sites what we're mitigating to is that average that's already at nighttime, which tends to be a bit quieter than during the day. And then the last thing, or the other thing I'll say is, so again, these are the sound contours on site. You know, design, there's potential for this as always with equipment change design change potentially prior to construction. So, as with other products we've always of course, I'm sure the board would would want this anyway, recommend, you know, sound measurements post construction ensure compliance with DEP. And if that's not, you know, present then we would have to provide further mitigation or to ensure that that that regulation requirements is met. Okay, I'll give a brief overview just of our other work we're currently that's under under going on the projects and also other permits where we've applied for working on. So is the table just of the permits including the special permit is EBA. Again, we have already received our recommendations from on, we also have a DOT access permit. Since we are crossing that range easement and coming in off of someone road which is the State Highway. I, the fire department identified in their letter, I need to apply for a fire permit directly with them which we will be doing post EBA decision. Hopefully approval. We are currently being studied with utility ever source for interconnection agreement. We're expecting that I say, later this year, that I say is obviously a key component that actually allows us to interact to the grid at the size will be in study that, and in order to continue operating and charging discharging from the grid. And finally a building permit as well. Of course, after all, not in serial from a certain. So we would, you know, our intent is to update and convey to update all town boards were involved with our progress with EOT with fire department and making sure that no one that will move as to, you know, any stage of the process work project where the project is or what it's working on. Finally, just want to go over just briefly construction and on M. I, as was mentioned, we had provided a construction schedule with the initial application since our initial application was last August. It is outdated and will certainly provide an updated schedule. We're expecting construction to last at most four to six months and likely beginning at the beginning of 2024 at this point. And then we're going to be able to continue to monitor and monitor some operations follow for at least 20 years. We'll obviously work in and more than welcome any conditions standard conditions report has in regard to construction for, you know, time of day or days of the week. Once the system's operating again, it pretty much operates on its own is monitored remotely at most during regular operation and there should be quarterly visits or by annuals maintenance visits for inspection of various equipment. That could be the HVAC or coolers within the units, checking the transformer inverters generally just inspection inspecting the site conditions. And we did provide a sample on and schedule with our application if the board is at an opportunity to look at that. And then we have mentioned before and we'll have to have an answer more questions on this. Due to the inherent nature of the systems they typically undergo degradation over time and the most degradation happening within the first year of operation. And we do anticipate and that's why we in our footprint have allowed for room for additional batteries to be installed to be clear on two things one, those additional batteries will not allow us to charge or discharge more than that that 18.87 megawatts AC. And the extra batteries are installed only to keep us at the initial megawatt hours that roughly 75 megawatt hours that we have. And finally, we would of course welcome and happily provide a decommissioning estimate and decommissioning bond that the town would hold for the property to our project to be dismantled and taken away from the site. And that's the representation so happy to taking questions there before I jump into the questions before it had from the side of it. Let's, I think the best way to proceed would be to let's go to those questions that we had on site. And then we can work through questions that people have individually. Let's find that list of questions again, and we can run through that. What's the problem with these large, these large applications is a lot to paper and I tend to set it down. Don't know where it goes. Rob, do you have that list of questions that you can throw up on the screen. Yeah, let me just pull that up. I believe so. Just give me one second. Work with that for everybody here. Rob, I found them. I'm sorry. Oh, no worries. Thank you. Yep. All right. So the first one is project schedule to be sent to the board. I think you address that one. Mr Larsi. Yes, we will. You will. And we, that's something we would need. I think before approving that's something we would need before approving the application. So that's, that's to come. One of the things that if you perhaps you can bring up your site plan. For the electrical lines being waved to the best units. I don't know if the suit. I don't think they're included on the site plan on the site plans. We may need some more detail on some of the site plans, but in the, I know in the project application, you say there's both underground and above ground connection to ever source. I think that's what it was. Can you show us where that is? Sure. So let me know if you can see my plan on the screen. We can. Yeah. So, yeah, so there will be, so the connection down here you can see zoom in a little more. So this marking right here, this is the existing ever source poll that's on opposite road. So that to come overhead to this series of polls here. Then proceed underground pass on the sound barrier. And then again, kind of come up to another series of polls here. Those polls are required for necessary equipment that ever source requires for all projects. So that under that connection from this last poll would likely then run underground again to these equipment pads here. These are going to contain the power conversion systems and switch and necessary switch gear. Basically aggregating all the energy from these battery units. So there will be the section of the only overhead line on the site will be the section basically among these polls and then out toward the road. All other electrical connections will be participated the underground. So basically, all the units will have typically conduit emerge from the roughly the middle of the containers immediately down through the equipment that and those will go down. Usually no more than two and a half would be below grade, and then they'll run underground up to these equipment pads that have the inverse transformers on them. Typically. So, in most products I've worked on, we, we don't typically those showing the actual home runs, what they refer to and conduit runs, typically doesn't happen until more construction level design. But if the board wants to see that sometimes we can certainly look to try to add notation for like preliminary conduit run markings. And again, it'll, it would be finalized, of course, with the instructional plan set and signed up by the electrical inspector, but we can't provide something preliminary. So the one I guess the one thing I noticed is that the, the pole, the light of the power poles for lack of a better term. If you're currently on site, you're, you're going to propose more on site, both down low and then up in the top. And those aren't on the rendering right now, the rendering stone. I don't, I guess they contain the, some of the, some inside the, the sound barrier, but there'd be additional power line power poles. Then is in the rendering, is that correct. I think they just, I'm one of the runners now. So I think we show all the new poll. I think, I think you might be correct. So we do, I think the, the poll close to the road. We're showing you polls, but they're not entirely, they don't match exactly the plans. So we can, we can have that updated. And I think there's just one pole missing, but yes. So that's, but you're, you're correct. And yeah, we start happy to update the renderings to reflect that. All right. And yes, yeah. And again, the underlying cause for the additional polls is again, typically that so ever source those first three polls coming off of the road. Those will actually be owned by ever source and they'll have their equipment on it. And then from that last poll it's referred to as the point of common coupling. And from that point on, that'll all be blue wave owned equipment and then those other three polls closer to the system batteries. We'll have basically mirror the ever source equipment just on our side. Mr. Meadows, is that your question about the underlying under the power lines, the electrical lines. No, it wasn't on the site. All right. I think the next one is your question about the degradation plan. Can the board get a copy of the degradation plan for the best units. Yeah, so I'll. All right. So we, the degradation schedule or anticipated schedule for the units is confidential to cancel or so we would have to ask the motion to share with the board, which we are happy to do. I would, I was curious if there was a specific concern here the board was looking for is if it's just to kind of match the degradation with maybe like when we would anticipate adding additional units to the site or if there was some other concern but again we'll just have to provide some sort of permission to share that exact schedule but at the very least we could, we could probably give a, at least a schedule will me anticipate adding units which correlates to the degradation. Mr Meadows is that me to give you the information you want. I'd like to, I'd like to see it before I say sure. Yeah. So that'd be good to have. Mr. what Rob. So just a follow up question to what Mr. Larry C said so are you requesting permission from the manufacturer. Correct. Okay. The degradation schedules for priority. So we have to ask them. Okay. Thank you. A question about where the stakes flags the state flags currently on site represent a budding wetlands. The answer is no. Those represent the wetlands on the property right. Correct. So yeah, there's flagging on property. And then I think there might be a later question but I know there was, it sounds like there was a huge on site is to states. There are states on the property that are effectively the vertices of the one to work, but we can, before we have a full site visitor with our engineer, we can have like more thorough flagging of a little bit of work. That'd be great. And we can schedule something with you. We'll work with the staff schedule something to do that. I think you've already answered this. The next question, which is will batteries be removed once they reach standard is the life cycle. I think you said you would not remove them. You just add additional to make sure you reach that capacity or the limit. Is that correct. I'll clarify a little bit so over the first estimated 20 years, no batteries will be removed, unless of course there's say a faulty battery cell or something. In that case, we would replace a rack typically within an enclosure, but we want to remove the actual enclosure. But for the first 20 years, we would just add those additional units at the end of 20 years, it is expected that those batteries are at the end of their useful life. So at that point, we would either have to. But let's say there, there's a number of factors that go into whether or not we would do what's called repowering which is replacing the batteries with new ones to keep the capacity of where it needs to be. To do that, we would at that point in time evaluate whether or not, you know, we would do so and if so which batteries we would look at the cure. If we don't do that, we would then remove all the batteries from the site and restore the site. Does the board have any further follow up questions to any of us just raise your hand and let me know. Miss, Miss Marshall. Yeah, just regarding the, the degradation schedule. Everything that's submitted to the board is the public document right so it's just something to be aware of I don't think I'm confident if proprietary information is being shared with us, we can't keep it confident. I mean, it has to be available to the public. No, I would just wanted to close that. I think that's right. It's a public document. If it helps, I can't provide the exact schedule. Again, if the concern is, if it helps to know what answer you're looking for with the schedule, maybe we can find a way to not provide the schedule but give you the answer if that makes sense. We'll get as much information as you can that that the company is comfortable and providing us and then see if that's sufficient for our for our needs. So let's work on that get as much as you can with the recognition that it's, it's a public document. Absolutely. The next question was what happens the battery energy storage system after it hit its 20 year mark. I think you went through that there are various options. And it depends on the degradation of the batteries. Is that correct or is there a plan for something after 20 years? At this time, we tentatively are assuming we will repower after 20 years and replace the battery units. But again, it depends on number factors market conditions at the time, they're like both from the electricity market and also the what batteries are available. But right now we are assuming we will repower and replace the batteries, but again, we may not. Will blue wave be owning a running the site immediately after the best is operational and will continue to run the site. 2030 and 40 years on what's your. Hard to, hard to predict, but what's your business plan. Sure, our business plan is to own and operate these projects for their entire time. It obviously, as you mentioned, 34 years could things could change, but our intent would be operate them long term. The next, the next, I would also welcome comments from the captain of our fire department. If he hasn't followed up on any of the emergency plans that we're going to die. We'll be responding on site emergency or maintenance issues. Can you typically with with many projects we require, you know, sort of a contact person. Information about who is going to be who's going to respond. We do that for a whole host of applications you receive. How can you put what information. Can you give us it is possible to give us regarding contact information for site or maintenance issues. Sure, so we can provide a primary point of contact this time from blue wave in regard to who would respond to any outreach or an event that occurs at a site. Right now that's Tim Kelly is our director of asset management. I'll, I'll follow up with his contact information. In terms of technicians will likely look to contract out to a third party group that does regional servicing that's approved for this, this final system that we're utilizing. So we are happy with, you know, it might be difficult to provide say prior to a board's decision but we are more than happy with the condition that, you know, we have to provide that prior to any building permit issuance. And it has to be confirmed by both the board and and the fire department. Yeah, I don't think we need the name. We're not asking for the name of the individual work person extreme maintenance, but the company in this case, the company that's, that's doing it. And if it changes to update the plan. Okay. Yeah, we can. Yeah, potential company that we might partner with and then yeah, if it changes, we would, we would of course update that plan. Okay. Okay. Fire department have any comment on that. At this time blue wave has been very responsive throughout the whole process, they've, you know, had a couple meetings. First meeting they just reached straight out to us and introduced the project to us. And they were the couple of times on the operation management plan emergency response plan. They got me the copy of the UL 9540 a testing within days after I asked for it so I'm not at this time like I said every question I've had up to this point they've answered it extremely quickly and it's been appreciated. Thanks. Thank you chief press come. You've been in contact with Sunderland and maybe cap and you can talk to us about whether it's important would it be normal for them to also be in contact with the Sunday department. Do you take the lead and do you contact the Sunderland fire department to make sure that everybody's coordinated here. How does that work in terms of the best way to make sure that both agencies are in the loop here. I'm sure that you take the lead but Sunderland's press. Yeah, no, absolutely because it is isn't an Amherst we would take the lead on that. But if the wave was willing to include Sunderland, or the board wanted to include that as a stipulation and we'd be happy to include Sunderland with the training since as we all know it sits right on the edge of the border on the town. So, yeah, the original response plan I think there was a little confusion but it got updated to the state that Amherst was the responding agency but it looks like initially blue wave was going to include Sunderland anyway so I think that is absolutely something we should look to do in the future going forward. So, as far as I'm concerned I'd like to take this and, you know, render my judgment on top of yours so. Maybe you think it's a good idea so maybe that's something that we can condition that we can impose. There was a question about was there a second exit or egress point on site. Now I think that's referring to outside the sound barrier, I think that's the question that was asked and you answered that second site about, you know, at the other corner of the, of the sound barrier but it's the person that had that question wants to clarify it just be the time to do that. Yeah, I asked that yeah exit for personnel inside if there's an emergency. So you saw that they have one down at the have a second exit that's a far end in the corner. Yes, so that's. Will the well and existing property the existing well and the property be capped or how you deal with that and what, what did the concom say to you about that. Yeah, we didn't have a direct discussion on that with the concom. It wasn't noted, or as a discussion I visited but we will look to fill in cap that and we'll likely coordinate with the health department, just to confirm that that's been done as well as the construction. Okay. The next is on stormwater and this might be a good opportunity for for you to pull up. Maybe it's on here, but one of the questions is about the lot the stormwater lines of drains and you run through that in more detail. This is a better, better rendering than we had in your initial presentation. So that would be helpful to go through the stormwater mitigation that you've designed. Drew, I know I'm sharing a plan if you want to want to have a plan do you want to describe again and having detail based on what we're seeing right now. Yep, can everyone still hear me. Yep. Again, Drew Vardakis, civil engineer in WSP. So yeah, it's it's hard to see on this plan there's a lot of lines going on but essentially what's going on is is each row of battery pads has a drain line that's connecting them so they're demarcated with the letter D in a line. There's a bunches running the mouse there basically on each, I described earlier each set of battery pads, battery enclosures sits on a concrete pad that has a concrete lip surrounding it. And then out of that concrete pad is it does a drain pipe that goes down under underground, and those are all collected in those lines the D lines the drain lines. So a row of battery containers has a drain line that comes out drain going underground and all collects into those there's two there's two water underground water tanks one of the southern end there right next to his cursor and one of one at the northern end. Okay. As I mentioned, those will drain to these basically infiltration trench trenches that run along the front of the site. The water runs into the trenches runs along where the plantings is that we're talking about along the plantings. So there's a slightly wider trench here with my cursor that's just on the interior of the sound wall and it will overlap a little here at the end, and then there's a smaller or narrower trench here along the axis road as well. I see. So the two you can see here the this holding tank will train to this trench, and then this one for the French, all other storm water that falls between the pads or anywhere else on site will just drain will infiltrate where it falls and also kind of flow and train naturally based on the Yeah, and Josh I'll just add on to that. If you don't have it, it's on sheet five but it's the detail sheets of the drawing set so there's a detail 14. It shows a rendering of basically what we're describing it's it's not to scale but it basically shows right in the center center up top there yeah so you see the the concrete pad with the footing. There's a pipe that goes down underneath the 12 inch PVC drain line goes to that tank. And then that tank it pumps water out to to the infiltration trench so basically what we just described on the plan is shown there in a cross sectional view. And so even in the hundred year. So in the hundred year event, which we have more often than every hundred years now things hundred year event. Those I suspect those drainage ditches will fill up. I'm sorry yeah we design our stormwater VMP is in our stormwater modeling we design everything to the hundred year storm. And so where does it end up in the department of transportation. French drain or whatever that is the just cross the infiltration trenches are sized to to accommodate the hundred year storms so they're there. We with our what I described before with our pre development and post development calculations the post development calculations have less runoff than the pre pre existing condition so those trenches are wide enough and deep enough to accommodate that exceeds in water due to the pads. And so that flood compensatory flood storage area would just remain or you may you may change it or what is. Right let me touch on that that is less for stormwater and more for what Josh described in the flood zone elevation so we added that compensatory flood storage elevation because we were working in the flood elevation. However, like Josh said, back and forth with the concom what was on the FEMA maps and what the town of Amherst is now going to change that elevation we were, we had that square footage of work occurring in the flood zone so essentially we were setting aside that square footage and volume of area to compensate the work that was occurring in the flood zone. Questions Rob. Thank you Mr Chairman so one question that the Whitelands administrator Aaron did have that I just remembered it pertains to the equipment pads at the top so the six equipment pads. Do you plan on including drainage into each of those pads and if so how do you plan on doing that and would you be able to include that on a supplemental update the site plan. Thank you. Blue. Yeah, Josh you want to take that. Yeah, I can take that. So we, and we can clarify this with Aaron as well and the concom separately but the drainage these drainage lines leading to these long tanks was primarily results of the discussion with the concom surrounding the batteries and, you know, an abundance of caution against over, you know, any kind of leakage from the batteries themselves. The, the only equipment on the pads that's when you present is for these these six pads up to the top of the system are going to be the inverse transformers and the other switch here. The transformers we are planning to spec with a non toxic biodegradable dielectric fluid. So there's really no for my perspective there is no concern from any kind of, you know, fluid or contaminate present on these pads that would you would need to contain and again that's really the primary intent behind the drainage lines this one tank and some pump system. So these pads would remain on lips water that falls on that equipment pad with sheet off and drain naturally. And again that that's that's because we were we don't have a concern. We don't identify concern for any, any potential infiltration of fluid or fluid and again we can happy to reach out to Aaron and clarify with her and make sure she's an agreement. Mr Meadows. At this point I'd like to ask if they could possibly use pollinators for their plantings. Yes. Yeah, Mr Meadows sorry you said pollinators with the plantings. Yep. Yep. Plants that attract pollinators. Sure yeah we do. You have a species list on our plantings and we're happy to make you know we'll double check and make sure that includes pollinators because it will absolutely include some species. Thank you. Well we have, I guess, that raises a question that I had, and I'll ask now. We had a list of the plants around the sound wall. We do we have, did you have a landscape plan generally for the other areas. I'm assuming that you're going to do some landscaping around the beyond the sound wall. What is, are these plantings for privacy borders? What that's. Yeah, correct or yeah. What are those? Privacy might be a little bit more like visual landscaping and aesthetic landscaping. So these plantings would and I'll scroll back up to the proposed conditions. So these you can see here these along the northern boundary is a row here, and then along southern so there is a privacy perspective of we wanted to provide some plantings to the northern of other and the southern of other here. Just in terms of providing some vegetative buffer between the property line of the wall. In terms of landscaping elsewhere on the site. So obviously this, or I should say, obviously, but as was mentioned, this eastern side portion of the site has had some active farming on it and not bother that areas more toward the front of the property. We might, you know, we might keep them mowed down occasionally if it presents. So, you know, say maybe the, from a drainage perspective or just making sure the access road and general areas is clean for for maintenance and personnel access but generally we wouldn't propose anything else. Anyway, because we're not disturbing or planning to disturb any of these soils or this is an existing vegetation in these areas. Okay. Thanks for the. I think you have where the water go after it gets to the holding tanks. Mr chair. Oh, Miss Marshall. Yes, go ahead. Sorry. I have a question about this water management. I, and I have to keep reminding myself that this interior area is large is gravel where where there are not where there's not equipment there's gravel so I don't understand what's being drained. I think that some catastrophic leak of the batteries if they're even I don't even know if it's a liquid system but what's what's being drained and captured in these the. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, no, no, that's a great question. I apologize for not in that earlier. You'll have the, so each of the, there's obviously that they call it L zoom in a lot here. So these solid white rectangles each of these represents one storage unit. And then this kind of dotted exterior rectangle that's the actual pad. So the drainage is so that the, and speaking of the conservation commission and working with them. The concern was containment over potential mainly electrolyte within the battery cells, and that has a potential leak and contain that in the normal course of operation, mainly because we don't ever expect. We don't expect the electrolyte to ever, you know, in material amounts, we got the cells are much less than any quarters, but so in the normal course and operation of the system. We do just the water that falls on the edge of these pads or falls on the container rooftop or the countertops and sheets off or on the actual lip of the pad itself. That water. So it's mostly just storm water. And the pump system is so that we can ensure that that water will you out and infiltrate into these trenches. And in the event there is an alarm or any kind of potential leak protected. So we'll shut off and anything that's coming out of anything that's, if it happens to be raining, it would also contain that, but it would contain anything that's coming off of these pads. And that would be disposed of as hazardous waste or some other. That would have a hazmat response in coordination with the state and we would. Yeah, we would make sure if there's obviously double checked and ensure that there wasn't any, you know, potential exposure to the soils. We would do it obviously remediate that immediately. Thank you. Mr. Wachala. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So follow up question to that. Are you planning on putting any sort of like alarm system in the tanks themselves. So say if the cell pumps were to fail and the tanks overflow, you could be alerted to that in any way. So you don't flow back up through the, the drainage pipes. Yeah, great question. So, yes, we would, we would look for to install some kind of monitor or alarm to know the status of some pumps. So we were going to have to tie basically the monitoring the systems anyway to the pumps so that because what we want is we want the pumps to shut off. If there's any like fire alarm or just any any kind of condition that's triggered within any of the enclosures we want to go ahead as a fill safe and shut those pumps off. We'll tie that in and there will be some monitoring all those pumps to make sure. So even if there's all the battery enclosures are operating fine, there's no concerns. If there's a failure in the pump, we know about that and we can respond. Thank you. One of the questions on site was what level of protection does the sound barrier provide from intruders, wild animals, etc. Yes. Can you just just describe what your intent is with that with the sound barrier, the 16 foot fence, not fence but barrier. Sure. So, and I think representing the visual renderings helps as well as this but it would be so flush with the ground. Again, 16 feet high, typically we're expecting somewhere between a four to six inch width barrier barrier materials can vary for these types of sites for what we're anticipating is effectively again four to six inch thick like sandwich construction so it'll be metal panels sandwiching as some, you know, sound and the material that again would go around the entire perimeter of the site. Gates would also be designed into that sound wall. So there's that's to ensure that there's no no gap in sound transmission. So from a perspective of wild animals, just general intruders. So it would be in order to kind of get into the site you would have to climb over that sound wall when it's locked up so from a mitigation perspective we kind of do that pretty highly in terms of providing a significant barrier. And then again, those both access gates would be locked at all times there would be a Knox box that the fire department police department can access. If they need to but otherwise, there wouldn't be any I know miss Marshall you had this question and site visit you have a follow up. Yes, and I hope we'll have a larger discussion of security but I'm wondering. I mean this is. I'm right by a highway and I'm wondering how, if this sound barrier is strong enough to not be destroyed if some vehicle comes flying off the road either intentionally or not intentionally I if it seems to be designed to mitigate the sound and not actually so much protect the site. So, do you have any comment about how physically strong it is. So, I don't want to speak without knowing exactly, you know, we could certainly once we're at a point where we're working with the barrier manufacturer, and there, there would be various on that design in terms of structural integrity. Most that's going to be calculated from say like a wind load perspective. You know, especially with the slightly higher wall, you're going to want to make sure that that wall will stand up to me when loads off of the wall. So it would be it likely will be a post and panel manufacturing driven posts with the panels attached kind of slotted in between. In terms of, you know, in painting a vehicle, again, I don't want to certainly would provide a measure of impedance. There's also, you know, degree of setback from the road so I can get the exact distance of it might not be depicted on the plans but certainly we, you know, we wouldn't expect a car, or you know, any other car impacting the wall, it likely would be impacted at an angle or potentially we'll just avoid the wall at all if it's going to go into the ditch first, it probably won't make it to the wall. But generally again, it can't speak exactly to how much would stand to a direct vehicle impact but just based on the site conditions we wouldn't expect or expect the likelihood of any kind of direct vehicle impact. At high speeds and directly into the wall would be would be highly unlikely. If the board would like to see, you know, potential additional considerations, we could consider something like installing some ballards along the front of the wall. You know, spaced out, they could kind of blend into the maybe the vegetation management, and that could, you know, provide also additional measure of impedance to vehicles. Yeah, I would be in favor of ballards or something. I mean, we have to, we, we have to consider the possibility that somebody would deliberately drive a vehicle at high speed into the wall. So, Mr. Prestor, if you had your, go ahead. No, no, that's enough for now. But again, there'll be other security issues. So I just wanted to, yeah, I was thinking of those barriers that they have along the highway in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Those are sound barriers that protect neighborhoods, but I imagine those are designed to protect the neighborhood from a truck flying off the highway to so I just wondered if that would be something that you might consider here that type of barrier. Yeah, or potentially, I know there's a lot of highway barriers we've observed that are might be concrete construction or might be thicker in nature and obviously trying to limit in general just the amount of impact on the site. You know, something that's less imposing visually than say like a highway concrete error. Like I said, I think we're happy to explore multiple options, most of the sound barrier. And again, we could, I think we could, you know, talk with the manufacturer and the engineer who will design the foundation and the do the calculations on structural loads for the barrier. If we can work with them to assess potential vehicle impact and the barrier would be suitable for preventing that. We'll do that. And then again, if there's indication that they, you know, they'd say, well, you know, if we're trying to address the concern, something deliberately driving directly to it, then if we need something like ballards, again, we could explore that option as well. Thank you. Mr. Larra see go ahead. Finish up. So I, how soon will you will you have that information where you make that decision on identifying a manufacturer or a vendor for the sound barrier and when, when would we see would you participate. That being revealed to us before you would ask for a positive vote on your application. Many times you'd want to see the. Sometimes you want to, I might want to see the design before we approve the project. So what's your timeline for that? Yeah, absolutely. So we weren't intending or planning to have that level of design ready prior to requesting the decision. Typically we would look to incorporate that just because those structural low designs. In terms of say a percentage or typically going to be 60% designer greater, like much closer to construction. Again, we're happy to reach out maybe to manufacturer and get as much information as we can at this time, but I think it'd be difficult to maybe move at this time to say a more advanced like 60% or greater design. You do have a picture of you have a vendor in mind. Not this time I know we did provide a representative material and manufacturer that we might look to at least, you know solicit a quote from for their, their barrier. So that that example I provided likely would be a company one one such company we reach out to. Again, and, you know, I'm happy to maybe try to get some more information that that country might not have from them in terms of typical like a typical design maybe like I could try to reach out to them for a typical barrier designer or from an engineering drawing perspective. Just again may not be specifically designed to the site just yet but sometimes representative. So it's up to the sort of the world of board is how specific they want to be on the design of the project. Mr Meadows. Two things. One, in that same regard you might think about the fact that there's a utility substation, not more than a few hundred yards down the road which is a much more likely target for anything. I can't imagine anybody's going to care about this in comparison. Depending upon the degradation schedule it seems as though you probably going to have a contract a 20 year contract with the utility company to provide the 70 approximately 75 and a half megawatt hours. And that will need to be kept up during that whole period of time. At the end of the 20 years you still then got a life cycle with the equipment. And you at that point I'm sure I've got a choice between selling it someone else or retaining it for a period of time before you do anything else with it. If there's a transfer and title, I would assume that we're going to have to look at it again is that not true Mr Chairman. I would think that that be a condition that we would impose on them. It was one of the questions I would I was going to ask Mr Meadows is what happens and going to suggest the condition that we review the special term it on change of ownership. Very good. I think a lot of these next. A lot of these next questions Mr Larracy you've answered. Or they are contained in the, the management plan. That I did the extent I've read it. The site is not going to have lighting. That's correct. Yeah, you don't plan to have lighting. Okay. And you don't plan to have cameras present on the site. Do you. We haven't proposed that at the time, but I would say for both lighting and cameras, if the board has. Feels it now provided also additional measure security. We can have that and design incorporate, you know, some lighting locations and locations for those cameras. Okay, thank you. You have a maintenance schedule maintenance schedule in your operating plan for a host of things, everything from safety as well as it looks like landscaping. So I think board members could look at that. But generally there's annual quarterly monthly maintenance schedules and also you have some landscaping maintenance kinds of things that are required. So you have that in your operating plan. We talked about, well, I guess we didn't actually talk about attacks on energy facilities. Have you experienced that any, any, have your, has your company experienced board in the past and attack on energy facility or something that you or have, have owned. Sure. So we blew it personally has not experienced any attacks on any of the systems we've developed. Certainly none that we're aware of. And we haven't heard from any, say, other, you know, similar developers who work in the space that they've had any issues with with their systems. And so, you know, we haven't experienced that. Yeah, as far as mentioned, you know, there were grab and some recent ones on some substations, most recently, we were Carolina, but we have not experienced any of those. Miss Parks, I see you have your hand up. Yeah, I was just going to ask for the other projects that you have done. Is this the kind of fencing that you've used that is, I mean, do you already have fencing like this 16 foot high fencing on other projects. Sure. Good question. So we haven't incorporated this typically on any products in the past. So, all the products we have started to storage on today have been collocated with solar. This is among the first that would be on a standalone basis. So we have products with solar and storage located collocated. The storage is typically much smaller in size, since it's DC coupled and it's typically taking off excess energy from the solar. And then just do the nature of the solar development. Typically, we can, we can locate that energy storage in the more of the interior of the array and it's typically a lot. So, basically, much more setback from property lines. But usually less concerns or no concern over sound radiation. Okay, so is this your largest project. This isn't the largest project we're looking to develop. It's, I would say maybe the distribution scale size but typically, you know, you have a number of say by the 20 megawatt products that we're looking to develop. They're all, you know, given just the density of energy storage or where it's gone to. They don't vary in physical size that much generally we're talking quarter maker to an acre and a half space. And that covers generally the five to 20 megawatt range. Okay. Thank you. Miss Marshall. Thank you. I have a bunch some some littles. I don't want to be pedantic, just accurate in your own end plan I and I saw it earlier by annual means every two years. You may mean semi annual, which is every six months. So I just flag that. I think that updated renderings because I don't think the renderings match the site plan that we're looking at right now. Thirdly, if I understood you understood what you said about adding batteries over time that suggests that the facility will be noisier over time. I assume your modeling uses the full build out, but you said you'd be doing sound testing. When you start operating, but again that'll be with a, you know, much, not the completely built out battery array so will you be doing more sound testing as you add battery units. And then maybe can address that and then I think I have. Well, that's those are most of my questions. So, thanks. Sure. No, thank you for the questions. Just address the intern. Yeah, well, I'll check on the plan by an older sign or make sure the references there are correct to the maintenance being specified. I think that's a really nice earlier discussion I think the, I believe the renderings are are pretty accurate the only discrepancy might be just some of the electrical poles. So we'll double check those and I'll we'll go back and make sure that any is really correct, but the current rendering should be called 95% correct to the part of those or 100% correct to the part of the poles. And possibly I still don't understand from this, this drawing here, where is the wall is like is this gravel road inside or outside the wall maybe I'm just misunderstanding. No, no, no worries. And sorry, your, your first I'll just address your, your last question. So, yes, you're correct. Our sound analysis does take into consideration all units that would be installed at the end of the future so all not just the ones that would be installed day one but the 34 plus the 17 so all of those units combined. So we're mitigating we are mitigating to the eventual scenario where we have all of them. Yeah, the sound measurements I mean that's, we would pretty much defer to the board in terms of, you know, if they want to see ongoing measurement or say a measurement when certain units are added to ensure ongoing clients. That is something we could do. And, you know, the board wants to see something or, you know, condition as a approval. And yeah, on the plan, so I apologize, it's clear, but this single black line with the intermittent squares that represents the sound barrier line. So, so the access road does come in kind of along the front of it. And then just continues underneath it. But then once it's within the site section access is within, fully within the barrier here. Okay, thank you. All right, I withdraw my criticism of the rendering. Mr. watch Ella. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I do have a question pertaining to removal of snow snow storage and accessing between each of the barrier units on site so just get an idea in terms of snow removal you didn't really specify too much in terms of what areas of the site are going to be removed it seemed like you're only going to do just the access road outside and within the site. You do have those two snow storage areas shown in the hyphen a lines but I had a question pertaining to whether or not you're going to go be above and beyond that like do you think you would have to remove any snow in between the barrier units and then kind of a follow up question to that in terms of getting to each of those barrier units. Are you going to have technicians walking through them. Are you going to try to fit a vehicle through there like what's your plan for getting access to each of those units on the site. Here, thank you for the question so it's sort of snow removal. Yes, so you're correct we do have these these potential snow stockpiling areas for removal. That that would be any snow from both the access road but also you know you could utilize this interior location for snow within the system. I would say we wouldn't necessarily in a snow event we wouldn't necessarily look to always remove the snow from the interior between the battery enclosures and less it presented you know, and if there was a significant enough snowfall that could present a potential obstruction to say responding to an event emergency event or perform any maintenance then we would we would have someone go out and and also remove the snow or move the snow from from within the battery itself for the access road we would you know likely use a utility pickup truck with a plow for the road within the units so that we wouldn't, there's no intent to drive any large vehicles, say large the utility pickup or larger within the between or within the enclosures. So it likely would be personnel going through you know snowblowers or some smaller equipment by hand kind of going through and we're moving snow to any to a suitable stockpile location. And then additionally, again, related to that. The only vehicles we anticipate in operating between enclosures would be something like a forklift. If there was an event where say a battery a set of cells or battery rack needed to be replaced. And the containers are spaced out so the door swing open on the long sides and a forklift could kind of come down turn kind of come in a lot of rack, take it off site or take it out and replace it, but other than that, there wouldn't be we wouldn't have any other people driving. And in terms of the storage tanks. Do you have any specifications or calculations on the on the load they can withstand. So say if you were to take a forklift and drive directly over one of those tanks. Do you know the capacity of what those tanks can hold, or at least what weight can be supported. We haven't done at this time, you know this point in design we haven't done detailed calculations on that. That's certainly something we can do priority construction and I generally right now at the depth, the depth the tanks being buried at combined with the fact that forklift. We can also, you know, if needed we can spend, you know, low ground pressure units, say to have, you know, 10 psi seven psi or less. We don't expand any issues with structural integrity with tanks, but certainly, you know, we can provide confirmation of that and we'll we'll want to confirm our in prior to construction. Thank you. But you would not be opposed to having a condition saying that you have to provide that. Before you can use, you have to provide measurements or certification that it can stand. I think that's the pressure of a vehicle. Prior to occupancy or getting a building permit. I'm not sure that we, I don't know that we need to know it right now, but we need to know something before I got, before you started to use the construction. Yeah, we wouldn't be opposed to that condition. Okay, so we have that information. Miss parks. I just have a couple of random questions, but one of them is, so you're going to have 17 additional units, potentially installed in the future. Will the pads be installed when the project if the project goes forward. So there would be so the pads would all be sold the construction would be done, but then you'd still need to have a forklift to go in to bring in new batteries is that right. Yeah, good question. So that's correct. So we would put the pads in order to install the batteries. Yeah, you'd either we'd either check to see if you know we don't have a forklift coming in for the batter acts themselves likely what happened is we have a kind of a small call it crane that would come in so I wouldn't go within the enclosure but it'd be kind of just the side of it in this area staging area. Those are likely to lift in place and the actual enclosures. And then if they're already fully loaded and then if they aren't fully loaded then we would likely come in with the forklift and install the past themselves within the enclosure. So though, so we again we'd likely install the rebooked install the pads day one by coming later and put into place those enclosures over there. Alright, thanks and then I have a question. So is the is the sound only is the only sound generated from fans cooling the batteries. And regardless of the battery enclosures that's correct it's only fan noise, and then there's additional noise produced by the inverters, which will have like a slight home to them. So those two are the, when we model this when our insult models the sound analysis those are the two primary sound sources that model. All right, and the the additional three telephone poles that I guess would be ever sources polls. Those create any sound. No, those don't sound. Okay. Is there a fire hydrant close by the property. So the closest fire hydrant is up southern Erlen Road it's actually in Sunderland near the solar project that's to the north northwest. I want to say, I have to go back I believe we specify our initial application the distance. It's around 600 feet up the road. Or I have to double check but they're the closest one is up center on road near that solar project. Okay. And you had talked about if additional sound reduction was required that you would do something what what would you do. It would that be an additional fence or something. What would that look like. In all likelihood it would mean we would have to probably further restrict operation of the units. So that they so it would look to just reduce the noise generated, especially of course if the sound barrier is installed, you know, replacing it with something would be like the costly you also kind of do get the machine returns, let's say like going for a public wall. So it would like to you again just be reducing reducing sound at the source by restricting operations or exploring, you know, maybe other options. Maybe even potentially sound mitigation, much closer to the units if that's feasible, but likely reducing operations. And just one other random question is the do the batteries have to be white. And the reason I'm asking that is because when we went to the site, there were houses that were up a hill. Above it, meaning that their view will be the top of this, rather than the side. Sure, yeah, we can start to check with pain solar, generally speaking, I the enclosures are typically a white or stay more neutral cream beige color that perforable management so typically just to reflect more sunlight and that reduces the cooling load needed on the system, which should also keep fans lower and noise down. We could see if it's if it's feasible or you know based on the expected ambient temperature conditions, if we could make another color. Certainly the wall we could we could look to make another color. I'm not necessarily a wider gray but we can look into it I just don't want to say dependably if we could just because again those close to all management concerns become applied. Yeah, no I understand, I just from the perspective of the people up the hill, it would just be less annoying but you know if it's peak it's if it's for absorb you know sun absorption. Then I understand if if I can just throw out I have if there is a preference for wall color, I would have it be a dark green color so that it more blends in with the background and their nature in the area. And that's it for me. Thank you. One of the things I'd like to do is just as long as we have Captain Baskin here, I don't want to keep him longer than he has to stay because he probably has other things more urgent than this on his plate. But I would like to see if he has any comments or any questions I'd like to talk kind of focus on emergency response if we have questions about that. Well, the captain is here and Captain Baskin are you still here or did you have to believe. Or did he have to leave he can't answer. He can't answer us if he's not here. I think he's left. I think he's left. Okay. We can follow back with him, but I guess one of the things is there's a first question I have on that regard. Mr. Larracy is that there's a lot of the emergency response plan and a lot of the back and forth with the fire department police department that's to be included later, or TBD, and it hasn't been it hasn't been fleshed out yet. Is that maybe I think that would be important to see have those things finalized before we take a look at it and for the for the to vote on the special permit application. When I went through the emergency management plan I noticed that there was either it's not up. It's not currently up to date or you just have to make some decisions about what what you're going to do in cases of responses. When I look at section, I guess a section three of your emergency response plans. Central monitoring, networking, emergency shutoffs, site live site level east stops exposure level stops. I guess those are all things that you'd have a some kind of a trigger to I mean those are examples of. Incidents where you would have a trigger to measure when you have to take a certain action or something and I just wonder why those are not. I do wonder why those are not specified in your, your emergency response plan. Sure, so, yeah, first I would just say that some of those items we wouldn't have yet finalized or finalized just depending on, you know, we do try to maintain just as we're working through the general development process flexibility in terms of equipment and also layout so as we work. So first I would say as we work with permitting the project town you know town board such as yourself might have feedback on the way to lay out, you know, design maybe adding or moving things around. So that could affect staging areas or muster points various aspects like that. Additionally, there are some, some maybe more technical aspects specific to the equipment. We could certainly add it now. And then of course, if there was an equipment change down the road, we would, you know, have to provide not only the updated specifications for any changing equipment but obviously change update the RP to reflect that change equipment but we were happy to go back. We reviewed the RP with the SRG and adding, you know, anything additional this time we were mainly again just waiting. Just, just so that we don't have to go through more iterations if we finalize things on the status of equipment change, we would need to go back but if the board wants to see that, we can do that now and then just if there's a change will we'll deal with it then. Well, aside from Mr Meadows, I suspect most of us don't have any comprehension of what those things are, but I tend to rely upon the judgment of the fire department or emergency response departments to make sure they, that they are, they are comfortable with what you're proposing and that it's, that it's consistent with that and I would think that that's something you'd want to have done prior to finalizing the, the project application but I think that that would we'd have to rely upon the judgment of the, of the fire department and emergency services quite frankly for some of that stuff but I would like, I would like to see it finalized with them before you go forward, but I think Mr Meadows probably has more knowledge about this I know he has more knowledge about this than, than I do and he may have an opinion about that. Go ahead, Craig. I was simply going to say I'm not, I'm not too concerned about it. Okay. So but you'd like to, you're not concerned about it not being specified before the application is considered. Correct. Okay. So, this is a unique project. I've never, I mean I've only been on, haven't been on ZBA for a year even but there's a lot of blank wall here, especially when the plantings are new and they're small and I can imagine that it might be an attractive graffiti opportunity for people who do that. So I just throw that out there. I don't know if, if the owner would want to come and cover it all up speedily or doesn't really care or whether the town would want to put a requirement on, you know, moving unsightly or defensive graffiti so I don't know how likely it is but that's it's a lot of wall, a lot of blank wall. So any thoughts someone might have. I could say if you go behind Hastings. Yeah, really remarkable graffiti artist who now lives in town. He grew up here primarily and is extremely good. There's a remarkable wall behind Hastings. And it's been, and he updated it recently so it's, it's remarkable. I'd like to either Chris or Rob, I'd like to stay on the emergency services subject right now or if we can, if your questions about that, please go ahead. That's not a question it's just a comment that you can often create a condition that allows you to review something later on. In other words, approve a special permit but then have a condition that the applicant needs to come back with whatever the plan is in a final form before they need a building permit. So they do need a building permit for this. And they need, you know, all kinds of other permits to probably electrical permits, etc. But that might be something that could help you to deal with the possibility of the applicant to come forward with a final version of whatever plan it is that you're looking for. I just wanted to make that suggestion. It can be submitted back either to us or sometimes to the building commissioner or the fire department if we choose. So that's a good, that's a good point. Bob. Yeah, just to build on that. So the applicant. Mr. Larisi actually suggested making a condition that the final emergency response plan be reviewed and signed by both the police department and the fire department. And that would be given before issuance of a building permit and that would be given to the planning department and to the building commissioner. So that might be the best strategy for this sort of thing because it seems that the most important aspects of the ERP is public safety and that includes both fire and police and as long as they're okay with it. Even after the board votes to approve it. That's, that's the most important personality should be reviewing that specific plan. It seems to me that the one thing I don't know much about is how a lithium of these lithium batteries create the create a problem and what happens when it does when it does burn. I know you talked about it. I forget the term you use but when they sort of like they run away. They function too highly and they then they create too much heat. So have you experienced that with that? I don't know. I don't want to call it a meltdown because that's, that's I think really sensational. But have you experienced that with anything you've owned and described to us what the potential is for toxic chemicals or other things that would or smoke that would happen and air pollution that would happen. I did have one of those events in these in the battery storage for the vests. I guess is what you call them. Can you do that, Mr. Laracy? Yeah, happy to. I'll just briefly touch on this and then also, Nick works on the call and it's him since he has witnessed and as part testing fires in the system, you know, firsthand of close. So, yeah, as you, as I mentioned, in the historic conditions that could create a fire with a few batteries is thrown away in the underlying battery cells. As you mentioned, it's kind of a cascading effect that it could that has occurred in the past where cells basically heat up other cells and cause greater, greater conditions overall. And that's where I reference again in my presentation that he and Captain Baskin was right on the mark when you requested to see a copy of the online 548 test report. That report is critical for making sure that, again, with that report they test the system at the unit level so at the enclosure level. They'll check they'll basically cause cells that are filled right away and see what happens when a fire from open is created. So, the expectation is that due to design, it as long as the system and meet meets those UL 9 to 48 or based on UL 9 to 48 testing doesn't demonstrate propagation of them or in a way from a module. It's certainly a unit unit level. If those, you know, any thermal conditions are going to be isolated to, you know, the container that is the cells in the container that are having that issue. So that's the response. Because of that because of, you know, experience with firefighters and testing on the systems, the recommended response in the event of a thermal vendor fire is to monitor the system. You know, most of the, the, you know, connectivity that happens in the sorts of events happens. The first pretty soon after an event occurs. But it's to monitor the system. There wouldn't be large line is water applied to the system or, you know, the fire department would look to kind of monitor the site, make sure that the overall site conditions aren't causing a safety concern. And we would, we would have personnel stay on site, you know, within, you know, hours or days after an event to ensure that, you know, their conditions don't reemerge and that the site is fully mediated but I'll definitely, again, next on the call, hand it to him. So he can collaborate. Yeah, I am still Josh. So, to start at the beginning, like you mentioned, the thermal runaway is a cell level event. The purpose of the 9548 testing is to show that a single cell failure is going to be limited in its propagation through the system. The Canadian solar with their soul bank system has demonstrated that single cell failure does not propagate tremendously through the system. They have an exhaust system in the unit that is designed to vent the gas that's released from the battery as they're in thermal runaway. And I guess for everyone's edification. So the CMI on battery cell. In this case, each individual cell, maybe thought of as maybe a small shoebox. That cell by mass is going to be about 75 to 80% metals. It's got some very thin layers of plastic inside of it and then the electrolyte is a hydrocarbon similar to gasoline or naphthalene or something along those lines. If the thermal runaway occurs, what happens is that electrolyte, which is less than 20% of the mass of the individual cell is converted into a gas which then escapes from the cell. In some instances that gas can be ignited. And as you can imagine, same as you have same as if you had gasoline that was pressurized and heated and then, you know, evacuated from a space, it will burn. These particular chemistries and what 9548 testing showed is that single cell events are not likely to result in ignition. You'll have a mission of gas from one of these cells. A few hundred liters of gas, it should be ventilated from the system. And if somebody were walking by they may get a very faint smell of a unique odor because battery electrolyte is a little unique. Generally, a single cell should be more than a very localized event may not even be worth getting the fire department involved for. However, fire department exists because things happen. If a greater skill failure were to occur, as Josh alluded to our guidance to the fire department, so long as there's not a life safety issue or property safety, or something that, you know, we can't really fathom right now were to occur. Our guidance to the fire department is going to be passively manage the event. If the battery is continuing to off gas, battery off gas can look like smoke, but it's usually a heavy lazy gas. It can be managed very well with a fire hose on the fogging pattern. The guidance to them would be, you know, knock down the gas cloud, you know, no reason to, for it to run across the neighborhood or anything. The wall is actually going to do a pretty good job of containing it, but the fire department should be able to effectively manage what should normally be a very localized effect. There are a couple of specific weather conditions, usually between 40 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit and very high humidity, where that gas can be a little lazier and kind of linger a little more but generally the gas is going to disperse probably within 100 to 150 feet of the site, if not less than that. And not going to be an issue if it is an issue the fire department should be able to manage it. If the battery is burning, if it's fully involved, generally lithium ion batteries because they the flammable materials primarily that liquefied hydrocarbon. They burn pretty hot but they actually burn pretty clean. You should have a pretty clean white smoke, heading up into the air and it shouldn't be other than the visible smoke plume shouldn't be any noticeable odors or anything. Any kind of appreciable distance from the site. So we'll train the fire department as Josh alluded to but our general guidance does not call for any automatic evacuation or shelter in place. Same as any structure fire or commercial or utility fire. You know the fire department is can and should monitor the area if they see something that concerns them. And certainly that'll be their call to make but we have not seen anything in our testing to date that suggests that there's any tremendous toxicity risk or anything from batteries. The data we've generated suggests that in a lot of cases they're comparable to structure fires or in some cases may even be cleaner burning than a potential structure fire. So, again, it'll depend on weather conditions it'll depend on, you know what exposures may be in the area, the weather conditions and things like that but those are all things that the fire department should be well versed in and making decisions about for any fire. Back to the runoff water there's still research on going on that there have been, there's one study that came out last month, comparing electric vehicles to gasoline powered vehicles, not 100% apples to apples comparison, but maybe a red apples to green apples comparison, if you will, and found that lithium ion batteries in some cases were cleaner, or contain less of some constituents in some cases they contained a little more but generally were comparable to a car fire. You put a lot of water on the battery. And certainly if you flushed water directly through the battery. In our case, our guidance for the fire department is not going to be to directly attack the battery will protect adjacent exposures will put water up around the perimeter. We have a gas cloud or if we have smoke that is lingering but we're not going to directly attack the battery so intent will be to minimize the production of runoff water. There's a storm water system on site that's going to contain everything. Anyway, and so we wouldn't expect any any tremendous environmental risk between the research that's been done and that the containment methods and suppression that we're going to advise on site. Thank you so I what I take from that is that and again, my judgment will be informed mostly by. But you said that also, most importantly, by the fire department and emergency services here in Amherst, but that the off gassing tends not to be the kind of constituent elements and chemicals. That would warrant some kind of evacuation of neighbors or people in close proximity to the, to the, to the battery storage site is that correct. That's our guidance and that's based on what we've seen in our large scale fire testing. It's not uncommon for us to have anywhere from five to 25 people within 100 feet or 200 feet of batteries when they're on fire. You know, ideally we don't stay. We don't stand downwind of them. But we've been doing this for years and what's released what what does a fire. What's what comes out in the air. Is it some oxidized form of lithium or what I'm not sure what it would be. So, um, so that the research that's been done today shows same as any structure fire predominantly carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. In some cases we're looking at toxics like hydrogen chloride or hydrogen fluoride. My personal experience with these with testing is that it's actually the quantity of plastics inside the unit that drive those toxic levels. So you can imagine with a modern structure, you know you have flame retardant carpets flame retardant couches chemicals under the sink. All of those contain all manner of chlorides fluorides and other nasty stuff. Another experience with the batteries is it's usually how much plastic is in the thing that determines how much is some of those toxics are there. These systems are by mass 75 to 80% metal and steel. So, we haven't seen the admittedly we haven't looked for a lot of heavy metals in the gas because aren't, these aren't typically things that, you know, float long distances. With respect to the gases themselves we have not seen excessively high levels of any toxics or really even any other chemicals. Beyond 150 feet in most cases it's usually about as far as we sample because it's usually the distance where we get below detectable levels of anything. Thank you. I have a question about this. ul 9548 report. I may have missed it, but I did not see any statement anywhere from the testing firm that the the battery pack battery rack met the standard. I'm inferring that it did but I did. There's no, you know, sign off. Yes, met all met all the requirements of ul 9548. So, Josh, I can take that if you'd like. Unlike most 90 ul standards 9548 is not actually a pass fail test, it doesn't come there's not a listing criteria. If you look on the cover it's actually referred to as a test method. Its purpose is to gather information for further engineering analysis. So, you do three levels of testing to generate explosion concerns, or to generate the quantity of explosive gases that are released, and then that feeds into an explosion study. You look at what kind of heat is released during that but during the testing and if there were larger fire that feeds into a heat flux analysis. It's not like 1973 9540 other year old standards. There's not a stamp that comes with it so that may be why you didn't see a pass fail there. That makes sense. Thank you. But were those further analyses done. Yes. The heat flux, you know, whatever. I'm involved with the heat flux. I don't know how much I can say other than that's underway. The there's a for what it's worth there's not a requirement in the code for heat flux that's just something that some manufacturers have been doing for with respect to the explosion analysis. There's not involved in that particular study, but NFPA 55 requires compliance with NFPA 69, which is an explosion analysis that has been performed so there should be a document somewhere stamped by an engineer that tests to the analysis of that system. Yes, one more. Mr chair. Yes, there's no pass fail what is the context for assessing the degree of gas production is there, you know, compare this to other battery racks. Yeah, so you you collect the, the quantity and the composition of the gas that comes off, and then you feed that into explosion models. So usually it's some kind of computational fluid dynamic software. You feed that release rate in there. And then the computer builds a model of how that gas might disperse. And also what the pressure of that gas would be if, if it were to combust the way you typically do it because the standard in the test you typically only see a couple of cells fail. Like I said, I believe for Canadian solar's test. They had very limited propagation. What you end up doing in the analysis then to say okay I only lost two cells in the test. I want to look at what happens if I lose 20 cells, and you scale that up to more extreme scenarios to make sure that your system does cover a, you know, all worst case potentials. And then that's the approval for that comes by way of a licensed engineer reviewing that analysis and stamping it. Same as you would a building or a bridge or anything else ultimately. Great. Thank you for that. There are other questions regarding this application from members of the board for staff. Ms parks. So I'm just wondering if we heard anything from any of the butters. No, I don't think we have. I don't think. And a butter notice was, was given to everybody with was it not Rob. Every feet. Yeah. So butters in both Amherst and Sunderland were notified because the property touches the. Your foot buffer goes into Sunderland town line. So those are also notified. Okay. And I'm back to the safety issue. I'm assuming that if the battery heats up, that there's going to be some kind of shut off for it. Is that right? It's, is it an automatic shut off or is it someone's hearing it and they shut it off. Yeah, it'll be automatic. So this particular system utilizes a liquid gold plate. And what we need to do is we're going to connect the battery to the battery. So the total battery is going to be low. Below each battery module. The flow liquid through there between that and the fact that the overall operating rate of the battery is pretty low. Four hours is considered. Pretty slow charge discharge. Philippine batteries. Heat generation should be minimal. The cooling system should manage it. If it doesn't. Yes. All right. Thanks. I would also add that those shut off temperatures are usually a small fraction of what the actual failure temperature would be. Usually you'll see shut down between 50 and 55 degrees Celsius. You wouldn't expect to see failure in these cells until 185 to 200 degrees Celsius. And once you shut it down is the chance of the possibility of the what's the term you use the thermal runaway end. Does that end once you shut it down or does it is the runaway that it's reached like a critical mass and it can continue to increase and run away when even though you automatically shut it off. So the answer is it depends to be honest. Yeah, if the heating is purely a result of it just being a hot summer day and it's just getting a little more sun than usual. Or if you have a loose electrical connection, then yes, shutting it down should end any risk. In the very rare instance that that heat generation is coming from internal to the cell as a result of an internal defect, then it would depend on the extent of the defect inside the cell, whether or not it would fail. To give you an example you guys may remember the galaxy note seven failures, you know a few years ago. That's an example of thermal runway. Stationary energy storage batteries have significantly lower failure rates significantly higher quality control and most of your consumer products. I've been involved in a number of failures throughout the US and actually most of the Western world over the last four or five years. Of those dozen or more events, only one or two potentially may have been related to a single cell failure so those kind of internal defects that would cause it are exceedingly rare. So yes, ideally if you had a failure that was detected and you shut the system off that should end their threat right there. Again, things happen, but I would say for the not you should be good. But you that's why you have a second and third system. Exactly back up to do it. Yep. Okay. Great. How about other questions from board members. There's a lot of stuff. What I'm impressed with I was say that I'm impressed with how new this is for the process of board. This is the first time we've dealt with something like this. There's a lot of concepts that are, but I know I am and I think many of you are unfamiliar with and we're learning about this and I'm impressed with the amount of just the amount of information you provided to us, your candid nature response to the questions. I think that's all been really good. I think we may have the need for additional information before we can make a decision before we're comfortable with that and I hope you understand that that's because this is really sort of precedent setting. I'm apologizing. I'm explaining why I think it's this is precedent setting for the town, not so much for the ZBA, but for the town for us to do this. And so we're going to want, you know, we have some questions that we're going to want to have answered before we before I'm comfortable moving forward on this. Definitely predisposed to think that this is a good idea and increasing battery storage makes sense and reducing our reducing that the peak draw, which is the most expensive time to use power. I mean, it all makes it makes a ton of sense, but we just need some answers. I think to before we can move before I'm comfortable moving forward. But I think you've done a we've done a good job so far in trying to identify the issues that we have to deal with. So what I with that what I'd like to do is for anybody else as a general comment they'd like to make we can do that but I open it up to the public for comment. And then we can come back and talk a little bit about going forward on this as a board if we wish. So if you have a comment, any board member has a comment right now they want to make. It's time to do it before we go to public comment. Miss parks. Hi, I just I had some just like a general question like, how does this help the town. Do we get taxes from your use. Is that the is that the main benefit for the town or does this support solar. So I'm just thinking of those. Yeah, no, that's a, that's a great question. So, certainly the most tangible direct benefits of the town would be in the form of so the storage units would be personal property and taxes such so there would be annual, you know, we're going to, we've been in communication with the assessor's office and we're working out how the system would be taxed but there would be personal property taxes paid in town so that's the, the most direct tangible benefit. Additionally, as we kind of outlaid a little bit in the presentation. And as the chair just mentioned, the system, you know, one of the primary benefits of storage and ability to shift energy, which is the generation which effectively reduces, you know, each generation cost and those costs that are passed on to consumers so it will, you know, it wants to reduce the cost of energy storage is on the grid that will make a measurable effect with reducing electricity cost value parameters before, you know, all the, the commonwealth. And it does, it does enhance solar it's the stage ease office attorney general's office has defined or stores as facilities are equipment that facilitates the collection of energy storage, the clean peak standard, which we mentioned. And we're looking at it in D we are looking at it or just sort of saying pay it, you, we put out these systems and they charge within most videos and discharge. It's other in these teaching demand times. You're effectively spreading out that little generation. And then also, you know, you know, about that kind of peak demand and you need time. You know, as there's more of these on the grid, as there is more just general electrical charging. So it really serves to just be shaping shift the real energy, reducing costs, not as resiliency. And then I also, it sounds like you were leasing the property from the owners is, is there an idea that you might purchase that property, or will you continue to lease that. So at this time we would just be looking to do and we're hoping soon to enter into that long term lease with the property owner. Again, the potential to go as far as, you know, 3540 years at this time we wouldn't have plans to purchase the property. And that could change but I would say that's unlikely this time. Okay. Yeah, I guess is there any concern that the property owners might want to sell the property. If they wanted to sell the property. Would you be purchasing the property. Oh, yeah. Certainly they could sell the property. We wouldn't necessarily have a concern with it. We would have our lease. So, you know, someone else came in with the parcel. We would continue to have our lease and we'd have as you know, the a new person we support into our lease. Again, I don't think if they put it up for sale I don't think we would. We wouldn't be able to buy it unless I don't know unless we there was some sense that a potential buyer would come in and be trying to cause a bunch of issues or maybe like then, you know, had issues there but we would like to, you know, get ahead of that much sooner without looking at purchase. Okay, I just a long term like a 20 to 40 year lease is very long to me I don't know about a lot of those but apparently I mean I guess it happens. I think those, I guess, is this happening more and more around the state. Maybe I even asked Craig or anybody else I mean is this something does this. The next thing that's going to be happening is a lot of battery storage units going up. There's a lot of battery storage going up in different scenarios. In other words, we see, you know, solar systems with battery backup for them like, but not to the same extent that this system is. This is a consideration for a large system out at Fort Irwin that that has the potential. The VA is now looking at any energy service agreements in conjunction with the energy savings performance contracts which would probably encourage battery storage systems. But they're, they're on a different level than this one. Typically, they are associated with usually with with solar, very occasionally with wind for private entities or where the federal government. This is, this is a utility grade and there's a lot more utility grade solar and battery battery energy so solar battery energy so storage systems. I keep on stumbling on that. It's, it is it occurring more. Yes, definitely is. Okay. Well, go ahead. Just to follow up on Miss Park's question. In the operations and management section there's a distinction made between the owner and the operator. So in this case, the owner is the trust and you got and is it blue wave that is the operator is that the distinction, the correct distinction. Whoops, you're, you're, you're muted, Josh. Sorry about that. Yeah, it would be in this case the developer and the owner and the owner operator. So it's the trust isn't the owner at all. It's you guys are the developer owner and operator. Correct. Yeah, the trust would own the underlying land, but the company would own the project. So you must have different divisions that would. So these different operation and management plan that are one is for the operator, one is for the owner. It goes to different divisions within your own company. Or different related companies. Within good, we will have an operations team that would be handling asset and operations. Okay, so it's all from the same entity. All right. Apart from some sort of third party contracts, if it's like. Further assets. Got it. Miss Marshall. We haven't talked about the decommissioning. And I'm wondering, does the state have any requirements for decommissioning? Is it going to be up to us or is it up to the property owner? Does the industry have standards? What, what would you be proposing to do in the way of decommissioning? So generally speaking, so for decommissioning the site decommissioning to involve in terms of the time and effort to actually just what you're going to come take the, take the batteries and enclosures off the site. You know, you're on flatbed trucks or otherwise. You would take out the concrete any electrical conduit. And, you know, recede and service the site. Also the electrical poles. But all of that on all wouldn't. Yeah, you would basically or we would remove effectively all improvements to the site and meet the site as close to the mission was before we install. Generally in the past when we've done same same as with solar projects typically will have an engineer. An estimate is to the cost of removing those pieces of equipment and transporting them off site. Well, for the batteries will will look to solicit ideally a low floor reachable recycling facility, take the actual underlying battery cells to other materials that also be recycled steel enclosures. You know, concrete as well even. So, as much as it can be recycled, taken for second studies will do that. But again, that cost estimate typically is formed in the past we work with towns. Well, we provide them with a cost estimate, then they would have that reviewed by either their town engineer or maybe an external engineer. If they feel that's the estimate is in line with what they're expecting and then we would agree upon that that amount of the decommissioned barn. Okay, would you be removing the storage to the underground storage tanks in the plumbing. Yes, we remove those as well. But presumably the drainage. I forget what you call them the infiltration that stays in place or you remove and fill the infiltration is what I it depends on those may stay in place just because it's there, you know, it's effectively stone both trench. But that may change, but that would be likely the only aspect of the site that would remain. Mr. Achilla. I just want to suggest the board that it would be wise to propose a condition where you require the applicant to provide a decommissioning plan with cost estimates from engineer and a bond. Before issuance of a building permit to be submitted to the town. So I'll take note of that. But I wanted to make everybody aware of that that should be a proposed condition. Miss parks. And just one last comment is I do think they're, you might want to put signage, not additional signage but maybe painted on there that says, you know, blue wave battery storage so that people don't wonder if it's penitentiary or something. You know, alien, you know, area 51 marijuana, marijuana. To get rid of interest. Yeah, exactly. Something boring, something very boring. Yeah. I think that's a really good idea. You know, once you see that paranoid people will have imaginings so. Yeah, absolutely. The blue wave. The name of the project is then contact information role for anyone. Yeah, I think some, some kind of sign would make sense. Would probably reduce the number of people that want to get in there and take a look at it. All right, let's see if there's any public comment. We have 4 people in the queue and nobody has their hand up right now. And also, I know that at one meeting we did not, I did not give the instructions for people who are on the phone who may wish to comment. Can you, Rob or Chris, can you, what's the way in which a person who's on the phone and listening if there is one. Do they just, do they press nine or how do they, how do they indicate that they're interested in commenting. So they're supposed to press the pound key. According to the agenda. Yep. Okay. All right. So we have no pound key. And we have no hands up from the public. All right. So I guess this is a chance for you, Mr. Larisi or anybody, any of your colleagues to make a last comment before we. We, we may have some comments as a board here, but we're not going to finish this tonight obviously. And if you have other comments that you want wish to make and closing. There's no time to do it. No, I, no, no further console. I think I'll say is thank you for your time and all the questions are appreciated. And yeah, we look forward to providing additional information. I would ask you just, if we can get, you know, clear direction on, you know, and we're happy to follow Rob afterward and he can maybe confirm with you, Mr. Just the list of the specific information that you'd like to see that next meeting and then we can be clear on our homework. Great. Thank you. And thank you for your time. Members of the board. We had a lot of questions. I think the staff had a good job. I saw them taking notes. So I think they can come up with a list of information that we requested. If you have specific things you have interested in, please communicate directly with the staff over the next couple of days about what you would be interested in learning about. But I think we pretty much, I think there's a long list of additional information that we would like from the applicant before we proceed. And if there's anything else that you wish to have to speak to right now that's the time. I think we should, I think we should move to continue this hearing until a date certain and I think the best time for doing that is I think it's March, I mean may May 25, I think is the next meeting, not the next meeting time, but it's the next free meeting. Is that the correct date Rob? Yep. May 25. That's the fourth Thursday. Yes. If you're all comfortable with that process, I would move I would entertain a motion that we continue the public hearing on this matter until May 25 that's 6pm. So that's about just about a month from now. Do I have a motion. Ms. Parks and Ms. Marshall you second. Any discussion. This requires a vote. Chair votes aye. Ms. Parks. Aye. Ms. Parks is that an aye. Oh, aye. Okay. Good. Mr. Maxfield. Aye. Ms. Marshall. Can you hear. And Mr. Meadow. Aye. All right. Now I've lost all. Are you hearing me? Yeah. Yes, I'm not hearing you. Your pods probably died, Steve. I don't know what I've done. Yes. Can't hear you. Can't hear you, Steve. Your audio is gone, Steve. Did we ask our vice chair to take their all call? I think we might get it. How are you doing, Steve? I'm taking over. Everybody thumbs up. Whatever. You took the vote to continue the public hearing already. Yes. So Steve, you might have to change your microphone. So I think your AirPods were connected and that was your microphone. So there might be a way you can change it. So it's coming through your computer instead of your, your AirPods. So I believe you go to the bottom left portion of your screen is a little microphone with an arrow. You click the arrow. And if you collect, if you select a different microphone, that should be able to help you out. No luck. Dylan, you're on. All right. We've lost Steve. I'm going to go ahead and take it over. All right. So we had a Steve with an eye. Ms. Parks. Aye. I vote aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Ms. Marshall. Aye. All right. So the motion passes. The hearing is continued to what do we have for the other date on that one? May 25th at 6 p.m. May 25th at 6 p.m. All right. So. Nope. We got Steve back. Yeah. I finally figured it out. Sorry, guys. All right. Appreciate the question. I will be sending you a, um, and all the board members a list. Of all those questions that are required updates tomorrow. Just so everybody has them. Um, so just be on the lookout for that. Probably sometime tomorrow midday. Sure. And we can, um, we'll grab, I can connect you on. Uh, looking to schedule that fall side to do with true. Um, I, you know, I assume if we can get it prior to the 25th. Yeah. That one. Sounds good. All right. Yeah. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Now's the time for public comment. On, um, any matter that was not before the board tonight. We have no, um, nobody raises their hand, no public comment. And I don't have before the board tonight. So we set the date for the next meeting. Ms. Brestrup. Is there anything else that we need to discuss before we adjourn for the evening? No, there isn't. Just to note that the, um, zoning board of appeals is going to meet to discuss a different topic on May 11th. With a different panel. So the spoke, um, public hearing was continued to May 11th. So. Just wanted to mention that. Got it. Thank you. And the board members to serve on that panel will be notified as well. Of that meeting date. All right. Thank you. Thank you. With that, I take a motion to adjourn. Before, before we totally jump in the adjournment motion. I did want to let you know that it is, it will be unfortunately my, uh, my term ending. Uh, soon in June. So it will be, uh, Came up, it came up faster than I thought, but unfortunately with my new job, I won't be able to continue making Thursdays at six. I will be with us till, uh, yeah, until. When does it determine does it end June 1st? Is it end June 30th? I don't even know. So be here through, through June 30th. Uh, and then any, uh, Any panels that I'm, I'm on that continue beyond that. Like if I don't have spoke continued, I might continue that one, but, uh, If a 40 B application comes to us before June, I'm going to probably have to have to use myself from that one. Yeah. You won't be around for that one. Yeah. No, uh, but yeah, so I'll save my, my real final goodbyes for when, when we get near the end. But, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm sad to be leaving you guys. It's been great. And, uh, you know, I'll enjoy the time we have left together. And you've been great Dylan. Thank you for being a part of it. Yeah. Thank you very much. Congratulations on your job. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I'm down. I just got a job selling a home improvement projects down in Connecticut. So yeah, I'll be driving all over and some of the sales appointments you do are at 6 PM when, you know, people are home from work and it's, uh, it's going to be a lot, but, uh, I think I'm, I'm going to like it. I've been at the company now for training for just a, just about two weeks and it seems like a really good spot. They have like a great culture there and it looks like, like, uh, it looks like it's a job I'm really going to enjoy. So I'm excited. It's a free. Congratulations. Love to hear that. Thank you. All right. Uh, and with that, I'll, I'll second the motion to, uh, The chair votes aye. Mr. Maxfield. Aye. Ms. Parks. Aye. Mr. Meadows. Aye. Ms. Marshall. Aye. We are adjourned. Thanks everybody. Thanks for all the work on this, uh, long night and so, and I'm. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks everybody. Thanks for all the work on this, uh, long night and so, and I'm.