Battery Energy Storage System (BESS)

What is the Woodson Energy Storage project?

a proposed 12 acre Battery Energy Storage System (BESS)
in Groveland Township, Oakland County
by the multinational developer, Vesper Energy, which has a long history of lawsuits & fraud
a 63 acre greenfield site of undeveloped, wooded land (home to significant habitat)
located in a rural, residential community in Groveland Township, Oakland County
if built, the site would be the state’s largest BESS
zoning ordinance is currently under consideration by Groveland Township board

What is a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) site?

Due to the inconstant electric production of industrial-scale wind turbines and solar energy fields, Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS sites, are becoming a key part of the “renewable” energy grid infrastructure. These sites consist of multiple shipping container-sized units full of lithium-ion batteries.

These BESS sites use their banks of lithium ion batteries to collect and store surplus energy from the electrical grid. This energy is given to BESS site owners for free, at no cost. The BESS facilities store the energy, then sell it back to energy companies during times of peak demand and low supply at whatever cost the market will support.

Local officials & the BESS site

Groveland Township Supervisor Robert DePalma insists it’s in the township’s best interest to approve the site in time to qualify for the potential $1.5M in Renewable Ready Community Award grant funding from EGLE.

BESS sites, fire hazard, and safety

“These types of [BESS] units,”says veteran Michigan firefighter and lithium ion battery expert Captain Durham on his educational YouTube channel, “the ones that look like shipping containers where there’s one door, one way in and one way out–they should be banned…it’s dangerous not only for the employees, but for the firefighters and the responders on scene.”

Durham says some of the BESS designers and engineers he’s spoken with were “clueless” about fire suppression. Following news cycles, he estimates BESS fires are happening globally at a rate of more than one per month - an estimate readers can easily confirm for themselves in search engines.

In many of these cases, residents are issued shelter in place orders or are told to evacuate entirely. Land, water, air, and entire ecologies are polluted for miles surrounding these BESS fires.

“Not only are these extremely difficult to extinguish, but they’re extraordinarily dangerous,” says Durham. “Unfortunately, there’s not a lot you can do with an energy storage system fire. The best you can do is protect exposures, set up a hot zone, and stay away from it…

I can’t stress how dangerous a situation this is…fire crews, get people away from these incidents. It’s extremely dangerous. You’ve got the deflagration hazard. Toxic gas. Electrocution. Arc flash. It’s just a major thing that we need to stay away from.”

Who is Vesper Energy?

Vesper Energy’s past and present dealings are riddled with scandal, fraud, destruction, lawsuits, and bribes. Their founding company, the property management company Lendlease, has an equally riddled past.

A highlights reel of Vesper Energy and Lendlease’s more prominent, well documented activities includes:

defrauding the Australian government out of $1B in taxes (ongoing)
causing the multi-billion dollar investment fund Australian Ethical to divest its $11M due to lack of transparency and concern over destruction of koala habitat corridors on the site of a 3,300 home development community (2023)
a pattern of offering bribes to local residents with cash payments and “project cooperation agreements” to keep them from speaking negatively of the project (ongoing)
paying $56M in fines and restitution to avoid criminal charges in an over decade-long overbilling fraud scheme across several major construction projects in NYC (2012)
residents near Vesper’s Nestlewood 700 acre solar field in Clermont County Ohio have been experiencing severe soil erosion, runoff, and flooding as a result of the site, describing it as “700 acres of hell” (2024)
currently battling the Ohio Power Siting Board in Ohio’s Supreme Court to overturn the board’s decisions to deny Vesper Energy permits for large-scale solar projects based on public opposition

A local resident neighbor to Vesper Energy's Nestlewood solar field in Clermont County, Ohio.

Profiting off environmental and community destruction

A Clean Energy Land Use Specialist from University of Michigan made a presentation at Groveland Township, in which she listed pros and cons of the BESS site. “Local Benefits” were almost entirely financial, while “Local Concerns” included visual impacts, sound, environmental impacts, and fire and explosion risk.

The presentation made it clear that money is the only motivating factor for this development, and that money would be made at the expense of the health, safety, and ecological integrity of the area.

When questioned by township residents why existing brownfield sites aren’t being considered for the project, Vesper Energy employee, EJay Fyfe, stated:

"This is the site we’ve identified. You know, we're a business. I think it a lot of the times, it gets lost in this that we're maybe like a nonprofit or something, kind of coming in to try to save the environment, but the reality is that we're a power producing business and those sites, uhm, don’t work, those sites don’t work for this project”.

Another Vesper employee clarified, regarding the available brownfield sites: “They’re too small, there’s not the available injection capacity that we have here, there would be significant remediation efforts…”

Remediation = cost.

Groveland Township Supervisor Robert DePalma is in is in favor of the project because of the $1.5M Renewable Ready Community Award grant opportunity with EGLE. Despite all the available evidence, DePalma states the project:

“Appears to be a very good way to do safe installations, protect the integrity of the community, and these things tend to be very noninvasive.” The greenfield site, he says, “is about the best site for this that I can think of if this goes through.”

Disdain for local stakeholders & taxpayer rights

In Ohio, the Ohio Power Siting Board declined several of Vesper Energy’s permits on the grounds that the local communities strongly opposed the projects. In open disdain for local stakeholder input, Vesper Energy is suing the Board in Ohio’s Supreme Court, arguing that the will of local residents shouldn’t weight in the Board’s permitting decisions.

“Public opinion is not public interest,” said Lindsey Workman, community affairs manager for Vesper Energy, the developer for Kingwood Solar.

in Oakland County, Michigan

Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) in Groveland Township

What is the Woodson Energy Storage project?

What is a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) site?

Local officials & the BESS site

BESS sites, fire hazard, and safety

Who is Vesper Energy?

Profiting off environmental and community destruction

Disdain for local stakeholders & taxpayer rights

We do not consent to being placed in harm's way in these experiments to perfect BESS technology. We do not consent to our natural environment being harmed, our dark skies polluted, or to potential forced evacuation from our homes. We do not consent to our property being devalued.

in Oakland County, Michigan

Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) in Groveland Township

What is the Woodson Energy Storage project?

What is a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) site?

Local officials & the BESS site

BESS sites, fire hazard, and safety

Who is Vesper Energy?

Profiting off environmental and community destruction

Disdain for local stakeholders & taxpayer rights

We do not consent to being placed in harm's way in these experiments to perfect BESS technology. We do not consent to our natural environment being harmed, our dark skies polluted, or to potential forced evacuation from our homes. We do not consent to our property being devalued.

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