The Poway City Council on Tuesday night finalized the approval of the construction of a 300-megawatt, 1,200-megawatt-hour battery storage facility at a business and industrial park, despite concerns from some residents about potential fires. Called Nighthawk, the project by Arizona-based renewable energy company Arevon is expected to break ground soon and could be up and running by the second quarter of 2025. Arevon officials anticipate the facility will include 329 battery enclosures and, when fully built out, will generate enough electricity to power up to 300,000 homes for four hours. The parcel, which is zoned as light-industrial, is located near Kirkham Way and Paine Street. The City Council initially OK’d the Nighthawk project in a unanimous vote on Aug. 20 but, as is custom at municipal proceedings, the matter came up for a second reading as one of the items on the consent calendar Tuesday night. A rash of fires at battery storage facilities that have broken out in the San Diego area in the past year prompted about a dozen Poway residents to call on the City Council to reverse itself. The most recent fire occurred Sept. 5 in Escondido at San Diego Gas & Electric’s 30-megawatt, 120-megawatt-hours facility that led to the temporary evacuation of about 500 nearby businesses. Crews from the city of Escondido found no abnormal readings indicating toxic fumes and air-quality monitoring did not indicate any health risks. “Please reconsider, all of you. This is wrong,” one homeowner in nearby Stonebridge Estates said during Tuesday night’s council meeting. “I’m all for clean air and all of that but this (battery project) is a disaster waiting to happen.” Arevon officials say that unlike the lithium-ion batteries that have been involved in recent fires in the San Diego area, the Nighthawk project will use Tesla Megapack 2XL batteries that use a lithium-iron phosphate chemistry they say are “orders of magnitude” more stable and less likely to catch fire. Though the site is located within a Very High Fire Hazard Safety Zone, a Poway city staff report said the Nighthawk facility will have a protection system that will automatically shut down and prevent the spread of fire to other battery modules. The system will also be monitored remotely 24 hours a day, seven days a week and fire department training will be conducted before the project begins operating. Among other precautions, Arevon will build a 12-foot masonry wall completely around the site and pledges to “fully reimburse the City for all costs” incurred from responding to any fire at Nighthawk. “When I look at what the actual risk is here, I truly don’t see this as actually causing more of a risk,” said City Councilmember Peter De Hoff. “I do see this actually as reducing somewhat the wildfire risk.” The council approved the Nighthawk facility via the consent calendar on a 5-0 vote. Poway Mayor Steve Vaus alluded to the fact that California policymakers and legislators consider the building of battery storage facilities crucial toward reaching the state’s clean energy goals. “Even if we were to say no tonight, our decision could be appealed to Sacramento,” Vaus said. “And I can tell you with a great level of certainty they would approve this project. Because we have gone above and beyond, I think this is going to set a new threshold for what these facilities should be like.” The developers have committed to paying a lump sum of $2 million for a City Community Benefit Fund and a minimum of $10,000 per year for the life of the project to Poway civic organizations. They have also committed to guarantees of at least $3.5 million in sales and use-tax revenue to the city from constructing the project and at least $6.5 million in property tax revenue to the city over the first 20 years of the project’s operation. “The company is pleased” by the vote, Arevon’s Nighthawk Energy Storage Project said in an email to the Union-Tribune, “and looks forward to continuing to advance the project’s development to bring safe, reliable renewable energy to California.” Energy storage has taken on a higher profile as more renewable sources of power have come onto California’s electric grid. Storage systems take solar power generated during the day and discharge the electricity later, especially from 4 to 9 p.m. when California’s grid is under the most stress. Batteries can help reduce the risk of rotating power outages and replace natural gas “peaker plants” used during those critical hours when customers crank up their air conditioners. California has set a target to derive 100 percent of its electricity from carbon-free sources by 2045, if not sooner. In addition to the SDG&E battery fire in Escondido earlier this month, two other fires have broken out in the San Diego area in the past year. Cal Fire crews battled a battery fire inside one of the buildings at the Gateway Energy Storage Facility in Otay Mesa for 17 days in May. (Cal Fire) On May 15, firefighters and a county hazardous materials crew responded to a fire in Otay Mesa at the 250-megawatt Gateway Energy Storage facility, operated by LS Power and its subsidiary, Rev Renewables. Fire officials said the batteries experienced “thermal runaway” — a condition in which excessive heat results in a chemical reaction that spreads to other batteries — and it took nearly 17 days before the last unit left the facility. In September 2023, a fire ignited at the Valley Center Energy Storage Facility, operated by renewable energy company Terra-Gen. In response to those fires, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors last week passed a measure aimed at bolstering safety regulations for all future battery energy storage facilities in unincorporated areas of the county. The still-to-be adopted regulations, which would include establishing buffer zones, will be based on a technical study the county fire department is about to complete in coordination with a battery storage consultant. The technical report is expected to be completed next month, with county fire officials then working with seven other independent fire districts in unincorporated areas of San Diego County to come up with one uniform safety standard for battery projects.