Streetsboro is considering a year-long moratorium on solar electric generation facilities, including those residents may wish to install on their roofs or in their yards.
The idea, Mayor Glenn Broska said, is to give the city time to add regulations to Streetsboro’s zoning code, a document he said was written 40 to 50 years ago and updated piecemeal ever since.
Streetsboro’s Planning and Zoning Commission considered the proposed moratorium during its June 11 session and is forwarding its recommendation for approval to City Council.
Since solar farms and residential solar installations were not common or even economically feasible in the mid-1970s, Streetsboro’s zoning code did not mention them. Its continued silence means anyone can install solar farms, rooftop or yard solar panels and external energy storage facilities anywhere, Broska said.
Excluded from the moratorium would be solar electric generation facilities designated by state law as “major utility facilities,” meaning they can generate at least 50 megawatts annually.
By comparison, the average homeowner array of 17 to 25 solar panels generates about 11 to 16 megawatts annually, and the average household uses just under 11 megawatts of electricity per year. Actual figures vary depending on the size of the home, hours of direct sunlight and each family’s energy needs.
Ward 1 Council Member Marianne Glenn, a former Rootstown resident, said she brought the issue to the city’s attention after her former township on May 28 imposed a six-month moratorium on solar farms.
Rootstown’s concerns centered on fires that malfunctioning or damaged lithium-ion batteries can cause and on residents not wanting solar farms in their backyards, township Trustee David McIntyre said. Rootstown’s fire department is simply not equipped to deal with solar farm fires, he stated.
Rootstown’s moratorium does not ban homeowner installations. Though Glenn said her original intent was never to include such restrictions in Streetsboro, she agreed with Broska that extending the moratorium to homeowners is reasonable. Yard arrays and external storage systems should be regulated, if only to establish a reasonable setback from property lines, he said.
According to the National Fire Protection Association, lithium-ion battery fires can occur when the batteries are physically damaged; suffer electrical damage, perhaps from being overcharged or having been attached to improperly designed charging equipment; when they are exposed to extreme temperatures; or when they are simply defective.
The Fire Safety Research Institute, Underwriters Laboratories’ fire safety research arm, extends those concerns to batteries being exposed to salt water, being overly discharged, short-circuiting or aging as a result of rapid charging and/or use.
While the NFPA advises firefighters to douse lithium-ion battery fires with water, the EPA cites a 2011 study indicating that lithium-ion battery fires “often reignite,” even after they are initially suppressed.
A document on energy.gov cites the Solar Energy Industries Association’s assertion that rooftop solar systems “spontaneously bursting into flames is an extremely rare occurrence.” The website also references a 2015 German study asserting that half of fires involving homeowner solar systems were caused by the system itself: design flaws, component defects and faulty installation.
Ryan Shackelford, director of Portage County’s Emergency Management Agency, said concerns about lithium-ion battery solar farms are reasonable.
Last year, three solar farm fires in the state of New York burned for days, all the while emitting hazardous fumes that prompted Gov. Kathy Hochul to organize a task force to investigate response to lithium battery fires.
“The fire is one thing. If you can’t extinguish a fire, it continues to expand to other things. The other thing is a by-product of a lithium fire. There’s a lot of hazardous chemicals that are released as a byproduct of a lithium fire,” Shackelford said.
Though Shackelford limited his remarks to solar farms, he said there is a concern anytime anyone has a lithium-ion battery in a home, whether it be in a vehicle in a garage, in a storage system for a rooftop or yard array, or even in a cell phone.
Streetsboro’s fire department, as well as a number of others in the county, have Hazard Control Technologies’ F-500 encapsulating agent, a fire suppression system that rapidly cools and encapsulates flammable electrolytes, reduces heat below possible reignition levels and encapsulates the toxic hydrogen fluoride gas that burning lithium-ion batteries emit to levels below EPA-approved exposure limits.
Should batteries storing energy from homeowner systems be kept indoors, Streetsboro Fire Chief Robert Reinholz said firefighters would find themselves not only battling a house fire, but also trying to disconnect solar panels from the electricity converter box while getting foam where it needs to be.
Whether indoors or outdoors, literally anything that strikes a battery could pose a threat: baseballs, rocks thrown by lawnmowers or weed whackers, out-of-control bicycles or four-wheelers, anything, he said.
Blunt impact aside, as long as homeowners follow manufacturer instructions regarding charging and battery replacement, Reinholz said he is more concerned about fires from garaged vehicles or electric scooters kept indoors than he is about solar farms or homeowner systems.
Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.
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