Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act, Part 2: The Brave New World of Batteries

In my last Reick Report I discussed recent "energy" legislation passed in the October veto session. I put "energy" in parentheses because the bill wasn't about energy so much as it was a dead-set giveaway to the environmental lobby in Illinois that's made a pretty good living stoking hysteria over the issue of climate change.

I focused my discussion on the part of the bill that dealt with utility-scale battery storage projects. My reason for that is because a proposal has been made to construct a 600Mw battery storage facility in Nunda Township, and a lot of people have questions that have yet to be answered. Today, I hope to provide some background into what this proposal is about. It starts with a discussion of the whole notion of battery storage on a utility scale, what it is, why (if) it's needed, and what risks we incur by letting them be built here in McHenry County.

Utility-scale batteries don't generate electricity, they're only required because of the ever-increasing installed capacity of intermittent, weather dependent wind and solar power, which are largely useless without extensive and complex network integration, backup, and storage systems. They are only short-term energy storage systems, providing backup power for a few hours at best, not for days or weeks. Simply put, "solar + battery" does not provide dispatchable, round the clock base load capacity, and won't in my lifetime.

Wholesale electricity costs in Illinois vary significantly based on demand, with prices spiking during peak summer or winter conditions and dropping during low-demand periods. Based on 2025-2026 data, wholesale prices are generally trending higher due to increased capacity charges and demand from data centers.

Battery project developers hope to make their money by storing electricity when costs are low and selling it back to the grid at times of peak demand. Costs are generally lower at night, when the sun isn't shining and the wind is generally slack. In addition, as the demand for utility scale battery facilities increases, that increased demand is going to drive up the cost of what renewable energy is available as developers scramble for supply. And, if you pay attention to their flowery promises, selling all this stored electricity is going to reduce the peak load cost of power.

See where I'm going with this? If you're counting on charging the battery in the middle of the night at $25 and discharging it during the peak daylight hours at $125, you pocket a $100 margin. But by increasing the demand for power to store off-peak, you increase the cost, and by dumping more energy onto the grid at peak demand, which in theory will lower the price, you'll narrow your profit margin. (For the benefit of all you English majors out there, it's called the "law of supply and demand".) If that margin drops to $75, would that margin be enough to pay for developing the battery array and then hooking it up to the grid?

For ratepayers, it's a lousy deal because you pay three times for the same product. First you pay for the wind and solar fields, then you pay for the battery backup, then you pay for the natural gas plants standing by for when the batteries run out of juice. Then you get to pay all over again when the developers come crawling to Springfield to be bailed out with more and bigger subsidies.

Then there's what happens when the batteries catch fire.

When fire broke out at the world's largest battery energy storage facility in January 2025, thick smoke blanketed surrounding wetlands, farms and nearby communities on the central California coast. People living in the area reported headaches and respiratory problems.

When battery energy storage facilities burn, the chemical fallout from the batteries contains metals that are toxic to humans and wildlife. The fire in Vistra's battery energy storage facility at Moss Landing released not just hazardous gases such as hydrogen fluoride but also soot and charred fragments of burned batteries that landed for miles around.

So how do you deal with a utility scale battery fire? It's extremely difficult to put out a lithium-ion battery fire, which can burn for days and reignite. The best industry-accepted practice is to suppress the fire, manage the burn, and protect surrounding structures. Suppression means slowing or containing the fire, reducing its intensity, and preventing it from spreading to nearby equipment or structures. Extinguishment means fully putting out the fire, stopping combustion altogether, which in any case must be done.

Here's a link to a discussion about the various ways these fires can be suppressed. One would hope that any battery technology used today would include one of these suppression tools as a standard feature. But if the fire spreads beyond a single unit and must be extinguished, it's going to take large amounts of water.

How much water, you ask? Lots. I spoke with the folks at the Nunda Fire Protection District, which would be the lead department in charge of putting out one of these fires at the proposed facility. I was told that it would take anywhere from 25,000 to 50,000 gallons of water to fully extinguish a fire. There being no direct water service to the proposed site, the Department would be limited to bringing water out in a tender, which has a capacity of several thousand gallons. That's a lot of trips back to the nearest well.

The alternative is to create a storage enclosure to hold that much water which, at that size, would have to be concrete. The weight of such a structure, along with the weight of the battery array and its concrete pad (not to mention the 203 tons of water necessary to fill the tank) would be enormous. In fact, I was told that such weight could have the effect of diverting the flow of water in the underlying aquifer.

Then, the water used to put out the fire has to go somewhere. Since water runs downhill, and it's only a mile and a half from the proposed site to the Fox River, there's a good chance that a portion of the contaminated runoff (see above) that doesn't soak into the soil and ultimately into the aquifer will find its way to the river. In either case, folks out there would be drinking bottled water for quite some time.

So now you have some background on what's being proposed to be built in our own backyard. The question remains: what are the people of Nunda Township and McHenry County getting for all this? I haven't even begun to talk about what surrounds this site, who wants to build it, and what's going to come after it's built. My next installment will go into much of that. See you next time.