After several Surprise City Council, planning and zoning commission and public hearings over the last couple of years, the council finally agreed on a setback distance from existing homes for battery energy storage systems, or BESS.
The council on Sept. 1 did not agree on a set number, however, and instead unanimously voted to make the distances variable from 100 to 500 feet, depending on the BESS project location.
Seven years after Arizona Public Service’s devastating McMicken station thermal runaway and explosion incident, the city council put to rest the question of how far the emerging energy technology can safely be from homes by passing a zoning text amendment.
