April 3, 2025
Spanish-based renewables company X-ELIO will be able to go ahead with its proposed 300MW battery energy storage system (BESS) at Alice Creek after a split vote in the South Burnett Regional Council on Thursday morning.
The SBRC convened the Special Meeting to vote on the Development Permit for Material Change of Use after a vote was deferred at the March 19 Council meeting.
X-ELIO wants to build a BESS which would consist of lithium-ion batteries housed in 472 shipping-container sized steel units at 1196 Ellesmere Road.
The BESS would be developed on 4.3ha of a fenced-off 8ha section of the 84ha block.
Cr Danita Potter moved an amendment to the proposed Planning Conditions that would cover landscaping, a 5m fire break, on-site water supply for fire-fighting and the monitoring of underground water. This was seconded by Cr Linda Little.
A long debate then followed, with Councillors expressing concerns that although they did not want the project to go ahead, they would lose any Court challenge if they knocked back the permit application.
Cr Ros Heit said the main things to consider were to secure water in case there was a fire, and also the fire-breaks. The aim was to improve the visual amenity but not increase the fire risk.
“Once its there it will basically be a stack of containers that we might not like the look of but unless we’ve got good planning reasons … we will lose in any Planning Court and cost ratepayers if we don’t support this,” Cr Heit said.
She believed the document prepared by Council staff was “a good compromise”.
Deputy Mayor Jane Erkens said she believed nobody wanted to see the battery project go ahead but she believed Council was not in a position to refuse it if they had met all the conditions.
“If we refuse it, how much is it going to cost our ratepayers?” she said. “We have put in as much conditions as we can.”
Cr Erkens said she knew some people were totally against renewable energy, but some ratepayers were definitely for it “and we have to keep that in mind”.
“But we also have to keep in mind that we cannot be wasting ratepayers’ money by just going against something to stand on principle,” she said.
Mayor Kathy Duff said she was going “to stand on principle”.
“I have been fighting for the right … we don’t choose where they go. We have a carefully put together South Burnett Regional Council Plan and nowhere in that plan does it say anything about what I regard as ‘heavy industrial’ out in the middle of agricultural land,” Mayor Duff said.
“So I have to stand on my principles. I have voted against every single one of these.
“The planning grounds is that it’s not in our Planning Scheme, and we don’t want them.
“We want the chance to have them in our Planning Scheme where we want them and not just where they choose to be.”
Mayor Duff said she did not regret voting against the solar farm on the outskirts of Kingaroy despite it costing ratepayers’ money.
“At least we stood for what we believed in,” she said.
(The developers of the solar farm challenged the SBRC’s refusal in Court. The final judgment approving it was handed down in 2019 with the developer agreeing to make some slight changes to the project. It has since been built.)
Cr Deb Dennien said she did not agree with the way renewables had been rolled out.
“They impact the wildlife, they impact the neighbours, they impact the streams, the sand. Everything, they impact really badly,” she said.
“I am absolutely against it but I believe in this instance we would be in a really difficult position to vote against this because we don’t have sound planning reasons.
“The batteries (will be) put in a place that is close to the transmission station where the powerlines are.”
Cr Dennien commended Mayor Duff for her stand against the former State and Federal governments.
Cr Linda Little said she was not anti-renewable energy.
“I do believe that renewables are needed in the mix of our power situation in the whole of the country,” she said.
“What I am against, though, is these companies coming in and just buying our prime land and putting them wherever they want willy nilly.”
Cr Little said it was a hard decision because she knew there were many people “deadset against it” but she also did not want to see the Council wasting money by fighting something that it would lose.
Cr Potter said “none of us really want” these renewable projects.
“These things are now being literally forced upon us,” she said.
She said the Alice Creek property was “really good ag land – peanut land”.
“I’m against this as much as anyone else but because we know it’s going to happen, the best I can do is make sure that these conditions are lived up to,” Cr Potter said.
Councillors voted 4-2 to approve both Cr Potter’s amendment and the original Development Permit application.
Mayor Duff and Cr Heath Sander voted against both motions.
Footnote: Other BESS projects in the local region include the 300MW BESS at Tarong (under construction) and a 500MW facility by Akaysha Energy at Ellesmere.
- External link: South Burnett BESS
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Councillors asserting they speak for “everyone” in the South Burnett when deliberating on development planning applications like this one that will introduce a new technology to store electricity more efficiently, rather than it being wasted in the middle of a sunny or windy day, is a little misleading.
Some councillors’ “principles” appear muddled when approval is granted for more housing on good red soil land, such as in Taylors Road Kingaroy, compared to a small 8ha development in the scheme of things on similar quality land in Alice Creek. Both approvals reduce agricultural production.
In comparison, a coal mine is by far more toxic and a fire risk if poorly managed than a battery storage system.
When the local power station eventually closes because there is no more coal available in the ground, placement of new technologies close to sub stations that receive generation from many different sites well ahead of time, is a principle councillors should keep front of mind when making these types of decisions.
This maybe good peanut growing country, but tell me this, who is going to farm this land? There’s no money in it anymore and nobody to do the work. If you do the sums, that’s two less cows you can run on the farm.
If you wonder why they build these things “out in the sticks” do some research into the growing incidence of lithium battery fires around the world and what the firefighting community is having to do to counter it. You don’t pour water on these fires, it just washes the toxic material into waterways. This is a very unfortunate and foolish period of time we are being pushed into. Well done Mayor Kathy Duff for standing on principle.