Stephen Malkmus

4 minutes ago, Yngwie said:

The bit that troubled me most from the ICTST update is that because of the delays caused by the battery farm having to go to appeal, the £3.4m seems to be off the table even if planning permission is obtained and a new buyer will have to be found, no doubt for a lower sum. 

Yep, the buyer that was lined up pulled out due to the Council's intransigence. Another buyer will likely be found, but the terms for ILI/ICT may be less appealing.

48 minutes ago, wilsywilsy said:

This is virtue signalling

Good luck with your future show on GB News.

2 hours ago, wilsywilsy said:

This is sample bias.

The most relevant bias being displayed here is cognitive bias from people who understand that climate change is happening, but believe that an absolutely miniscule risk to themselves is worth scuppering this project over. 

The largest recorded wildfire in UK history occurred 26 miles west of Inverness just last year. That's a fire that we should be concerned about.

25 minutes ago, wilsywilsy said:

This is false equivelance. Is that statistically plausible when there's probably more houses in Dingwall (apparently they have some) than there are BESS installations around the world?

There are zero recorded instances of local residents in the vicinity of a BESS facility being injured by the facility catching fire or exploding.

Even accounting for the massive number of houses relative to BESS facilities, it's still riskier to simply live in a house.

57 minutes ago, wilsywilsy said:

To be fair to the NIMBYs, building houses is a weak comparison to use - houses aren't packed to the rafters with explosive chemical compounds (well, mine isn't..... although I dunno what my youngest keeps under that bed of his).

The only relevant comparison is that living in a house is statistically more dangerous than living close to a battery farm.

Totally agree that ILI's application was clearly done on the cheap, however.

2 minutes ago, wilsywilsy said:

Assuming it's actually fully used (the national grid skip rates for batteries have been grim) and remains optimal (batteries generally don't), the ICT bahh’rhee farm will allegedly save 20,000 tonnes of CO2 a year.

At its very best it will save 0.006% of the UKs emission. That is about 0.00005% of global emissions. We just need to build 2 million of these to save the world. The green wet dream.

Interesting link in the doc above to that EPRI wiki of BESS failures. Looks like there has been more than a few issues. First page shows a fire at a BESS in Australia a few months ago which was using Tesla batteries that Morrison said was planned for this site.

The UK HSE considers the monster batteries in BESS as the same as a lithium battery you might put in your TV remote, which is hilarious. How bad must the regulations be in the countries you say are "less regulated than the UK"?

Of course one BESS on its own will make a minimal contribution to addressing climate change. The problem is that for almost every one of these applications a coterie of NIMBYs propagate the same scaremongering arguments which need to be challenged, otherwise none of these facilities would ever be built and we'd make even slower progress towards addressing climate change than we currently are.

On the safety point: fire services in the UK attend 22,000 house fires in an average year. Should we stop building houses? Obviously not, because the societal benefit outweighs the negligible risk. Even for the Melbourne BESS you cite, which is an extremely rare incident, nobody was injured, as was the case at the only recorded BESS fire in the UK in Liverpool. 

34 minutes ago, Reality said:

battery-storage-press-release-v2.docxAnother perspective on the battery storage proposal

Another perspective:

"The WHO conservatively projects 250,000 additional yearly deaths by the 2030s due to climate change impacts"

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health

This image shows the number of BESS faciilities granted planning permission in the UK in the last five years. One event in Liverpool several years ago, where no one was harmed, is not an adequate basis for forming a judgment on the safety of these facilities. Nor is the list in the Word document which generally relates to very small scale incidents in countries where the facilities are less regulated than in the UK.

29 minutes ago, wilsywilsy said:

I'm not sure I would go that far and say it's scaremongering. There were some reasonable concerns highlighted today about fire safety and the environment that was all under lined by the lack of legislation that could offer any comfort. At least petrol stations have tight regulations and controls from HSE and other regulatory bodies that planners and councils can lean in to.

HSE, SEPA etc. would all regulate the site through their own regimes. The BESS would have to comply with the standards below. The officer presenting the application stated that he could attach a condition requiring a fire response plan to be submitted. The idea that BESS aren't subject to regulation and controls is fiction.

1 hour ago, McMurdo said:

How many of those up in arms and slamming the decision on social media actually live in what would be an evacuation zone where potential houses would lose value/desirability? 

Absolute scaremongering nonsense. Would you be saying the same if they lived near a petrol station?

22 minutes ago, STFU said:

ICT Community Development ARE the Trust, and not two separate entities.

Scroll to the bottom of the trust website - https://www.icttrust.org.uk/ - and click on Articles of Association, for confirmation.

Then you can come back again with a new story on how this is all working in your head.

Which one did the 2015 Cup Final flag belong to?

The only relevant matter is whether the Trust/Community Dept. will be benefiting from the battery application if it is approved. The Council accepted that they would be in their officer's report and at the last committee meeting. It seems unusual to me that some people here are desperate for them not to even have the chance of benefiting. Also, how do the Trust and its functions benefit if the club goes part time as a result of missing out on this investment?

15 minutes ago, wilsywilsy said:

All of the media coverage,  the trusts own website, and the planning application make it sound like its the trusts project managed by Craig Masterson. Happy to be corrected if you want to highlight where this outlines its not the trusts.

Yeah. Indeed. That is possible - speculate to accumulate and all that jazz. But the chairman has said twice now that the debt will be cleared. So I think it seems reasonable to surmise that the debt is a priority. And if it is, then my question is legitimate.

The application form lists the company/organisation applying as being the club rather than the trust. 

2 minutes ago, wilsywilsy said:

Independant of the club, the trust have done a brilliant job securing the long term lease plus funding and grants to take the project this far.

Feel free to pick up on the financial figures I have posted previously which are broadly in sync with what Gardiner said last night. As of May 2022 the club were under water circa -£1.3M. Gardiner said the burn rate in the championship is £700K-£900K a season. So the accounts to May 2023 will likely show they are roughly -£2M in the red. Project that through to May 2024 (-£2.7M) and May 2024 (-£3.4M) and I think it becomes a legitimate question: how much of this £3.4M being injected into the club will find its way to the trust?

 

The IRA application is not independent of the club as it is being made in the Community Development Department's name (not in the name of the Trust).

As the club state in the material for the battery application, the Trust will be a direct beneficiary of the funding the battery farm will deliver, in terms of having use of the new Hub, not through having money paid directly to it. In that sense it's not a benefit in terms of direct funding but a benefit in terms of having a facility to use. This is still a valid community benefit in planning policy terms.

In terms of the club's finances, the club doesn't have to wipe all of its debt before it invests in new facilities. Investing in new facilities can ultimately ensure the club climbs out of debt by providing the basis for developing sustainable new income streams.

Interesting that people are disputing the benefit to the Community Trust when there is currently a planning application in with the Council - in the ICT Community Development Department's name - for a £700k development at the IRA playing fields. Which certainly won't be followed through if the battery application doesn't get passed.

If anyone wants to write in support of the application you can register and do it on the Council's website here. Ignore what it says about S36/S37 applications. 

https://wam.highland.gov.uk/wam/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=makeComment&keyVal=RPE69PIHFYJ00

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/inverness-caledonian-fc-baffled-by-councils-extra-time-on-battery-plan-vr86k0tjm

1 hour ago, STFU said:

Planning policy is also that you don't build on green space, and you certainly don't put industrial use on green spaces.

No it isn't. There are numerous examples across the UK in the past two years of battery storage developments being permitted on green belt land as decision makers have realised that the threat of climate change is more important than an arbitrary green belt/open space designation.

3 hours ago, wilsywilsy said:

You are playing the man and not the ball here. The chair was 1 of 7 councillors who voted for the hotel on the IronWorks.

He was 1 of 30 (thirty!) who supported the ammendment that put the battery project planning application to the wider council for further scrutiny and a vote.

The 'ball' being the fact that planning policy at all levels is clear that grid scale battery storage is essential to meet Scotland's net zero targets.

The Council being swayed by ten dog walkers who might lose 1/50th of their space for exercising their dogs and a community council living in fantasy land is embarrassing. If they refuse it and the decision is appealed, the Council will lose.

17 minutes ago, STFU said:

The council did not make any decision to close the Ironworks, that was the property owner.  Going by some accounts, the operator was quite happy to get out of the lease as it wasn't making money.

Sucks that it's gone, but blame lies elsewhere.

The hotel development needed planning permission, and this was decided by the south planning committee. If permission had been refused, there would likely still be a cultural use at the site.

That is beside the point anyway - the Chair of the commitee is claiming that the battery decision isn't valid because not enough Councillors from Inverness voted on it. Yet he represents Fort William, and has been happy to vote in favour of the hotel development at the Ironworks and against the battery farm last week.

I hope the club embarrass the Council over this, it's a shambles.

The chairman of the south planning committee is an absolute pillock. He wasn't concerned about being a representative from Fort William, rather than Inverness, when he cast the deciding vote to replace the Ironworks with a hotel.

@sheepslagger has issued a statement 

https://ictfc.com/club-statement-battery-farm-application-approval/

On 1/30/2024 at 12:46 PM, Stephen Malkmus said:

I reckon the committee will overrule the officer's recommendation and it will get approved.

And that's The Malkmus Guarantee.

24 minutes ago, wilsywilsy said:

To immediately sell the asset (which ever part of the asset the club actually owns) would seem pretty disingenuous would it not? The sales pitch and lobbying of councillors from the board was all on the premise of the projects revenue sustaining the club and its community projects to infinity.

I haven't seen anything to suggest this BESS was linked with Red John or the Stratkraft deal.

 

If the asset is sold for £5 million, which seems to be about the going rate, then the profits will sustain the club for years. ILI claim in the planning documents that they aren't benefiting financially and that the profit from the development would go to 'ICT Battery Storage Ltd.' which is wholly owned by the club. I don't see how that is disingenuous.

I'm sure Gardiner has mentioned something about the projects being linked at some point, but probably not that it was linked to the Statkraft deal, that was just speculation on my part.

17 minutes ago, wilsywilsy said:

Looking past the cozy sound bites, I wouldn't pin hopes on the BESS loading the coffers for a squad rebuild any time soon. If approved it will probably take a few years to build. Plus the BESS market is currently in the gutter - the big players in this space have seen revenues and profits plunge. Their seems to be a glut of BESS capacity already in the build pipeline around the UK too.

I would imagine ILI will find a buyer pretty easily. They sold this one in December pre-construction. The money could come to us well before the facility is actually built.

https://renews.biz/90240/ili-sells-50mw-scottish-storage-project-to-edpr/

It may already actually be part of ILI's deal with Statkraft as the intention is that the BESS will connect to the scheme below as far as I can remember: 

https://www.hydroreview.com/hydro-industry-news/pumped-storage-hydro/statkraft-to-acquire-red-john-pumped-storage-hydro-project-from-ili/

The councillors on the committee now have good grounds to ignore any concerns relating to noise or ecology as their officers are happy with the scheme in terms of those issues.

At the last committee meeting, those seemed like bigger concerns to them than the loss of the open space. I reckon the committee will overrule the officer's recommendation and it will get approved.

Do Inshes and Milton of Leys Community Council live in the real world? A toxic cloud reaching Raigmore Hospital