Texas Wine Country Residents Oppose Battery Energy Storage System

Residents in Gillespie County, Texas, six miles outside Fredericksburg, are seeking to stop a battery energy storage project that, they say, will mar Texas Wine Country. More to the point, they fear it will mar the view from their property as well as constitute a major fire and environmental risk.

Good luck to that. Texas is home to some of the weakest land-use regulations in the country, and counties have very little they can do to stop the project, Any relief, if there is to be any, must be at the state legislature.

Unlike California, Texas has not seen significant adoption of solar by its wineries. In fact, only one winery, Red Caboose Winery, is known to be 100% off-the-grid, thanks to solar and geothermal energy. It's located in Bosque County, which is not in the Texas Hill Country AVA, but the county shares similar rolling limestone typography and features

Gillespie County is home to nearly 50 wineries. None of them are named in public records or news reports, including one in Texas Monthly just a couple of days ago, as opposing the project.

The Hill Country's grid infrastructure and proximity to renewable electricity generated by wind and solar farms makes it an attractive location for BESS. The projects near Fredericksburg involve hundreds of megawatts of storage capacity, requiring large footprints and industrial equipment.

Development of more renewable energy, which necessarily involves solar, windmills and battery storage, is a response to a disastrous Great Texas Freeze from Feb. 10-20, 2021, that left 4.5 million homes and businesses without power.