Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay. We'll call the meeting of the City of Galita Planning Commission for 08/25/2025 to order. Can we all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance? Can we get a roll

call, please?

Yes. Commissioner Maynard?

Here.

Thank you. Commissioner Peneman? Here. Commissioner Sirodkin? Here. Vice Chair Miller?

Here.

Chair Fullerton?

Here. Okay. Now is the public forum. It's the time for a member of the public to comment on any non agenda item relative relevant to the jurisdiction of the city. Do we have any body for public forum?

Thank you, madam chair. I've not received speaker slips for general public forum. If any attendees wish to speak on Zoom, please use the raise hand feature and I will call upon you. Madam chair, I'm seeing none.

Okay. Thank you. Do we have any amendments or adjustments to the agenda?

Madam chair, we do not.

Okay. Can we read the first item into the record?

Yes. That is item b one. Or excuse me. Item a one, approval of the Planning Commission meeting minutes of 10/14/2024, 03/10/2025, and 04/14/2025.

Okay. Do we have any comments? No? Can we get a motion?

I move to approve the Planning Commission meeting minutes of 10/14/2024, 03/10/2025, and 04/14/2025.

I just have a quick question before if we have some people that weren't here for some of the meetings, do we have to do it separately?

Commissioners could choose to abstain if they weren't present for that meeting. I may defer to Ms. Kai.

Yeah, correct. The planning commissioners who were not during at the meeting could have reviewed the video, and you could still vote. If you did that, you can go ahead and vote. If not, please abstain. Thank you.

Okay. So I guess we have a motion. Can we get a second?

Might need to do we need

to split the motion if we're going to have somebody abstain, but one vote yes on others I guess where are we in that

or would they just abstain from all

they could vote on the ones that they were here for these are the minutes right so we could split them up by date of the minutes

Okay. So, let's go ahead and do that. Can we get a new motion for the first meeting?

Move to approve the Planning Commission meeting minutes of 10/14/2024.

Okay, do we have a second? I'll second. Can we get a roll call vote?

Commissioner Maynard?

Yes.

Commissioner Peneman? I'll abstain. Commissioner Sirodkin?

Yes.

Vice Chair Miller?

Yes.

And Chair Fullerton?

Yes. Okay. Can we get a motion for the second meeting?

I'll make a motion for the second meeting. This is a motion for the approval of the Planning Commission meeting minutes of 03/10/2025.

Do we have a second?

Second. Can

we get a roll call vote?

Commissioner Maynard? Yes. Commissioner Pendeman? Yes. Commissioner Siroczakin? Yes. Vice Chair Miller? Yes. Chair Fullerton?

Yes. Okay. And then, can we get a motion for the last meeting from April 14?

Move to approve the Planning Commission meeting minutes of 04/14/2025.

Do we have a second?

I'll second.

Okay. Roll call vote.

Commissioner Maynard?

Yes.

Commissioner Penman? Yes. Commissioner Srutkin?

Yes.

Vice Chair Miller? Yes. Chair Fullerton?

Yes. Next, can we get the next item read into the record?

Yes, that is item B1. Proposed Development Plan Amendment, Conditional Use Permit Amendment, and Addendum to Final Mitigated Negative Declaration for the Galita Energy Storage Site located at 6864 Cortona Drive, case numbers 20Four-eightDP, and 20Four-threeCUP, APN 70Three-oneForty-thirty1.

Okay, thank you. Before we start, can we see if anyone has any ex parte communications? Can we go person by person?

I don't. Okay.

I do have ex parte communications. I met with the applicant at the site to do a tour of the site. I did not learn anything that was not in the public record.

Vice Chair Miller?

I also had a tour of the, property on August 14, and I did not learn anything that's, not in the public record. Thank you.

Commissioner Pendeman?

I also did an on-site, visit. I did learn a little bit about, the difference between, this site and the site at Moss Landing. I believe it's going to be in the presentation, although it's kind of in the addendum, so if we can cover that, then it will be in the public record.

I do not have any ex parte communication. Okay, so do we have a staff presentation?

Yes. Good evening, everyone.

Oh, wait. Just a minute. Marisol, thanks. Hi. Yes, we do have a staff presentation. And I will say that city planning staff has been helped on this project by ESA staff. And so they are going to be doing the presentation. And then all of us are available for comments or questions. And we also have the applicant team with us. So Marisol Guzman will be doing most of the presentation.

We also have with us Selena Whitney, who's been our project manager, and then also Savannah Bautista, who headed up the addendum work. So that is the team you have before you tonight. And then, we'd be happy to answer any questions later. I'm wondering if, before you have your questions, if you want to have the applicant's presentation, because, you know, maybe some of the technical questions you may have, you know, staff isn't going to be able to answer. But they'll leave that up to you all, how you want to handle once we get through the staff presentation. So with that, we will turn it over to Ms. Guzman for the presentation.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, miss Prapasse. Good evening, everyone. I am Marisol Guzman, the contract planner with Environmental Science Associates, and I will be presenting tonight on the Goleta Energy Storage Augmentation Unit. Good evening, chair Fullerton and commissioners. Tonight, I will be reviewing the proposed installation of augmentation units at the previously approved Goleta Energy Storage facility.

The project site for the augmentation units is located on the approved Goleta Energy Storage project site at 6864 Cortona Drive. The project parcel is 5.88 gross acres and is East of Stork Road and South Of US Highway 101. Immediately adjacent to the north of the project site is the Cortona Pointe apartment complex. Located east of the project site is M Special Brewing Company and the SKATE-one skateboarding equipment manufacturer at 6860 Cortona Drive and a research and development building at 6868 Cortona Drive. The Hilton Garden Inn is located south of the project parcel.

Next slide, please. The Goleta Energy Storage Facility project was previously approved by the City of Goleta Planning Commission on 10/25/2021. This included the approval of a tentative parcel map to create the project parcel, a new development plan and conditional use permit authorizing the project, and an amendment to the existing development plan for project related changes to 6868 Cortona Drive, the adjacent parcel providing access to the site. The Planning Commission also certified the accompanying initial study mitigated negative declaration at the time of project approval. Next slide, please.

The amended project includes the installation of up to 132 PowerPack III augmentation units. The power pack three augmentation units would be installed on existing concrete pads immediately adjacent to the existing mega packs. The augmentation units would measure approximately 3.5 feet wide by 5.9 feet deep by 8.25 feet tall and would match the existing mega pack color. One power pack includes three independent battery modules, and the installation of the 830 power pack units would occur in installments of up to 40 units placed at a time. Each installment would take place over a maximum of thirty days.

Thus, the construction period for the amended project would occur in three to four phases, lasting up to thirty days each. The installation of the augmentation units was previously contemplated for the approved project, but the units were not included nor analyzed in the approved project CEQUA review. The concrete pads required to support the augmentation units were part of the approved project and have been installed. Therefore, this current request involves city review and approval for placement of the augmentation units on the existing concrete pads located at the approved project site. The installation of power pack units under the amended project would include the anchoring of augmentation units on existing foundations, the anchoring of power supply cabinets on existing foundations, and connecting low voltage electrical cables between power supply cabinets, augmentation units, and existing equipment.

Next slide, please. The proposed augmentation units do not require additional approval by the design review board. The DRB previously conducted review of the approved project and determined that the design was compatible with the site. The DRB granted final approval in December 2021. The potential for future augmentation was acknowledged in the originally approved plans, and the proposed augmentation units are fully consistent with the original DRB approved design.

The DRB chair reviewed the amendment project plans. This slide shows the layout of the augmentation units immediately adjacent to the existing mega packs. The proposed project does not include changes to the approved site layout, circulation pattern, utility connections, or emergency access. The augmentation units would be installed in phases on existing concrete pads within the previously approved footprint. No changes to the approved lot configuration and parking arrangement are proposed.

Each power pack comes with preinstalled components housed in a steel cabinet enclosure designed and manufactured by Tesla. Each PowerPack cabinet would hold 24 modules of batteries with each module holding approximately three thirty six battery cells. The PowerPack units hold three modules of batteries each with up to three augmentation units per mega pack for an additional nine modules total. Each new augmentation unit would have a nearly identical design as the approved mega pack leveraging the same four components. Access to the site would continue to be via Cortona Drive.

The delivery route for the proposed augmentation units would use Los Carneros Road to avoid traffic impacts to the Stork Road Hollister Avenue intersection. Next slide, please. As specified in the CECO guidelines sections fifteen thousand one sixty two and fifteen thousand one hundred sixty four, an addendum is appropriate when proposed project modifications do not result in new significant environmental effects or a substantial increase in the severity of previously identified impacts. An addendum to the final ISMND was prepared by Environmental Science Associates on behalf of the city of Goleta in July 2025 that evaluated the changes to the Goleta energy storage facility and provided documentation to support that the proposed changes would not result in effects that meet the criteria described in CEQA guidelines sections one five one six two and fifteen thousand one hundred sixty four. The addendum finds that the amended projects would not result in any new impacts already addressed in the previously prepared ISMND.

The addendum provides the necessary documentation demonstrating that the proposed changes do not meet the criteria for the preparation of a subsequent M and D or environmental impact report. Pursuant to CEQA guidelines sections 15,164, subdivision C, public review of the addendum is not required but can be included in or attached to the adopted M and D. Next slide, please. The land use element of the general plan designates a project site as business park. The project is found to be consistent with the general plan land use table two dash three, which lists utilities as an acceptable use on properties with a business park land use designation.

The amended project would continue to be consistent with land use policy 1.5 with regards to compatibility with adjacent uses in terms of noise, hazards, landscaping, and lighting. The amended project would also continue to be consistent with the safety element with respect to policy s e 10.3, hazards and risk assessment. The potential for the approved project to result in impacts to public health and safety were previously analyzed in the 2021 hazards analysis and risk assessment. As analyzed in the addendum to the ISMND, an updated analysis was prepared to assess the amended project's potential impacts related to its use of newer lithium ion battery technology. The addendum to the ISMND concluded that the risk of health and safety impacts resulting from a fire at the energy storage facility with the addition of the augmentation units are very low risk.

The amended project is consistent with the conservation element and the city's strategic energy plan, which encourages the use of renewable energy sources and the reduction of reliance on fossil fuels as important goals for the city. Next slide, please. The amended project conforms to the development regulations for the Business Park Zoning District as detailed in the zoning consistency analysis in exhibit d. No zoning violations exist on the energy storage facility site. The amended project would occur on the existing energy storage facility site and would conform to the applicable title 17 regulations.

Therefore, the amended project would be allowed in that same zone with the approval of an amended conditional use permit. The amended project meets all applicable development standards as the units would be installed on existing concrete pads located outside of the required setback areas and have a relatively low height of less than nine feet high. Next slide please. This slide lists the common procedure findings required for the amended project. Findings for the previous approval can be remade with the amended project changes.

The project site has adequate infrastructure and public services to serve the proposed development. The amended project would not have an effect on the adequacy of these services as these services are already being provided, and there is no proposed increase in the intensity of development on this site. The existing energy storage facility meets all applicable zoning code requirements. The amended project conforms to the development regulations for the Business Park Zoning District as detailed in Exhibit D, the zoning consistency analysis. And the amended project would occur on the existing energy storage facility site and would conform to the applicable title 17 regulations.

The approved project is located on Lot 1 Of Parcel Map 32061, which was recorded and legally created on 11/09/2022. The amended project would continue to be located within the Energy Storage site. An ISMND was prepared for the Goleta Energy Storage Project and was certified by the Yolita Planning Commission in 2021. An ISMND addendum was prepared for the amended project and found that the amendments would not result in any new impacts not already addressed in the previously approved ISMND. Next slide please.

This slide shows the required findings for the development plan amendment. The first finding shows that the findings required for the original approval can still be made, including CEQA findings. The approved project was found to be in compliance with the general plan as seen in attachment one, exhibit c, and the zoning ordinance development standards as seen in attachment one, exhibit d. The amended project is consistent with the land use designation and the zoning designation of business park. The property was previously found to be suitable in size, shape, and location for the GES facility as the site is generally level and previously disturbed.

As previously mentioned, the amended project does not include changes to the approved site layout, circulation pattern, utility connections, or emergency access. The second finding shows that environmental impacts related to the proposed change are substantially the same or less than those identified for the previous approval. The addendum concludes that the amended project would not result in significant new environmental effects or an increase in the severity of previously identified impacts. As such, an addendum to the previously adopted MND is appropriate as the proposed changes would not result in effects that meet the criteria described in CEQA guideline sections fifteen thousand one sixty two and fifteen thousand one sixty four. Therefore, the original CECO findings and determinations remain valid, and the required findings of approval can still be made for the amended project.

As detailed in the addendum to the ISMND, the amendments associated with the project would not result in any new impacts already addressed in the approved ISMND. The impacts are expected to be the same or less than those identified previously. Therefore, this finding can be made. Next slide, please. In conclusion, the Goleta energy storage augmentation is consistent with the business park land use designation as well as its business park zoning designation.

The environmental impacts are expected to be the same or less than those identified previously. And the Goleta energy storage augmentation meets the findings required for a development plan and conditional use permit amendment. Next slide, please. Staff recommends that the Planning Commission adopts the addendum to the energy storage project final MND and approves the amended conditional use permit and the amended development plan to add battery storage augmentation units at the Golida Energy Storage site. Next slide, please.

This concludes my presentation. We are available for any questions as well as other ESA and city staff that are part of this meeting that are available to answer any of your questions, specifically Savannah Bautista who facilitate facilitated the preparation of the addendum to the ISMND, and Selena Whitney, who senior reviewed the staff report and the addendum, as well as city staff such as Lisa Prossi, the city of Bolita planning manager. Thank you.

K. Thank you. Do we have any questions for staff? Commissioner Penneyman.

I was just wondering if so I understand that there will be up to 40 units, three to four phases, each lasting thirty days. Is there any projected date or estimated timeline for like when the first phase is going to start? That would be question one and it might be better to the applicant. And then are there any notification requirements in our conditional use permit stating that notification of nearby residents and businesses for when those phases start? Sure.

Chair and commissioners, the applicant will be the best one to answer, but they do want to start the first phase relatively quickly. And I think that would be within the next, like, six months maybe or less. And in terms of notification, no. Mean, notification of this meeting, yes, but not like ongoing construction, any construction. We don't require notification. It's not a standard to require that.

Thank you.

Okay. Commissioner Maynard?

This is two questions for Ms. Guzman. So I understand that with the additional units that are going in, the noise limits will still be below what was projected in the original project or the allowable noise limit. Is that correct? And can you just speak to if you would anticipate additional noise from this project?

Commissioner Maynard through chair Fullerton. That is correct. The expected noise levels are, equal to what was analyzed in the approved ISMND and the approved plan. And it is also part of the, conditions of approval that if any noise complaints are received, there should be, corrections done moving forward.

Thank you. And my second question also for miss Guzman. The project was originally envisioned to have these additional units. So the fire management protocols that are there, the basin that collects all the water if there was a fire situation were designed to this scale of project. Is that correct?

Commissioner Maynard, that is correct.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Commissioner Siroczyn? Is your mic on?

I apologize. It It's been a while. My first question, I apologize for my ignorance of this, but there was a big fire up north. Was that the same kind of installation as we're talking about now?

Chair Fulichen and Commissioner Saracan. No, it is different, and I believe the applicant will talk about that.

Oh, okay.

And, yeah, it is different.

And as an extension of that question, is there an emergency plan, if in fact something should happen? You know, is it already has it been, you know, put in place and that sort of thing? The other question that I had is, looking at the layout, is there and the fact that we're supposed to be getting so much more development, you know, possible in the next few years, what happens? Is this going to continue to be sufficient area for future growth? Will there need to be additional sites or additional augmentation? You know, how do you see this in the future, for the future?

Chair Fullerton?

No, I was saying, I think I believe that the applicant has their presentation. So maybe it would be better to have them go ahead and do their presentation. But

I could answer that question. I mean, the this facility is designed for 60 megawatts of battery storage capacity. And these augmentation units are designed to support that and maintain it at 60 megawatts. If in the future other battery storage facilities were needed in our area, they would have to find their own sites. And in fact, we have another one of those proposals on a site in Western Galita that we are undertaking sequel review right now, and will likely come before the planning commission in the next few months.

I don't have a date. And so, there could be others proposed. So, but it would be unrelated to this proposal.

Okay. Do we have any other questions for staff before we go to the applicants? No? Okay.

Okay. I can introduce myself in the meantime. Good evening, Chair Fullerton, Commissioners. I'm Laurel Fisher Perez with CEPS Land Use Consulting, representing the energy the Goleta Energy Storage Facility's request to amend the city approved development plan and conditional use permit for the Goleta Energy Storage Facility in order to install these augmentation units in phases over time, and they will be located on previously approved and constructed pads. Before we get into it, I'd like to thank staff and ESA for a very thorough presentation.

We really appreciate the time and thought that went into that. While Lisa's pulling up the first slide, the augmentation units are required to maintain the permitted energy capacity of the existing facility. So we're not increasing the overall capacity of the facility in terms of how much power it stores, But these augmentation units are designed to maintain that previously permitted capacity. They were always contemplated with the project, as you heard from staff. And the concrete pads were permitted and installed with the original project in order to support the augmentation units.

But the units themselves were not analyzed in the prior environmental review, since the technical data that was needed to study those units was still emerging at that time. So now that we have that, we're able to add that analysis in the the addendum to the previously certified MND. The facility has now been in operation for over a year and a half with no issue, no complaints that have been filed with the city. And in fact, the facility is operating at sound levels that are lower than those levels that were adopted in the prior mitigated negative declaration approved for the project. The project team has provided all technical studies needed to update the project CEQA analysis to include the augmentation units and amend the permits that are before you, the CUP and the development plan.

The city has peer reviewed the technical studies that were submitted, and they've confirmed that there are no new or increased impacts resulting from the installation of the augmentation units. That's more or less what that slide is telling you. This is not an issue of a land use for this site. This is a site that's been permitted at this particular location. The facility is already in operation. This is rather about adding battery augmentation to maintain the permitted capacity for the facility. And so with that, I'd like to introduce Toby Butterfield with GridStor.

Good evening, chair, fuletown, commissioners. We, we really appreciate your time this evening. And I'd also like to thank, staff and ESA for a very thorough presentation. I'll I'll be able to skip some parts of my presentation, in fact, I think, and focus a bit more on safety and some of the questions that I heard earlier. I think we've actually covered fairly well the content of this slide already. I think I'll just say that we're very proud of the Galita Energy Storage Project here in Galita. It's a model site for us. We're very happy to have been a good neighbor in the area over the last year and a half. And in fact, as I've mentioned to some of you previously, we actually do use this as a model site. I'm the vice president of development for Grid Storage, which means I mostly work on new projects that have not yet been built.

And we are actually in the habit of flying landowners from other projects down into Santa Barbara and to Galita to look at the site as a demonstration of how nice these projects can be. So who is GridStor? We are a developer, owner, and operator of utility scale battery storage systems. We're headquartered up in Portland, Oregon, and we also have offices in LA and in Denver, Colorado. Our leadership team comes from a background of developing both storage projects, but also wind and solar projects.

Collectively, we've built and operated over a 100,000 megawatts of generation and storage assets across The United States. These projects provide clean, dependable power supply and help support grid resiliency and renewables integration in the areas they operate in. In addition to our operating facilities both here in Galita and in Texas, we have a portfolio of more than 3,000 megawatts that are currently under development in the Western US alone, as well as further resources in the Midwest. We can go to the next slide. So, you know, many several of you were on you were seated at the time of the original project permit.

But as a reminder, you know, what are these storage projects for? So these storage projects have two primary functions electrical grid. The first, and maybe the most important, is they enable an integration of a greater amount of renewable energy resources. California is blessed with a lot of installed wind and solar resources, but the wind is not always blowing and the sun is not always shining at the exact moment when you might want to consume that energy. So without some kind of storage on the grid, those projects are subject to curtailment, which means their excess energy is simply wasted.

By having storage on the grid, for example, during the middle of the day, these storage resources can charge from excess solar energy that would otherwise be wasted, hold onto it until the evening as the sun begins to go down, and then discharge it back into the grid. The effect of that is that if it weren't for these storage resources, you would need to fire up a gas generator typically in order to meet that evening ramp as the sun is setting. So these storage resources, although they don't directly produce energy, they have the effect of displacing gas fired generation from the electrical grid. These are very important for the state of California to hit its clean energy goals. In fact, the California Energy Commission estimates that approximately 50 gigawatts of energy storage is going to be needed in order to meet the state's clean by 2045 goals.

The other really important use that these batteries serve on the electrical grid is related to reliability and power quality. So because these projects can fit into unique, fairly small niches, sometimes in urban industrial areas like the Galita Energy Facility we're talking about tonight, you could not fit a large scale energy generator into that same area. You can't fit a large solar plant there. You can't put wind turbines there. But the load in the area does fluctuate over time, as do the electric imports into Galita as the as the operations of the broader grid kind of try to follow the load moment to moment.

So by having something right here in Galita that can react to changes on the local grid, so if load is falling, the battery project can charge to kind of help follow that load down. And if load is rising, the battery project can discharge to help meet that load. It helps ensure a greater level of grid reliability in the area. We've also heard from the Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce that there are concerns about power quality in Galita. The Galita Energy Storage Facility can't solve those problems on its own, but it does provide ancillary services.

They're called ancillary services, which are essentially contributions to local electric quality in addition to just reliability. Grid reliability I don't think I need to tell everyone in the room this. I know it's a hot topic lately, but grid reliability is a really important thing for Santa Barbara. The electric grid in this area is pretty weakly connected to the system more broadly. There's just a couple of high voltage lines that bring basically all the power into the Galita load pocket here, and they run right through the mountains.

And they're both on the same set of structures, so they're rather vulnerable. Think we can go to the next slide. So the Galita Energy Storage Project is an outdoor facility. It uses Tesla batteries that are built right here in California. That 60 megawatts that Lisa mentioned is enough capacity to supply power to 30,000 households through the peak hours of the day.

And it also provides those grid reliability services I mentioned earlier. And in fact, we've actually also seen the project used for emergency dispatch during the mountain fire last November when those lines I just mentioned were at risk. The California independent system operator, which is the grid operator here, took control of the facility and ramped it all the up to full charge and then held the batteries at full charge that they were there on reserve in the event that those lines did need to be disconnected. So it's been used already even in a year and a half for a kind of emergency grid reliability purpose. So it's it's extremely valuable to the local grid here.

Okay. Next slide. Okay. Commissioner Siroczakin, I heard your question about that fire up to the north. That's a facility called Moss Landing, and I'm gonna walk you through all the ways in which this facility is different from that project. The Moss Landing facility was an indoor project that was built. They wanted to use an old turbine hall. It was one of the first large scale energy storage facilities built in California. They wanted to make use of this old building. They also used a different chemistry, different underlying battery chemistry called nickel metal cobalt.

And in general, that project predates all of the modern building codes that we have these days that are used to define the design and operational envelope of these facilities. So principally, those are the National Fire Protection Agency, NFPA eight fifty five, and UL, the Underwriters Laboratories, 90 fiveforty. NFPA eight fifty five sets all the general technical standards for these facilities. UL 90 fiveforty relates to how all the components of the facilities have to be tested for fire safety when they're being designed and before they're installed. So unlike the Moss Landing facility, a modern facility is going to be placed outdoors, first of all.

So I think many of you have seen the site now. You've seen these enclosures. They're outside. They're not in an enclosed space. So that's the first thing that's really helpful.

A building will tend to trap heat and any gases that come out. They also all modern facilities are going to use lithium iron phosphate chemistry, which is an intrinsically more stable, much more stable chemistry than the nickel metal cobalt that was used previously. It's much harder for it to be pushed into those thermal runaway conditions where it ignites It has a much higher ignition temperature at which that occurs. But arguably, the most important thing is that every element of a modern facility is going to be designed to prevent, if there is a fire event, prevent it from propagating throughout the facility. So the smallest functional unit of these facilities is the battery cells that ESA mentioned during their staff report.

Each module contains three sixty six of these cells. UL ninety five forty requires that these cells be actively, when they're designed and then when they built the prototypes, that these cells be actively pushed into a thermal runaway condition and that it is not possible under the testing conditions, which are real world conditions, for the fire to propagate from one cell to another. Then they take all those cells and they build the modules, which are three sixty six individual cells. And they put the modules into their real world conditions, and they push one module into thermal overload. And then they observe and make sure that that module can't propagate to another one.

Then they put the modules altogether into the cabinets. These mega pack units have multiple cabinets in them. They push a whole cabinet into thermal runaway and make sure it can't propagate to the ones next to it. And then finally, they push an entire enclosure, a full mega pack, into thermal overload and make sure that the fire from that cannot propagate to any others. And that's really a worst case scenario because if the fire would always begin, if something were to happen at a cell level, and if it can't propagate cell to cell, can't propagate module to module, it's almost inconceivable that you would have an entire mega pack catch fire.

But even in that event, it's not possible for it to propagate from one enclosure to another. And that's the reason on the site that the enclosures are separated from each other by the distance they are. That's a tested variable. They've actually gone through this large scale fire testing, and and that's how we arrive at the distance between those enclosures. So it's not something that was chosen randomly.

Really, every element of the site is designed from the ground up with fire safety in mind. So it's different in many, many different dimensions from Moss Landing. We actively coordinate with Santa Barbara County Fire Department. We've done a training for them when the was first brought online, and there's another refresher training that's being planned for later this fall. We do have an emergency response plan in place that they have on file and are familiar with and have been trained on.

And the facility has twenty four seven monitoring by actually multiple different groups that are involved in its operations. The the battery management system itself monitors the battery's voltage, temperature, current, and a variety of other technical characteristics. And if anything is observed that's outside of the normal operating parameters, those units are immediately disconnected and power is no longer allowed to flow into or out of them, and then a crew would be dispatched right away. In addition to that, the site is equipped with infrared cameras, which is a bit above and beyond industry standards. So those cameras are essentially a redundant way of keeping an eye on the thermal condition of the site.

Even though there are already thermal sensors in the mega packs themselves, this is an extra layer of security to keep an eye on that. I think there'll be time at the end for questions, so I'll just keep going here. I imagine there are some questions on that. We can come back to it. Very briefly, why does the site need augmentation at all? So like any battery, the system's total capacity over time will decrease. Just sure you've all experienced that with the batteries in your cell phones. The way the industry manages this on all facilities is to periodically bring in and add some more batteries. We don't remove the old ones. The old ones still have a twenty year useful life, but we will add some new ones that allows us to maintain the system's overall capacity over time.

This augmentation is done with significantly reduced sized enclosures. I I know the staff report mentions that number, a 132 of these power packs, but the power packs are very small compared to the mega packs. We're gonna see that with some visuals later in the presentation. We've talked about how this was part of the original sort of contemplated during the original permit already. But the the really key thing here is that this augmentation is necessary to keep the project functioning as designed and keep it able to properly support the electrical grid. We think of this as a part of its normal operations. This is something that every one of these sites needs. It's a routine event. Okay. Next slide.

This is quite similar to what you saw in the staff presentation. This is just the location of those proposed augmentation units. I'll note that compared to the white structures, those are the mega packs that are in place today. All of these augmentation units together are much smaller. We're going to get into exactly how much smaller in a subsequent slide. But it's much narrower extent than the original project despite that 132 number seeming like a lot more. Okay. Next slide. So this is a depiction of one of these PowerPack three units. This is three of them.

So each one of them is a PowerPack three unit. These are basically a single cabinet of the MegaPack. So for any of you who have been to the site or are at the ribbon cutting, the MegaPacks have eight cabinets of battery modules. Each one of these PowerPack threes is one cabinet's worth. So these are much smaller than the existing mega packs. The site is designed to accept a 132 of these PowerPack threes. So in total, that represents 37 and a half percent of the site's existing energy capacity, and these would be installed over a period of fifteen years. So very gradually and slowly over time added to the site. Again, all in service of simply maintaining its existing energy capacity, not trying to increase the capacity. Okay.

We can move on. Alright. So this is just a picture of what the augmentation units would look like to give you a kind of visual sense of it next to the existing mega packs. So the the kind of large white structure, tan structure on the left, that's an example of a mega pack. That's what's out on-site today already.

Those three structures to the right, those would be power packs. So this is a mega pack at the end of the augmentation process when it's had all three units installed. One of them is sort of open so you can see it, but under normal circumstances, they'd all be closed. But that's ultimately what we're looking for the amendment to enable today is just to add those handful of units next to each of the existing mega packs. And again, the concrete pads are already in place, so there's no earth work, no no new earth work, no civil work that's needed for this for this.

Okay. And then I'm going to turn it back over to Laurel here for a second just to walk through some of the details of the permitting. And I'm happy to I'm not sure what the right flow you want here is. I'm happy to come back up at the end to answer questions.

Yeah. How much time are we at? I believe we were trying to Okay. Because we're about fifteen minutes now. How much longer do you think you need?

I'll keep it quick.

Maybe five at the most. Thank you, Chair and Commissioners. Just quickly, I'll hit on two of the main issues that were analyzed as part of the addendum, that being noise and risk assessment. So the team took a hard look at both of these issues for the addition of the augmentation units. And the analysis on noise determined that the proposed augmentation units would not alter the approved project's findings with respect to noise.

We actually had the advantage this time around of going out there and taking real life measurements of the facility in operations. So rather than somewhat estimating based on science what the noise levels would be of the permitted project, we had the benefit of sampling it in operation. And as it turns out, the existing facility is significantly lower in terms of noise generation than what we expected with the permit approval. And the augmentation units will not significantly alter the existing noise levels. And they're well within the city's acceptable thresholds for noise.

So we can go to the next slide, please, Lisa. And then risk assessment we have MRS Environmental here with us tonight, the project environmental consultants that looked at hazardous risk assessment. If you have any questions for them, they'd be happy to address it. And the analysis there, similarly with noise, determined that the project would not alter the findings of the approved project, and therefore, the same conditions of approval are recommended for the augmentation augmentation units. As mentioned earlier, the County Fire Department has been heavily involved in the review of this project, including the proposal that's before you this evening.

The report findings, again, identify that the risk impacts for the facility will remain less than significant. And I wanted to mention that Grid Store has maintained a very close cooperative relationship with County Fire Department. They'll be out again in the fall to do another, training session, which is updated on a regular basis. And in fact, there is an emergency response plan in place, as you heard earlier, with 20 fourseven monitoring. Next slide, please.

Peer review, as I mentioned, has been conducted by environmental ESA consultants, as represented in their staff presentation. They also reviewed all of the information that has been provided and confirmed that the project would not result in any new or greater impact than the facility that's been approved and is in operation. So with that, we will jump straight to the recommended action. And we ask that your commission accept staff's recommendation for approval of the requested amendment to the development plan and conditional use permit, allowing the energy storage project to continue to meet the energy goals and power requirements of the approved project for the long term, which is aligned with the city's energy policies, safety policies, and other conservation policies. Before I close, we do have one request, and that is to refine the project description as it relates to the construction period for installing the augmentation units.

This is defined in project condition number 1C, clarifying basically what is stated in that condition is that the construction period would last a maximum of thirty days. What we would like to say is approximately thirty days. And while thirty days may be sufficient, there can be some fine tuning that's required with installation and powering up the augmentation units. It's non noise generating, it's not intrusive, and it's not impactful. But we'd like just to insert the word approximately thirty days just to allow for a little bit of flexibility there. And with that, our team is available to address any of your questions. Thank you very much.

Okay. Thank you. Can we get do we have some questions for either staff or the applicant? Commissioner Maynard? I have the last speaker

who could actually come back up for just a second. So two quick questions. If, What would you consider to be the maximum number of days? So if you wanted to make it from thirty days to, what would a true maximum be?

Through the chair, Commissioner Maynard, I'm looking to my team here for some guidance.

Sixty?

Yeah.

So that was something that we had talked about earlier, the active construction. You know, the construction that has the tendency to perhaps cause nuisance. And again, this is truly installation of units on existing concrete pads. So we're not talking about grading or dust. But that active period would be thirty days with the maximum of up to sixty days for, like I said, the powering of units themselves.

And this is just a clarifying. I think you hit this in your presentation, but my understanding of this project is this is not an expansion of the project. Not to increase the amount of energy that can be stored. This is a maintenance of the project to replace the battery power that's going down over time.

Is that correct? Through the Chair Commissioner Maynard, that is correct.

Thank you. You're welcome.

Commissioner Penneyman.

Just a question about that active construction noise. Is that expected to exceed the decibel levels of the operating site today?

Through the chair, Commissioner Penneyman. I don't believe that there's much in the way of noise generation. It will require bringing in a crane for a very short period of time to locate the units, the augmentation units on the pads. There's no drilling. There's no grading. There's no anything that I can think of that would generate significant noise. Of course, it would be a very short term period that we're talking about, the active construction period being limited to thirty days. But crane activity would be the major extent of the work that would be required in order to locate the units on the pad.

So they're not fastened to the pad in any way?

They're fastened to the pad.

No drilling

Just fasteners. Through the chair, Commissioner Penningman, maybe

Yeah. I imagine there'd be drilling.

Drilling.

So

I guess drills for the fastening. I stand corrected on that.

No worries. No worries. I have some more questions, but if you all want go? All right, the other question I have was, this amendment, you know, you mentioned that the distance between the mega packs was intentional and this amendment is actually infilling between the mega packs. Could you explain why people should not be concerned about that?

I'm going to step up. Hi, Commissioner Pettiman. I'm going to step up for that Yeah, so similar to the large scale fire testing I mentioned initially that was used to set those distances, the same testing has been done with the power packs in place. And so even once installed, will still meet all those same testing standards, the UL nine thousand five and forty that I mentioned earlier. So that's likewise been subject to real world testing and ensuring that a hypothetical fire couldn't propagate from cabinet to cabinet, including the additional power packs.

So they can butt up against each other, but they have to be spaced on the sides a certain distance?

Yeah. You may recall, or those of you who have seen the site or seen the plans, there's a ventilation structure at the top of those containers. There's significantly more distance between the units when their ventilation structures face each other and then much less when they're sort of back to back because heat would not be vented in that direction and they have a significant firewall in those backsides.

That makes sense. Thank you. And then last thing is and this really isn't about the amendment, but just kind of my curiosity because I wasn't involved in the original approval. But what do you do you all do to maintain cybersecurity on the site?

Wow. I also wasn't involved in the original approval of this project or its day to day operations. Nico, do you wanna I'm gonna call up my colleague Nico who works in asset management to speak to that. Thank you.

Commissioner Benjamin. So I'm asset manager for Grid Store. I manage most of the day to day operations once a project actually becomes generating electricity. We have significant, connection with our o and m operator, Renewable, who has direct control of the site as well as CAISO. So there are significant standards for us to comply with in order to make sure that there's not possibility of cyber attacks. Anybody could can take control of the site. There is one direct tunnel from the CAISO operator to the renewable rock remote operation control center. That is a very secure tunnel with plenty of firewalls and rule sets so that nobody else could gain access to that cyber system.

Are there any standards you guys are like compliance standards that you follow?

I couldn't name them off the top of my head, but I would be happy to follow-up with you on those particular standards.

Thank you.

Do we

have any more questions? Hey, I have some questions.

Please.

So my first question is about the battery degradation. I know that all batteries degrade. I do have an electric car, and I know that the car doesn't go as far as it does when I first got it. So this we've only you know, you've only been operational for about a year and a half, and you already need to put these augmentation units in. What happens and then in the presentation, there was a slide that mentioned adding more and more over the years. So is this something that you're intending to come back and add more and more to this same site?

No. I'll take your questions in reverse order, if I may, Chair Fullerton. We won't add any more than are being contemplated here tonight. So the additional 132 power packs is, frankly, all the site can accommodate physically. And the pads for those are already in place, so that's kind of what we're set up to do. So we won't need to add any more than those. The augmentation, there's different strategies that we can take in terms of how often we do these augmentations. It happens that at this site, need to do this initial augmentation a little earlier, and we're going to do more units than we might otherwise normally do just to get ahead of it. But it's all completely within the kind of normal operating parameters of these things to have to do some of this a little bit early.

But you had mentioned you have to a certain standard that you have to maintain or a certain level. So what happens in five years when the batteries degrade more?

Yeah. It's mostly a con there's sort of two elements to this. The primary concern for us is a contractual one. We have a contractual obligation to Southern California Edison to provide a certain amount of what's called resource adequacy, which is a technical term used by the grid operator. If we are not able to maintain the duration of the batteries at the four hour sort of notional limit, then we run into problems with that contract.

And so that's really what we're that's that's one of the primary reasons that we would do this augmentation. But more generally, grid interconnection is a fairly scarce resource. So once you have an interconnection open to the grid, you really wanna maximize your use of that. And so you don't want to have a a project that doesn't have a sort of full nameplate capacity available to it using that grid interconnection. It's just kind of wasteful from a standpoint of of grid operations.

Okay. So just to recap what even in that lot, there was a slide that mentioned doing this repeatedly. You're saying this is the last time you would come back and ask for this?

I guess what I'm saying is that the amendment tonight contemplates all of the future actions we would ever need to do for this site in terms of adding more batteries for augmentation. So the amendment tonight would enable the addition of up to a 132 of these power packs. It is true, as Lisa mentioned, we want to get out and do one of these augmentations fairly soon here. But that would not be the full 132 units. We would come back over the course of a fifteen year period and periodically add some of these in three to four separate phases.

Sure.

Just a quick question to help clarify. So my understanding is this site is projected to last for twenty to twenty five years, and this augmentation would help it get to that twenty year point. Is that correct?

Yes. Thank you, Commissioner Maynard. The site is designed to a this particular site is designed to a twenty year useful life. And these augmentation units will get us through that entire period.

And then at the twenty year point, we'd have to consider where to go from there. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's right. The site the sort of base case plan for us is that we would decommission the site at that point. But with all these facilities, there's always the possibility you have all this fixed infrastructure in place, which is pretty valuable. The non battery infrastructure is generally designed to a much longer life, fifty years or more. And so there's always the possibility of doing what's called a repower, where you might bring in more modern batteries at that point. But that would be a different permitting effort considerations commercially and in terms of permitting.

Okay. So when you talk about multiple thirty day periods, that could be over the course of years? Is that what it wasn't all Okay. And there would be, as Commissioner Penneyman asked, no notification of construction, so this could just happen at any point over the years with no public notification?

Chair Fulton, and maybe Lisa can help me with this. I believe we need to come and get separate building permits for each mobilization. And we are what we're looking for in the permit amendment here is the ability to do this in three to four phases. So it wouldn't it's not as if we'd be coming back annually to do this. It would be a much more limited number of mobilizations.

Okay. And then I have just a few more questions, because I know there were some public comment and just questions that I've heard asked. You mentioned there's a lot of testing in place to make sure a fire doesn't spread, like it happened at Moss Landing. But have there been any other mega packs that have caught fire? Any other projects? And have they spread to other enclosures?

The only Tesla mega pack fire that I'm aware of occurred in Australia with one of the Gen one systems. And I think that was actually a pretty good example of the propagation approach working very well because it was not able to spread from one enclosure to another. It was a single enclosure.

And do you know how long it took to get that fire out?

I do not. I do not.

And then one last question. We are near, you know, a high fire danger area. There's new fire maps in there. The fire danger area is closer. What would happen if a wildfire spread to the facility? So it's not a fire starting in the mega pack, but what would happen if a wildfire came to the facility?

Well, the facility, it does have a fire sort of barrier around the exterior of it. Right? Between the fence and the batteries, there's a significant setback, and there's no fuel in that setback area. So I I think such an event would be rather unlikely. But the the containers are designed with multiple firewalls within them to the same firewalls that prevent propagation of fire internally would tend to help insulate the batteries and prevent a fire from spreading into them, if that makes sense.

Have there been tests of that? I mean, not a wildfire, obviously, but have there been tests of external fire?

Right. Okay, Nico, if that's something you're familiar with.

So the particular firewalls that we're talking about in between the units, you can and there have been these tests where they hold a flame to those walls for an hour. Even after that hour point, the flame does not catch that wall on fire. In the event, as part of our emergency operation plan, that if there were a fire that was going to threaten the facility, it would immediately be de energized and shut off from the rest of the grid. She would not have continued energy pouring in or the possibility that that fire would release a sudden amount of energy.

Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Sorokin?

While we have been talking about the danger of fire, the other danger that we have out here is earthquake. How secure? And I know you said that there are bolts that hold them down. But, I mean, I know I've got all kinds of bolts in my house. So, I'm just curious, has that ever, you know, have you projected what might happen to this site if we did, in fact, have a major earthquake in this area?

I don't know if the hazard mitigation analysis contemplated that specifically, but I know the local building codes would tackle that by obligating that the foundations that these are on meet kind of modern earthquake requirements.

But, I mean, if they're shaking, I guess that's what I'm it's like, you know, they're be in a blender. If there's a really severe earthquake, it would be like they'd be shaken.

Yep.

And how I mean, how do they handle that? I mean, how what happens

to

the energy that's being stored when it's shaken like that?

That's a great question. The same UL95 forwarding testing standards I mentioned earlier, they don't just obligate the thermal overload testing, but also physical damage testing. And under physical damage, the batteries have to meet that same threshold of not allowing propagation cell to cell, module to module, cabinet to cabinet, or enclosure to enclosure. So very similar but distinct failure pattern, as you're right to notice.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I've received three speaker slips. And if any attendees wish to speak on Zoom, please use the raise hand feature, and I will call upon you. Speaking first, I have, excuse me, Bill Woodbridge, followed by Craig Lewis, followed by Ben Schwartz.

Hi, commissioners. Thank you very much for your time. My name is Bill Woodbridge. I too went on a tour of the site because I'm very concerned about the power shutoff safety system. I know with the increased heat, there's going to be more and more and more power shutoffs that are going to last for anywhere from, who knows, eight hours to two days. So I wanted to see what the system is all about. Fortunately, Grid Store offered the public some members of public the right to come and tour. First of all, I thought it would be pretty noisy. We stood next to the units. We didn't have to raise our voices.

The noise level was what I would consider equivalent to a soft hairdryer. Secondly, I was concerned about the fire. I learned that there are firewalls placed around each cabinet, as you've heard, and flames can be pointed at it for an hour and nothing happens. I learned that there are video cameras and infrared cameras twenty four seven watching over the site. So if anybody saw any irregular heat formations from the infrared or smoke, they could immediately shut down those cabinets or the entire site.

So I was relieved about that. My major concern is that this is the only storage facility in Galita. So, Toby can correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is this facility would facilitate 30,000 residents for four hours. Well, if we have a shutoff for twenty four hours, we need six times that much storage to keep Galita going. So I plead with you to please encourage the establishment of more of these grid star or grid star like facilities in our town since we are so restricted with the two power lines coming into Galita, I would very much appreciate your encouraging and considering more sites like this to be established in Galita so we are not stranded with a one or two day power safety shutoff, which would just destroy our economy and upset so many people on so many levels.

Thank you very much for your consideration of this. I really hope that we can go forward with more storage sites like this because it's a lifesaving. We're blessed to have this in Galita. It's a lifesaving, economy saving, probably health saving, to have air conditioners remain working when the power is shut off. So please go forth with this approval and move towards establishing more sites like this. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Craig Lewis, followed by Ben Schwartz.

Good evening. Craig Lewis. I the I live in Santa Barbara, and I am the founder and executive director of the Clean Coalition, which is a very technical nonprofit with a mission to accelerate the transition to renewable energy and a modern grid. Succeeding on that mission is going to require a lot of energy storage, so my comments are going to be very similar to Mr. Woodridge's, I think, bill, which I really appreciated.

The California Energy Commission has said that we need five times more energy storage than we have today. So that's where the state is going. And we need to get a lot more of that into the Goleta Load Pocket, which includes the cities of Goleta, Santa Barbara, Carpinteria. It goes all the way up to Point Conception and all the way down to Lake Casitas. That 70 mile stretch is called the Galita Load Pocket.

It's the entire region that is served by a single point of interconnection to the transmission system. And our single point of interconnection is at the Galita substation at the top of GlenAnnie Road. That's the only point of interconnection we have to the transmission system. We get most of our energy off of that. And that is connected to a substation in Ventura, which is 40 miles away on the backside of the mountains, 40 miles through extreme fire, earthquake, and landslide risk. Southern California Edison has said that that connection can go down. It will go down. It goes down. It will go down. And it could be down for months at a time.

So the public safety power shutoff that Bill mentioned, that's nothing compared to losing that connection to the transmission system for days, weeks, or months. I will say that Clean Coalition's were an expert in the area of solar driven microgrids. Our greatest example of that is for Santa Barbara Unified School District in the region. We have solar microgrids that we've designed for many of the campuses, including Dos Pueblos. So, if you go to Dos Pueblos I'm sure you all have been up there covered with solar over the parking lot.

There's also Tesla batteries. That is a full solar microgrid site. So, when the proverbial you know what hits the fan in Galita and you don't know where to go, go to Des Poblos. The critical loads will not turn off there. And most of the loads beyond all of the loads beyond for a significant percentage of the time as well. I'm just going to leave it at that. I'm here. I'm happy to answer any questions as well. And we definitely encourage support for the GRID STORE project. Thank you.

Thank you.

Speaking next, Ben Schwartz.

Good evening, Chair, Vice Chair, and Commissioners. My name is Ben Schwartz. I'm the policy manager for the Clean Coalition. And I think my boss laid it out pretty well, the situation of the glued load pocket from a geographical standpoint and our energy needs. We've done an analysis from the perspective of resilience. The applicants focused on reliability and power quality, which is do we have enough energy in a given situation when the grid is on? Resilience is more focused on what happens when the grid goes down. Do we have a backup plan? And if we do, how long does it take to get the grid back up? In 2016, Southern California Edison filed at the Public Utilities Commission a plan for the region.

And their plan, in addition to a potentially extended outage, is to bring in mobile natural gas generators. Obviously, if there's a better option, we should pursue that. And renewable energy storage represents that exact solution. I'll also add that we've done an analysis and found that generally we will need around 200 megawatts of solar and 400 megawatt hours of energy storage, which are kind of the magic numbers that will allow us to work with the utility and create a large community microgrid for the region that can keep our energy needs going in the event of an emergency. Projects like this are very important, And in particular, keeping them at the desired level throughout their lifetime is essential to combat degradation and ensure that we are still able to hit those magic numbers over time and to meet our electric needs.

So the Clean Coalition strongly supports the staff recommendation, approvals of the addendum. And we definitely believe that projects like these are very important in Goleta. Goleta's done a great job, and we encourage everyone to keep going. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Do we have any other public comments?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm seeing none.

Okay. I have a follow-up question. I'm not sure if this is for staff or the applicant. A few people mentioned the public safety shutoffs. What happens if Edison I know there's different circuits, because when they say they might be shutting it off, there's always different areas that may shut off. If Edison shuts off those circuits, what happens? Can this power be used? Or is the whole circuit down anyway and the lines are down so you wouldn't be able to get any power from it?

Jeff. I'll try to tackle that one. But I will just note that really only Edison can properly answer that I question for think the fact that the grid operator took control of the battery and charged it up in anticipation of precisely the sort of event you're describing indicates that they see at least some utility in certain circumstances to help keep the grid on using the battery for at least a period of time. But it would really depend, I think, on the very specific circumstances, like which circuits where are still running and where the line that's being taken out of service is exactly. So apologies if that's something of a general answer, but it's the best I can do without consulting SoCal Edison.

Okay. No, thank you. I know there's no 100% answer. Just I hadn't thought about that before, so I was wondering what the impacts are and if it was really part of the solution for the power shutoffs. Okay. Do we have any other questions? Commissioner Maynard?

I have a question of staff. So there was a request from the applicant to change the thirty day window to either approximately thirty days or a sixty day max. I like hard numbers. I kind of lean more towards just saying sixty day max rather than putting approximate in there. But I also wanted to get some guidance from staff as like how that recommendation should go and should that be part of the motion? If you could talk us through our options with that.

Sure. Chair Fullerton and Commissioner Maynard and the other commissioners, yes. If you wanted to change the thirty days to sixty days, you could just it would be an easy switch in the condition to make it that way. And you would just need to make the motion to if someone was going to make a motion, it would be to amend condition 1C to change from thirty days to sixty days. So did I answer all of that? Great.

Do we have any other questions? Or should we

I think we already established sixty days would be sufficient for you all.

Yeah, that would be wonderful. Thank you. Appreciate the flexibility.

Okay. So should we close public comment and then go to deliberations? Okay. So we will close public comment and go to deliberations. Does anyone have any comments? Vice Chair Miller?

Thank you for all the experts here tonight. This has just been amazing. It's wonderful, and we are very lucky as GOLITANS to have such a knowledgeable expert, companies, staff, all of you for working on this for us so that we can have electricity, so we can have electricity in Goleta and elsewhere in the country. And thank you to my fellow commissioners for asking some very, very smart questions. You kept me from asking any questions because you were asking all the good questions.

So thank you. Before this came before us this time, because I wasn't here for the first go around either. So this has just been a really, really enlightening experience for us up here on the dais. And I just think that your professionalism and your informative approach of how you explain it is really, really great. It helps us regular folks understand it.

And of course, to take the tour was very, very helpful. And I just want to say also, as others have said, that the noise I was just amazed by the lack of noise, by just that And as soon as you walked out of the gate, when you're standing right next to the units, yes, there is definitely a but it's nothing terrible at all. Nothing loud. You can still talk to each other and understand what each other is saying. And then as soon as you walk out of the gate and around the fence, you really don't hear anything.

It's really remarkable. So that's great. And the fact that you've gone one and a half years without any complaints, again, remarkable. So given all these reasons and situations, I would wholeheartedly agree with and support with doing this augmentation.

Anyone else have a comment?

I think she said what all of us were thinking. That, you know, I learned a lot tonight, and I really appreciate all the hard work that went into this. And it's, you know, turned out to be very different from what I expected. And so, you know, I think it was very helpful to find out exactly what the augmentation process is and what and the purpose. Purpose. And now I wonder why we don't have more of these.

Commissioner Penneyman?

Yeah, like Mr. Woodridge said, you know, my primary concern, not, you know, being ignorant of the whole situation hearing about Moss Landing. And a lot of people in the community have expressed concerns around fire and the danger that could be there. So, I really do appreciate the tour letting us learn about it and knowing the differences between what happened up there and why it's different here. I would definitely encourage you all to keep that public outreach going and help quell those concerns for the community. But I think you've been doing a great job. Thank you.

I agree for the most part. I mean, obviously, fire risk is high in my mind. And I wish it wasn't so close to some of the residential buildings. But it is there, and it's already been approved for that level. So I don't have any issues supporting this. So, do we have a motion? Commissioner Maynard?

I'm happy to make a motion. I would like to make a motion to adopt Planning Commission Resolution Number 25 blank entitled Resolution of the Planning Commission of the City Of Galita, California, making findings pursuant to CEQA guidelines section 15,162, adopting the addendum to the Galita Energy Storage Project final mitigated negative declaration, and approving the amended conditional use permit and the amended development plan to add battery storage augmentation units at the Galita Energy Storage site located at 6864 Cortona Drive, APN 70 Three-one Hundred 40 -thirty 1. Case number is 20Four-eightDP, 20Four-threeCUP with one modification that condition 1C be amended from thirty days maximum to sixty days maximum, allowing for construction for a maximum of sixty days during each of the phases.

Do we have a second?

I will second. Thank you.

Can we get a roll call vote?

Yes, thank you, Commissioners. Please remember to lock in your votes. Beginning with Commissioner Maynard.

Yes.

Thank you. Commissioner Pettiman? Yes. Commissioner Sirocad? Yes. Vice Chair Miller?

Yes.

And Chair Fullerton?

Yes. Okay. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Next up is the Planning Commission comments. Do we have any comments from Planning Commissioners? No? Any Planning Director's comments?

Thank you. Yes, good evening, Chair and Commissioners. Just a couple of scheduling matters. Our next scheduled Planning Commission meeting is on September 8. However, we do not have any items, and we did not need to continue tonight's item, so we can go ahead and cancel that meeting on September 8.

The next meeting following that is September 22, and we will advise the commission and the public on whether we need to hold that item, that meeting. At this point in time, we don't have items for that either, so stay tuned. And then you will be getting contacted by Planning and Environmental Review Department staff regarding local coastal program workshops in November. So we presently have a Planning Commission meeting scheduled for November 10, which is the day before Veterans Day, a holiday on the eleventh. We will likely cancel that meeting, but are looking for an alternative date around that time to schedule a workshop at which we hope to discuss and present to the Commission our draft local coastal program policies for your consideration.

So, stay tuned for that. And again, staff will be reaching out to you individually to gauge your availability. And that concludes my report. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Next up is adjournment. Can we get a motion

to adjourn? I might, September 22 is Rosh Hashanah. And I don't know whether that will make any difference for anyone, but just to be aware of it.

Thank you for that information. That at this point, again, it looks like we won't have any items, so it's likely we will cancel that meeting regardless.

Motion to adjourn.

Do have a second?

Second.

I think we had a roll call vote.

Yes, thank you. Commissioner Maynard? Yes. Thank you. Commissioner Pendeman? Yes. Commissioner Sratkin?

Yes.

Vice Chair Miller? Yes. Chair Fullerton? Yes. Thank you.

Okay. Meeting adjourned.