Some residents in a recently-built housing development in Western Goleta say they’re concerned about a nearby power plant that they say has been busier than usual.
About 25 residents from The Hideaway, a 101-unit development located at the 7900 block of Hollister Avenue, met with officials from a nearby power plant that sits on the east side of Las Armas Road, just south of the railroad tracks.
The plant, owned by NRG Energy, is known as the Ellwood Unit and serves as a “peaker plant,” meaning it kicks on when there is a peak need on the electrical power grid.
The plant would also be used in an emergency situation to keep electricity going at hospitals and other key locations if the power lines were disrupted for some reason.
Resident Robert Miller moved to the development in March 2014, and his unit is about 200 feet from the plant.
The existing power plant has been at the site for decades and predates the homes, and Miller said that residents were told that the plant would operate an estimated one hour per week.
The plant is limited by permit from the Air Pollution Control District to operate 400 hours a year.
But Miller and other residents say that in the last few months, the plant has been operating many days a week and sometimes for several hours at a time.
Noise has also been an issue.
“If it was only going to operate an hour a week, the concerns wouldn’t be as great,” Miller said. “It sounds like a freight train coming down the tracks.”
The company that owns the plant reached out to Miller and offered to meet with neighbors and about two dozen people attended a meeting last week with a handful of NRG officials, who allowed residents to submit questions ahead of time.
“It was very helpful,” Miller said.
NRG Spokesman David Knox told Noozhawk that the company “really did appreciate the neighbors being there.”
The plant produces about 54 megawatts of power, which means that 43,000 homes can be powered at that time.
Power demand starts building in the morning as people wake up and at about five or six p.m., renewable power generation starts falling off, he said.
“That’s when you see the greatest need for that dispatchable power,” he said, which could be why people are noticing the plant at night.
Anne Wells, planner for the City of Goleta, also stopped by the neighborhood meeting to hear the presentation.
She said the NRG has met with city staff about their plans to refurbishment the plant as well as install a storage battery,” but we’re awaiting an application.”
Knox said no changes are planned for the plant during the refurbishment process, and that it will be “an overhaul of the units to get them in top notch shape.”
The battery project has “great potential,” he said, adding that a battery will be installed on the property to help store solar and wind power.
“Electricity is the one thing we sell as a nation that we can’t store,” he said.
Miller has also organized a group of neighbors called the Westside Goleta Coalition, which is also opposed to plans for a California Highway Patrol facility that would sit to the east of the Hideaway development.
“It just doesn’t fit here,” he said.
With the power plant, neighbors are also concerned about electromagnetic fields, or EMFs, from the power lines, as well as the emissions that come from two turbines at the plant that run on natural gas.
Miller said an environmental impact report on the Hideaway involved some testing and learned that certain amounts of electromagnetic frequency “arguably presented some risk.”
The neighbors talked about doing their own testing, but ran into a challenged because the plant operates at unpredictable hours.
The neighbors also say there’s “an occasional gas smell,” Miller said, which they’ve reported to the Southern California Gas Company.
Staff couldn’t say exactly why the plant was operating more frequently because it is operated by a separate entity that manages the electrical grid. The company will be looking at the EMF issue and if something can be done to diminish the sound coming from the engines, Knox said.
“We’re going to see if we can make them a bit quieter,” he said.
— Noozhawk staff writer Lara Cooper can be reached at lcooper@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
