Locked and loaded, now gathering dust: What killed Narrabri’s battery?

A spark of misinformation at a council meeting derailed a not-for-profit community battery project in Narrabri, New South Wales, exposing how fear can fracture communities and stall progress. 

It should be a banal local council meeting, but it quickly escalates to YouTube videos showing e-scooter and electric drill explosions.   

Making this presentation is Fire and Rescue NSW’s Zone Commander for the region, Superintendent Tom Cooper.   

“I’ve been asked to explain to people in fairly, like, layman’s terms, what are lithium-ion batteries, what their applications are, and the risks associated with thermal runaway [heat build-up] in lithium-ion batteries,” he tells the room.

Over the next eight minutes, a PowerPoint showing the dangers of small electrical appliances will start its own version of thermal runaway.   

“That’s a drill battery. So if you compare that to one of those battery energy storage things that’s as big as a caravan, you can imagine what’s going to happen.”  

It’s March 2025, and Cooper has been asked to speak at the Narrabri Shire Council meeting, where a community battery is just weeks away from being installed.   

It’s one of 400 batteries being funded by the federal government to boost energy storage by soaking up excess solar during the day and feeding it back at night when demand peaks — a critical step in the transition to renewables, where more storage is essential to keep the grid stable. 

Getting one of these batteries for Narrabri was driven by Geni Energy, a community group established in 2020 by Sally Hunter, with the aim of ensuring local benefits from the renewable energy transition.   

The 500kWh battery had been backed by the local council, had half a million dollars in federal funding and was ready to take up its position in a car park, alongside the electric vehicle chargers already in place. The council had plans to add solar covers over the car park to create a renewable energy hub for the country town, in north-west NSW.   

But at that meeting, things changed.   

“That’s when the rot started,” says Judith Pownall, one of the battery’s supporters.   

Alongside Cooper, the head of the local emergency management committee (LEMC) also presents and submits a letter.

“The committee holds a number of concerns around the location of the [battery] installation being sought,” Inspector Robert Dunn tells the council.

“Given the risks associated with lithium-ion batteries that have been the centrepiece of a large number of media stories over the past couple of years due to the volatility.”

The letter requests the council’s intervention to ensure the battery project “proceeds only with adequate safeguards to mitigate risks outlined in the Consequence Management Guide (CMG)” and, based on a fire rescue presentation, recommends the project be relocated.

However, a freedom of information request found no record of the CMG document.

All of the council’s own reports and advice deemed the project low risk and said the submission from the LEMC was “unsolicited”.

Flawed comparisons

The concerns in Narrabri seem to have been driven by comparisons to e-scooter fires and fears that the community battery posed a similar threat, but fire safety engineer Ian Moore says that’s not the case.  

“The [batteries]  in e-scooters and e-bikes you see in the media are not very well controlled,” he explains. By contrast, “the battery units that go into the community system are tested to international standards … the risk is significantly lower than other community fire risks.” 

Moore also points out that electric vehicles are far safer than people think, with the likelihood of an EV fire “about 10 times less than a normal internal combustion engine car”.  

Community batteries go even further; Narrabri’s has heat and smoke detectors, automatic shutdown, in-built suppression systems, and alerts to local fire brigades. They use lithium iron phosphate chemistry, which is more stable than the cells found in e-scooters and EVs. 

That’s not to say fires never occur. In Australia, there have been two Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) fires — one at Victoria’s Big Battery near Geelong and another at Bouldercombe in Queensland. Moore says these both involved batteries many times larger than the proposed Narrabri unit and were managed without injuries or major impacts. 

Despite this, incorrect information spread quickly. Opponents claimed the battery would burn for seven days and shut the town down, that it required a 200-500 metre exclusion zone, and that it offered ‘zero community benefit’. None of these claims were accurate. Yet these ideas took hold, shaping the debate and ultimately derailing the project. 

The Narrabri battery is now sitting in storage, gathering dust, hoping to find a new home.   

How this small-town saga unfolded gives a glimpse into the consequences when misinformation spreads and takes hold.

Welcome to Narrabri  

The town of Narrabri sits on the banks of the Namoi River and the Narrabri Creek, in the shadow of Mount Kaputar, home of the giant pink slug.   

Mining is the biggest industry in this shire; Whitehaven Coal operates three coal mines and has a fourth planned.

Santos is also attempting to develop a new coal seam gas field which, if approved, would cover more than 95,000 hectares, with plans for 850 wells to be drilled.  

But agriculture remains the biggest employer of locals, with the town surrounded by cotton country, alongside livestock and cropping.   

Despite the heavy influence of the fossil fuel industry, Narrabri has one of the highest uptakes of residential rooftop solar in the country at nearly 62 per cent, according to data from the Clean Energy Regulator   

Narrabri sits in coal country, but rooftop solar has taken hold.

ABC News: Jess Davis

Part of this trend has been driven by not-for-profit Geni Energy. Its founder, Sally Hunter, says they’ve helped install 700kw of rooftop solar and 400kWh of home batteries across the region; the community battery was their next big project.   

“The concept for the community battery is that it was to be larger than a residential battery, smaller than a grid-scale battery,” she says.   

“The idea is that it’s a way to share that storage of excess solar. In the middle of the day, we’ve got too much solar. This is a small place to put some of that generation in the middle of the day, providing it back to the grid at night — when it’s most needed.”  

It would help even out energy generation and stabilise the grid, albeit in a small way, and any profits made from the buying and selling of electricity would go back to the community.

“We were working on a profit between $10,000-$20,000 a year, but it’s not really until it’s operating that we’ll know if that’s correct or not because of the nature of the beast,” Hunter says.

“[They were] going to fund other renewable projects for clubs and community groups.”

The car park controversy

At the centre of the controversy is a dilapidated car park close to the centre of town and opposite the public primary school. The council had ambitious plans to revive the area, and Geni Energy was central to that.

“When we were successful with the grant, we met with council. They developed the development application. They identified the site.

“They stepped through all of that process on our behalf, and we acted as partners in that process.”

With the development application and construction certificate approved, the final thing needed to install the battery was a licence agreement for the three car spaces it would occupy. That’s where things came unstuck.

The licence agreement was similar to the one used for the electric vehicle chargers, but it took a while to negotiate the agreement to make it fit-for-purpose for a battery.  

As those negotiations were underway, there was a local council election, and in October 2024 a fresh set of faces appeared on the Narrabri Shire Council, with six new councillors out of nine.   

The unanimous support for the battery in the last council fell away — even former supporters, including Mayor Darrell Tiemens, switched sides.  

One of those new councillors was Amanda Brown, who resigned from her position as a councillor the day before this story’s publication due to health reasons.

Born and bred in Narrabri, Brown runs a mechanics business with her husband.

“Sometimes, people run for council with their own agendas, and I didn’t do that,” she says.

“I just wanted to be a voice for the community.”

When the final agreement for the battery proposal came up in the March council meeting, Brown says she had reservations.

“When I left the council chambers that night, I started having a lot of doubts about the location of the battery,” Brown says.

“There’s been safety concerns regarding batteries. You hear about them all the time on the news, with fires and the like. I just had concerns. I wanted more information.”

Fears spread 

In April, Brown brought forward a rescission motion to delay the signing of the licence agreement for a minimum of three months, so councillors could review safety information, fire risk management, disposal plans, financial benefits and site suitability, and receive expert briefings. 

“We had three days’ notice before the April meeting that this was going to be on the agenda,” Hunter says.   

“At that point, we realised that we were fighting for the survival of the battery.”

Hunter mobilised the battery’s supporters and 67 emails in favour of the project were received by the council alongside 16 phone calls. Only four letters and one phone call spoke out against the project.

One of the four letters was from Brown’s sister, another from a woman who ran alongside councillor Jocellin Jansson in the council elections and an anonymous letter from a school student.  

Despite this, Brown maintains there was strong community objection to the project.   

“We’re not going out and telling the community about these concerns about how it works. The community are doing the research themselves, they’re looking at these things, they’re listening, and they’re coming to their own conclusions. Then they bring it back to the councillors.

“I only raised concerns. I didn’t put ideas in their head. I didn’t tell them what to say or what was happening. Those people have gone out and done their own research.”

Supporters of the battery staged a protest, creating a model battery and wheeling it through town.

Supplied: Sally Hunter

The battery controversy found its way to social media. Just days before the next council meeting, a fake profile started posting on the Narrabri noticeboard.

“These huge batteries with poisonous chemicals can catch fire — we’ve all seen it happen. And now they reckon it’s ok to stick one right across from our kids classrooms?? Not safe. Not even close.  

“The council and Sally Hunter better stop it or there will be mums marching the street. I’m angry.  

“Do a YouTube search on lithium battery fires. Scary.” 

‘Democracy has died here’ 

Fire safety engineer Ian Moore, who was asked by Hunter to provide an expert perspective, attended the April council meeting online and was given three minutes to give his expert opinion.  

“I’ve done a lot of court cases from my fire investigation work and now doing federal Supreme Court cases with cladding, et cetera,” he says.  

“It was already sort of decided, if you like.” 

Moore says he didn’t see any particular risks with the Narrabri battery’s location and that his offer to do a full risk assessment was never taken up.  

“Unfortunately, the project was sort of put on hold prior to being able to do the full risk assessment, but having a look at the proposed battery that they were going to use and the location, it would have definitely complied.” 

Greg Lamont was one of two councillors who spoke at that meeting in an attempt to save the project.  

“This rescission motion really concerns me as a councillor and a ratepayer and a business person,” he tells the room.    

“Democracy has died here. 

“The staff and all the experts have been through a process for two years. 

“The staff conducted a risk assessment of this whole process. It’s mentioned in the report and said the risk was low.” 

Lamont also acknowledged that, from what he could see, there was overwhelming support from the community. 

“Democracy is a numbers game,” he says.  

But for others, no amount of experts could put out the idea that this battery would be a dangerous risk to the community, including Brown.  

“Let me ask you this: if this site is so ideal, why did Fire Rescue New South Wales caution against it at the last meeting?” Brown says in her speech to the council in April.  

“Why did the chair of our local emergency management committee raise the alarm? Why are we even considering putting this next to our fire station?” 

The question of why the local Fire and Rescue zone commander became involved remains unanswered. FRNSW has told the ABC the Narrabri project proposal was below the threshold that requires FRNSW assessment.  

Ultimately, Brown’s motion passed, and three years of planning for the community battery fell apart. Over the next six months, the council investigated other locations on council land, but couldn’t find any suitable. In October, the council’s support for the project was officially withdrawn.  

Jansson used her speech to cast doubt over the battery’s benefits.  

“The battery purports to be a community battery. There is zero community benefit,” she proclaimed. 

“We know lithium-ion batteries regularly catch fire — we hear about them every week. To have a battery that burns for seven days in the heart of our community would shut the entire community down.” 

Moore says it’s not possible that a battery that size could burn for that long.  

Hunter says she struggles to see how people can say there will be no community benefit to the project.

“I’m struggling to respond because we’re a not-for-profit organisation. We run off the smell of an oily rag. There is no financial benefit to this project for us at all.”

Shifting blame

Narrabri’s Mayor Darrell Tiemens has defended the decision to rescind support for the battery and rejects claims it was sunk by misinformation.   

“This is not about misinformation. This is about lack of information and not taking the community along for a journey,” he says.  

“We were confronted by people who said we knew nothing about this battery, and secondly, why are you putting a great big lithium battery in the middle of our car park?”  

He argues it’s not misinformation for people to be concerned about the community battery based on the dangers of small lithium-ion appliances, like e-scooters and drills.

“People go lithium battery equals dangerous equals fire-prone. Why would I want that close to my kids’ school?”  Tiemens says. 

“People hear the word lithium battery, and it’s not up to us as council to suddenly go, ‘But these are not quite as bad as the other ones.'”

Tiemens says it was a complicated decision.

“It’s our car park, and we can do what we like with that car park,” he said.

Tiemens also laid the blame on a failure by Geni Energy to do proper community engagement, despite it being a project done together with the council.

“It’s very important that the proponent, the company that was putting in this lithium battery in our main car park garnered public support, and they didn’t in my opinion,” he says.

Hunter rejects the suggestion that Geni Energy didn’t engage with the community.

“As part of the grant, we had to have a community engagement plan. It had to be approved by the federal government, which it was, and we enacted it,” she says.

That plan included school activities, art projects, letter drops, blogs, social media campaigns, and public events.

“We had an open shopfront for five years where anyone could walk in and ask questions. We ran events, we built a fake battery and wheeled it into the car park to show the scale.”

Hunter concedes engagement can always improve, but says the claim of failure ignores reality and says council also had responsibilities.  

“It was their DA [development application] … I’m not sure what activities they undertook as part of that community engagement process, but I do know they managed to get a front-page article in the newspaper about the project.   

“So particularly for councillors to say they didn’t know about the project — I call bullshit.” 

‘A climate of fear’  

Despite the mayor’s assertion that misinformation didn’t play a role, tucked away in a submission made in May by the Narrabri Shire Council to a NSW state government inquiry is a telling nugget of information.

“A significant amount of misinformation and disinformation currently exists surrounding the management of emerging renewable technologies, particularly with respect of lithium batteries,” the submission into ‘infrastructure for electric and alternative energy source vehicles’ states.

“Government policy and information/guidance collateral in this space is currently either inconsistent, and is in some instances, considerably lacking. This is ultimately contributing to a climate of fear surrounding community safety risks associated with renewable technologies and a disconnect between the policy positions of key stakeholder agencies and supporting community collateral.”

Narrabri council’s general manager, Eloise Chaplain, says clearer guidelines from state and federal governments are needed.

“There was lots of confusion, there was conflicting information,” Chaplain says.

“If it’s a state or federal government coming out with technical advice or someone more independent, I think that would be received really well, and it could set out those standards, like I said. So we weren’t being diverted to different areas, but there just wasn’t a clear line of sight.

“And for people, perception is reality, so it’s really hard to change that.”

Community engagement consultant Margaret Harvie says that confusion is fertile ground for division.

Her job is to be an interpreter in the middle of project proponents and communities, but she says renewables is a “tough climate” to be working in.

“I think what we’re seeing with renewables is probably more of a polarised situation in terms of the people who are for and against ideologically.

“You’ve got a heightened level of division in the community, heightened level of some of the concerns about some of the risks that come from that.”

“What’s happening, in terms of the anger and outrage, is that activists are tending to use the fact that you can fuel that fire of that outrage and make people feel more scared about what the risks are.”

Understanding what drives climate-related misinformation and, most importantly — who is driving it — has also been the focus of a federal Senate inquiry.  

In its remit, the committee is investigating how online bots and trolls, disinformation campaigns and tactics like “astroturfing” (fake grassroots campaigns) are delaying global action on climate change and renewable energy.

It is also investigating the connections between Australian organisations and international think tanks and influence networks, and what approaches could help counter the spread of misinformation.

Cracks beyond the council chambers

The battery may have exposed a rift in Narrabri, but for some in ‘Australia’s sportiest town’, it’s an issue that’s barely registered.

Out on the touch footy fields, the 40-degree Celsius heat hasn’t discouraged players from giving it their all, as finals approach.

Born and bred in Narrabri, touch footy president Mereka Gleeson couldn’t think of a better place to live.

“Beautiful country town. Yeah. We’ve got a great energy here. Really great locals,” she says.

Narrabri touch footy president Mereka Gleeson loves living in the community.

ABC News: Nathan Morris, Jess Davis

She’s only seen glimpses of the battery debacle in the local paper, the Narrabri Courier, or on the local Facebook community page.

“I know that they were trying to get a location more central in town, but I think now it’s moving out of town. Just for, like, a safety perspective … you know, if something drastic would happen.”

But the divide playing out in council chambers and Facebook threads has reached Nanette and Murray Watson’s kitchen table.

After 50 years together, they agree on almost everything — except climate change and renewable energy.

“I’m very concerned about climate change, and I see that when we use fossil fuels, it’s aggravating the whole problem,” Nanette says.

But her husband, who she met at the picnic races in 1974, doesn’t believe that the burning of fossil fuels is causing the planet to warm despite the overwhelming scientific consensus.

“I believe in climate change — it’s been happening for thousands of years, going round. We’re on a cycle, a 15- to 20-year cycle of the weather, alright, and it’ll move round and round.”

He’d rather see a new coal-fired power station than a community battery in a car park.

“One battery. What will it do for the community? No one can answer the question,” Murray says, exasperated.

Nanette says their relationship reflects the wider split in the community.

“It’s like that in our town; generally, this is such a divisive issue,” she says.

Nanette and Murray Watson disagree on the issues of climate change and renewable energy.

ABC News: Jess Davis

Despite Murray’s scepticism, Nanette, who volunteers for Geni Energy, believes misinformation has caused the divide.

“People used to be scared of turning the electricity on.

“[Murray’s] great-grandmother was like that, scared to turn the power on. There’s so many things that we were once scared of — the internet, all sorts of things that are part of our life now.”

A bruising process  

It’s not the end of the road for this battery; Hunter and the rest of her supporters are hoping they can find a new location on private land, but it means starting the whole process from scratch.

But anger and frustration remain among the Geni Energy volunteers, particularly for Hunter. 

“To sit through complete mistruths that are spoken by people and not have any opportunity to correct the record in any way and that information goes on the record for other people to take on,” she says. 

“How do we feel? We feel very let down,” Pownell says.

Reporting and photography by Jess Davis and Nathan Morris

Graphics by Alex Lim

Note: 3D models were created from technical drawings published by EVO power and Geni Energy. Aerial map imagery was taken on July 19, 2025. Rooftop solar panel map information is identified by Nearmap using machine learning analysis of the imagery.