With the Caballero battery energy storage plant now fully operational, owner and operator Alpha Omega Power announced donations to a Nipomo high school and 5Cities Homeless Coalition (5CHC). But residents are still wary of the facility.
On July 1, Alpha Omega Power said it will donate $5,000 to Central Coast New Tech High School as part of its STEM Impact Scholarship. 5CHC—which Alpha Omega Power has been in talks with since March—will also receive $2,500 to provide housing, case management, and support services to people facing or at the risk of homelessness.
According to Alpha Omega Power co-founder Guillaume Dufay, this was the energy company’s first chance to donate to a community organization since it purchased the Caballero plant in November 2024.
The donation declaration comes on the heels of the plant being fully operational as of April 1 and an open house for the public on June 4 at the Nipomo Library. Residents living near the battery plant have voiced worries about the possibility of fires and health risks after January’s Moss Landing battery plant fire in Monterey County.
According to Dufay, Moss Landing was built before the National Fire Protection Association wrote the safety code standard for similar facilities in 2020. That standard, called the NFPA 855, is now the established framework for the safe installation and construction of energy storage systems like Caballero, which uses lithium-ion batteries.
“The major difference between the two is Moss Landing is one of several legacy projects built prior to the creation of specific fire safety codes for battery energy storage systems,” Dufay told New Times. “Caballero development benefited from two decades of hands-on working experience with lithium-ion batteries. Lithium-ion batteries are a radically improved technology in contrast with certain legacy systems that are known to present fire risks.”
Still, some community residents are wary of the Caballero plant. Nipomo resident Ty Ortiz questioned Alpha Omega Power’s donations, alleging a lack of transparency in how the battery plant was set up.
“Why would you hide something and sneak it in and build it so quickly if now you want to give back to the community?” Ortiz said. “There was no transparency on the build. We all drove by it and knew something was being built, but no one had any idea.”
On Facebook, other Nipomo residents complained that while the community received notifications about another potential battery storage project by developer NextEra, no one heard anything about Alpha Omega Power’s Caballero project except for the owner of the land Caballero now sits on.
NextEra withdrew its application in November 2024, according to a 4th District update on Facebook by SLO County Supervisor Jimmy Paulding. A second developer, esVolta, met with county staff in January 2024 for a similar battery storage project but didn’t move forward with an application or communication.
Paulding told New Times that both Caballero and the NextEra project received the same level of public notification.
“I strongly believe there should be greater public engagement in processes like these,” he said. “In this particular case, however, most of the public outreach occurred before I took office.”
The energy group submitted the Caballero project application in 2019. The project was referred to then 4th District Supervisor Lynn Compton’s office and the South County Advisory Council in 2021. The public hearing for its final conditional use permit took place in 2023.
The hearing date was posted on the county’s website and published in New Times. Property owners within 300 feet of the project were also sent mailers, Paulding said, and no objections were raised at the hearing.
“To improve notification for future projects, I successfully advocated for changes to the noticing requirements for battery energy storage system proposals,” he said. “Specifically, I pushed to expand the notification radius from 300 feet to 1,000 feet, ensuring that more nearby property owners receive mailed notice.” Δ
A previous version of this story attributed Alpha Omega Power’s statements to a representative working with the group. They clarified the correct attribution to New Times after publication.
This article appears in Jul 3-13, 2025.
