Half an hour’s drive south of Annapolis, you can find one possible future for electricity in Maryland.

BGE installed eight racks of lithium-ion batteries in Tracys Landing, bringing their combined 2.5 megawatts of energy storage online in January 2023. Surrounded by small farms, isolated homes and a church, they sit at the southern edge of Anne Arundel County.

Together, they provide backup power in a distant corner of Maryland’s power grid, where overload outages were common on cold winter days.

“You’ve got to send a lot of juice down that line,” said Nick Alexopulos, a spokesman for the power company.

There’s a different future 30 miles west. In the urban community of Oxon Hill, tucked next to the ever-busy Capital Beltway, PEPCO wanted to build a 1-megawatt battery storage system.

Frightened by the possibility that the batteries might spew flammable gas in a chain reaction failure called thermal runaway, residents convinced the Prince George’s County Council to oppose it in 2023.

“Pepco’s Livingston Road Battery Energy Storage System project in Oxon Hill … has been canceled,” said Chuck McDade, a spokesperson for PEPCO.

The most important thing to understand about electricity in Maryland may be that everyone wants more of it. Or maybe the most important thing — as the tale of two batteries shows — is that few people want to live near it.

Not power plants. Not power lines. Not solar or wind farms.

Ocean City is suing to block US Wind’s plan to build a field of turbines out in the Atlantic Ocean. The project would generate enough electricity to power all the homes from Edgewater to Severna Park, Annapolis to Crofton.

Thousands more oppose a 70-mile power line planned through Baltimore, Carroll and Frederick counties to feed growing demand. Anne Arundel residents are protesting a plan to put solar panels at an old Navy farm in Gambrills.

“Folks in Ocean City wanted to kill us,” said state Sen. Brian Feldman, chair of the Senate Energy and Environment Committee. “They just don’t want offshore wind there. When it comes to solar arrays, we are getting pushback from ag communities and farmers. Nobody wants a nuclear power plant in their backyard.”

We are about to see if that’s how people feel about batteries.

PJM Interconnection, which controls the regional electricity grid, is ready to give Maryland a chance to catch up with states fast adding batteries to their grids.

“Up until now, we have not had the ability to put massive amounts of battery storage in the state,” said Del. Lorig Charkoudian, a Montgomery County Democrat who frequently files legislation dealing with energy. “In the next two years, we have over 1,600 megawatts … coming.”

Feldman, Charkoudian and Maryland Energy Administration Director Paul Pinsky joined me Tuesday in a Baltimore Banner panel discussion in Annapolis on balancing the need for more electricity with Maryland’s ambitious climate goals.

Under the Climate Solutions Act passed two years ago, Maryland set a goal of reducing its greenhouse gases 60% by 2031, and reaching net-zero emissions by 2045. It’s the toughest standard in the nation. Building 3,000 megawatts of battery storage by 2033 is part of the plan, considered the most ambitious in the nation.

One hitch is that Maryland gets 40% of its electricity from out-of-state sources.

“We’re going to fall short of that if we aren’t producing it ourselves,” Pinsky said.

Solar and wind projects, like the one near Ocean City, provide just a tiny fraction and suddenly face trouble in Washington. A more likely solution is new gas-fired power plants — dirtier than wind and solar, but cleaner than coal.

Baltimore-based Constellation Energy plans to buy Calpine Corp., a gas power plant developer. It hasn’t announced plans to build in Maryland yet, but it seems likely.

“I think natural gas is probably going to be part of the answer moving forward,” Feldman said. “The economics are there.”

A network of batteries would be able to store power regardless of the source — Charkoudian calls it a “no regrets” idea — reduce the need for new gas plants and ensure power generated in Maryland gets used here.

It would work with existing sources but be ready when, or if, solar and wind live up to their potentials.

She’s introduced the Abundant, Affordable Clean Energy Act. It would require the Public Service Commission, Maryland’s electricity regulator, to move from a pilot project approved in 2019 to wide-scale construction.

“We actually think ratepayers may be paying less in this package than they’re currently paying,” Charkoudian said.

Under the pilot project, four of the state’s utilities proposed eight locations. The Oxon Hill site was replaced with a plan for a solar-and-battery microgrid serving six homes about 25 miles away in Fairmount Heights and will be the last to come online.

PEPCO said the project was dropped because of unexpected delays and costs. None of the others, however, encountered the same kind of opposition.

“I personally, since I have been in office, have not heard from a constituent about this,” said Anne Arundel County Councilwoman Shannon Leadbetter, elected in 2022.

And yet, things happen.

California has embraced batteries in a big way. Its 10 gigawatts are three times the capacity Maryland wants to add in the next decade.

Then, on Thursday, authorities evacuated hundreds of people and closed a major highway around Vistra Energy in Northern California because of a fire at its 750-megawatt battery facility — considered the largest in the world.

So it’s no surprise that PSC Chair Fred Hoover got a hostile welcome in Ocean City when he discussed the location of new power infrastructure.

“They beat up on him, basically saying, ‘Annapolis, you’re all a bunch of Nazis, essentially dictating to us locals where this should go,‘” said Feldman, who witnessed the exchange.

“So that is a tough issue. But it’s one we have to tackle, because if we don’t get that right, then all these other issues become almost moot.”