I don't think "lobbyists" is the right characterisation here.

A significant portion of the people of this town genuinely thought that this battery was going to catch fire, and that the town would be inundated with toxic smoke.

Yeah, Sodium-Ion ones are completely lithium free and are already being mass produced. They will most likely completely replace lithium batteries for stationary deployments because they dont care about the cold and basically do not burn.

It's surely not a view they organically developed, but rather the obvious consequence of anti-renewable propaganda. Although I agree that "lobbyist" isn't the right word as it wasn't through advocacy of politicians (entirely at least) but the more amorphous dissemination of disinformation by bad faith actors.

The same sort of fear is present in the regional area where I live, where there seems to be a mind virus against renewable energy.

A significant portion of the people of this town genuinely thought that this battery was going to catch fire

You are aware that this is a risk with batteries like this, right? Right?

500kWh......that's it? That's only 10x my home battery, and it's supposed to help a whole community? This would give 50 houses 10kWh each, so about 2 hours of power if they have their air-conditioning on lol. Less if they're using it for heating.

Sorry but a 500kWh battery is borderline pointless for a community battery.

Having a car accident is a risk we encounter daily. We implement safeguards to make the risks manageable.

Good thing that never happens with coal.