To assess its benefits and drawbacks, STPA was applied to the design of a lithium-ion based Community Energy Storage System (CESS). STPA works by breaking down a complex system into the safety constraints that are imposed on component actions and interactions to maintain safety at the system level, and analyzing how those constraints could be violated. For the CESS, three unacceptable losses were identified along with six potentially hazardous system states which, under worst case environmental conditions, could lead to a loss. A safety control structure was also developed to illustrate functional system components and the flow of safety control actions throughout the system. From the identified hazards and control structure, the safety control actions were derived through an analysis of each component's safety responsibilities. Control actions can logically become unsafe if and only if they are : needed and not provided, provided, provided too early or too late, or provided for too long or not long enough. The system's logical unsafe control actions were then analyzed for the causal scenarios involving other system components, control actions, and environmental factors that could contribute to their development.