By Sam Brill
From the mayoral debates to kitchen table family meetings, “affordability” is top of mind for many New Yorkers. Prices seem to be skyrocketing across the board, including for electricity. While there’s no silver bullet for bringing down your bill, energy storage is an essential tool in making energy more affordable across the City.
One huge driver of rate hikes are the expensive infrastructure projects that utilities build to boost grid capacity, like more transmission lines or substations. But battery energy storage systems (BESS), which store energy when it’s in excess supply and make it available in times of high demand, can strengthen the grid in a more targeted and cost-effective manner. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) estimates that achieving the state’s goal of 6 gigawatts (GW) of battery storage by 2030 will result in systemwide savings of $2 billion by 2050. That’s good news for everyone.
Energy storage also makes our communities cleaner and healthier. BESS can reduce reliance on high emissions “peaker” plants, outdated facilities which have been found to cause asthma and other illnesses. BESS help maximize our use of carbon-free, intermittent sources of energy like solar and wind. And at times of peak demand, like hot summer days, BESS help deliver energy where it’s needed most to protect New Yorkers’ health, keeping lights on and air conditioners running in neighborhoods where the grid is under strain.
As our company and others deploy energy storage, we’ve seen comments from some community members convey fear or even anger about these projects. Unfortunately, certain politicians and professional naysayers have hijacked reasonable questions about fire safety, using social media and press events to spread hysterical, false claims.
So let’s set the record straight. BESS technology in NYC, now installed in every borough, is subject to the most rigorous oversight and standards in the US – a key reason why there has never been a safety incident involving BESS in New York City since 2019 when the first systems went live. Contrary to certain claims, BESS in the City are not “lithium warehouses”: they are batteries which use the same chemistry as your cell phones and laptops, placed within standalone containers on outdoor sites that feature round-the-clock heat-sensing cameras, overhead water-spray systems, multiple manual shutoff mechanisms, and 24/7 battery management monitoring.
In the rare instances where BESS have failed in the US, (1) the fire has not spread outside the perimeter of the site, and (2) officials have found no levels of contamination in the air, soil, or groundwater harmful to human health. The impacts of a BESS fire mirror those of a typical building or structural fire. This is a very different result from a failure at a fuel depot, a gas refinery, an oil transport train, or a coal tailings pile.
Finally, some New Yorkers have questions about why BESS are being sited near residential communities, and the answer is simple: that’s where the power is needed. As a “grid-edge” resource, BESS are designed to integrate safely into the City’s power grid exactly where energy is used, just like traditional electrical infrastructure such as transformers found throughout the City in neighborhood substations. If BESS were located only in industrial areas, then residential neighborhoods would remain vulnerable to blackouts and brownouts on days of high grid stress like hot summer afternoons.
Deployment of BESS in New York may be novel but make no mistake: energy storage is absolutely critical to making Queens a safer, cleaner, healthier, and more affordable place to live.
Sam Brill is NineDot Energy’s Vice President of Strategic Development.
