Southampton Town’s steering committee examining the best ways to manage siting of Battery Energy Storage Systems throughout town recommends none of these systems be placed in residential areas, and wants to cap the size of stand-alone systems at 5 megawatts and systems tied to a solar array at 20 megawatts.
Pictured Above: The proposed site of the Canal BESS project, which led Southampton Town to enact a moratorium on battery storage systems in 2023.
New York State has been strongly advocating for the use of Battery Energy Storage Systems, known in the industry as BESS, as an essential part of the state’s shift to renewable energy, but three fires at BESS facilities in the state in 2023, including one at the 5 megawatt facility in East Hampton, led the state to impanel a task force to rewrite state fire codes to provide more strict oversight.
In the midst of this controversy, an application by Canal BESS, a proposed 100 megawatt BESS facility on residentially zoned land just off the south cloverleaf of Exit 66 on Sunrise Highway just east of the Shinnecock Canal, galvanizing the community of Hampton Bays.
Residents pushed for a moratorium on processing of BESS applications, citing fear for their safety in the event of a fire, and the proximity to one of just two land crossings of the Shinnecock Canal, a traffic bottleneck on an ordinary day.
That moratorium, which includes the Canal BESS project, has been in place since mid-2023.
Town Planning and Development Administrator Janice Scherer and Town Planner Seth Race gave an overview of the committee’s findings to the Southampton Town Board at its Nov. 21 work session.
“We heard again and again that large facilities did not belong in residential zones,” Ms. Scherer told the town board. “We said ‘what would it look like if we eliminated them entirely (from residential zones).”
“There are plenty of light industrial sites, both on the east and west side of town, that could accommodate it without having to go to residential zones,” she added.
“They are geographically spread out,” said Mr. Race.
“And, completely by chance, there are no (light industrial) sites in Hampton Bays,” said Councilwoman Cynthia McNamara, who has long pushed the board to take a critical look at BESS siting.
Ms. Scherer added that the BESS Steering Committee has recommended that even in the light industrial zoning districts, BESS would not be allowed on properties that abut residential properties, and there must be a buffer of at least 300 feet between the facility and a residential property. She added that the Steering Committee is proposing a one acre minimum lot size for a 5 megawatt BESS system.
Mr. Race added that BESS would also not be allowed next door to a high-occupancy building like a hospital or a school.
The state fire code classifies all BESS facilities greater than 600 megawatts as “Tier II,” and all of these facilities have to meet more stringent state fire safety guidelines than smaller systems designed for personal or small business use.
Ms. Scherer said small businesses, such as a hypothetical grocery store in Hampton Bays, would still be able to use a smaller Tier I system for their own backup energy storage needs.
“There’s a separate fire code for that,” she said.
BESS projects above one megawatt are known as ‘utility-scale’ facilities, which store energy from the electric grid at times of low demand, and place it back on the grid at times of high demand.
The Steering Committee is recommending not allowing owners of BESS facilities to engage in “arbitrage,” in which they make money from releasing the energy at times of high demand and cost, and it also plans to recommend that BESS tied to a solar array only be used to store the energy generated on site, and that those projects be reviewed by the Town Board.
Ms. Scherer said the theory behind capping the size at 20 megawatts is that anything greater than 20 megawatts is not subject to local zoning restrictions and is instead governed by the state’s Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES).
Ms. Scherer told the town board that the Steering Committee was pleasantly surprised to hear that regulators and utilities are supportive of smaller systems.
“Everyone would be more than happy if we just did small ones, and that would serve a great need,” she said.
The state Interagency Fire Safety Working Group is not expecting to have a complete update of state fire codes in place until mid-2025, but Ms. Scherer said town planners would reference the applicable state fire codes in its siting regulations.
Town Board members were generally supportive of the changes, and asked members of the Steering Committee to draft code changes that would be vetted by the board and go through a public hearing process.
Councilman Bill Pell, a member of the Southampton Fire Department, asked if the code would require access to a water supply for fire suppression.
Mr. Race said newer BESS facilities are designed to be self-contained, with fires burning themselves out within cabinets and containers.
“We’ve been told they’re not as reliant on water — you can’t put them out with water,” he said. “It’s been quandary to begin with, that as these rules are being promulgated things are changing (in the industry). At least to date, we’ve solved it to now,” he said.
As these rules were beginning to be developed, most BESS facilities used volatile lithium ion batteries, but the industry is beginning to shift toward lithium iron phosphate batteries, which are less prone to fires.
“As technology changes, we can update the code later,” said Town Supervisor Maria Moore.
“We all wanted this to be a process that was more community-driven,” said Ms. McNamara, who serves as the Vice Chair on the Steering Committee, which Ms. Moore chairs. The town had initially rolled out BESS siting guidelines in the midst of the pandemic, based on a model code recommended at the time by the New York State Energy Research Development Agency, which received little public comment at the time.
“I don’t think everybody got everything we wanted, but we’re comfortable with it,” said Ms. McNamara. —BHY
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