Two public hearings on proposed Battery Energy Storage Systems(BESS) in Calverton are slated for the Riverhead Town Board’s Feb. 18 meeting.
The projects, both of which are large enough to fall under Riverhead’s classification of “Type II,” utility-scale battery systems include a 5 MW/20KWh system proposed at 221 Scott Avenue in the center of EPCAL and a 1 MWh system at the entrance to the Hampton Jitney’s bus terminal on Edwards Avenue.
Pictured Above: The batteries would be near the front of the Hampton Jitney’s Edwards Avenue terminal
The Hampton Jitney batteries, installed by Sprocket Power, would tie into solar panels on the roof of the building, and would ultimately be used to charge electric motor coaches, Jitney representatives told the Riverhead Town Board at its Jan. 15 work session.
“This is about the sustainability of our services, and what’s coming down the road,” said Hampton Jitney President Geoffrey Lynch, adding that the company will have its first demonstration EV motorcoach in 2027. He added that the Hampton Jitney also contracts its services to Suffolk County Transit, which is moving its fleet toward electric vehicles.
“We need to upgrade our facilities to handle this new electrification,” he said.
Both projects will use advanced Lithium Iron Phosphate battery systems, a more stable chemistry than Lithium Ion batteries, which were responsible for several fires in New York State in 2023 that led the state to propose more stringent BESS codes.
The Scott Avenue site plan calls for the use of five Tesla Megapack 2XL battery packs, while the town Planning Department’s staff report for the Jitney project says it will use four EVO Power FLEX Series battery packs.
Town Senior Planner Matt Charters and Planner Heather Trojanowski gave overviews of the projects to the Town Board, which will need to approve special permit applications for both projects before they can move forward, at its Jan. 15 work session.
The planners recommended the projects, which are both on industrially zoned land, receive “negative declarations” under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, meaning they would not require extensive environmental review. The board is slated to vote on those declarations, and to set the Feb. 18 public hearings, at its next regular meeting Wednesday, Jan. 21.
Riverhead adopted a BESS code in 2023 establishing where large-scale BESS facilities can be located in town, and setting fire safety standards in line with the state code.
Town Planners, along with Chief Fire Marshal Andrew Smith, gave the board an overview of how those standards are being met by these applications.
Among the standards are requiring that qualified personnel with knowledge of the BESS system be available for dispatch within 15 minutes of an incident and are able to arrive on scene within four hours.
Both developers said they are working with Paul Rogers of ESRG, a consulting firm founded by former FFDNY firefighters who worked to implement New York City’s BESS codes.
The state’s new guidelines call for the facilities to have an Emergency Response Plan and provide site-specific training to local fire departments that may respond to the incident.
The latest BESS designs include fire suppression equipment within the battery cabinets and firefighters do not put the fires out with water. But first responders must remain on site for 30 hours after an incident, said Mr. Smith.
The EPCAL site is in the Manorville Fire District and the Edwards Avenue site is in the Riverhead Fire District.
Mr. Smith said that, while the Riverhead Police Department is currently training up a Hazmat team that could ultimately stay on site for the length of an incident, until that team is in place that responsibility would fall to the volunteer fire departments.
While the Suffolk County Fire Academy currently provides classroom training for local volunteer firefighters on the basics of BESS technology, the site-specific training would likely be done in collaboration between local fire departments a company with in-depth knowledge of that system, like ESRG.
“If there’s an event like this, the training cannot be just with Manorville. We have to ask other surrounding departments to participate in the training, because it’s going to be an immediate mutual aid,” said Councilman Ken Rothwell, a volunteer with the Wading River Fire Department. He added that, in such an incident, Suffolk County Fire, Rescue & Emergency Services (FRES) would likely take over the scene and the local fire departments would answer to FRES until the incident was over.
Mr. Smith said he recently went over the plans with the commissioners of the Manorville Fire District.
Allison Sclafani, the attorney for the Scott Avenue project, proposed by Grand Portage Solar LLC, said the Manorville Fire Department “said they were comfortable with it. They just want a site visit before the build.”
She added that new BESS systems also continuously monitor the health of individual cells within the battery packs, and can alert professionals when cells begin to degrade or overheat long before they experience “thermal runaway,” the process by which BESS fires become uncontrollable.
Mr. Smith said his office is asking for a “command post area” at the Jitney site, an enclosed area containing the Emergency Response Plan for the BESS, along with a ‘bat phone’ that would dial directly to the fire safety representative who is supposed to respond to potential incidents.
Ms. Trojanowski said both the Riverhead Fire Marshal’s office and the Riverhead Fire Department had seen the Jitney plans and had “no significant concerns.”
“We can bill back the proprietor. We can recoup whatever it costs us to be there,” he said of the town’s response to potential incidents, adding that he “could work up something” to also compensate the volunteer fire departments for their time.
Council members Denise Merrifield and Bob Kern said they’d recently attended a seminar at Stony Brook about new state BESS codes, and they believe the technology has improved dramatically.
“BESS is clean, reliable, affordable, resilient energy,” said Ms. Merrifield. “It’s come a long way since we first looked at it a couple years ago.”
“It’s important for the community to know there are battery storage units in skyscrapers in Manhattan,” said Mr. Kern. “Sixty percent of our energy goes through the wires and it goes nowhere. It’s lost. Batteries capture that and send it back out.”
Town Supervisor Jerry Halpin, a former volunteer firefighter who comes from a family of firefighters, said he wasn’t comfortable with the BESS units coming online until the town’s Hazmat team is fully trained.
“I’m not against the plan, technically, but we need to protect our first responders,” he said. “I understand the risk is like a lot of others, but the requirements to fight this fire are just different, especially the requirement to leave someone on site, post-fire, for that length of time.”
If approved on Jan. 21, the Feb. 18 public hearings would be held at 6 p.m. in the Town Hall meeting room.
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