The New York City Industrial Development Agency (NYCIDA) has approved five battery energy storage system (BESS) projects while governor Kathy Hochul has announced groundbreaking on a sixth, altogether totalling around 42.5MW.
The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and NYCIDA announced the five BESS projects yesterday (23 April), which will be built by developer-operators NineDot Energy, Elevate Renewables and Soltage across State Island and Queens, representing around 42.5MW of new BESS capacity.
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On the same day, governor Kathy Hochul announced that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the New York Power Authority have started construction on a 12MW solar carport and 7.5MW BESS unit at JFK airport.
New York state is targeting 6GW of energy storage by 2030, which it hopes to achieve via grid-scale projects of 5MW or over, which the state puts under the definition ‘bulk’, and smaller commercial and industrial (C&I) or community-scale below 5MW, defined by the state as ‘retail’ energy storage, and residential ones.
5-15MW projects approved by NYCIDA
NineDot Energy, a developer of primarily community-scale BESS projects, will deploy two BESS projects of roughly 4.9MW each with a total capacity of 9.8MW and 39.1MWh of energy storage, for completion by Winter 2025.
Elevate Renewables, the BESS arm of legacy power plant owner Arclight, will deploy a 15.1MW/60.1MWh system as part of retiring a 15.1MW gas turbine. The address given for the project is the Athur Kill Generating Station, part of a portfolio it acquired from NRG Energy in 2021, and the BESS has a targeted operation date of December 2025.
All three projects above are located on Staten Island while solar and storage specialist Soltage’s are in the borough of Queens. The company will deploy two 5MW/20MWh BESS projects for completion in Summer 2025.
The NYCIDA is helping the projects to lower the cost of capital by providing discretionary tax benefits, which it has used to support more than 254MW of BESS in the state, it said. The tax benefits can also be used for EV freight charging, cold storage retrofits and other clean energy applications.
That is in addition federal level investment tax credits (ITCs) for clean energy that the projects will be able to benefit from brought in by the Inflation Reduction Act.
The projects are being built in relatively population-dense parts of New York where some of the strictest fire safety regulations exist.
BESS technology there has suffered from a ‘loss of trust’ due to numerous fires according to one developer speaking at Solar Media’s Energy Storage Summit USA in Austin in March, and Hochul recently set up a working group to amend the state fire code to better manage BESS fire risk.
JFK airport
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the New York Power Authority have enlisted oil and gas major TotalEnergies to build and operate the solar and storage project at JFK airport.
The solar carport will have 12MW of solar power and 7.5MW of BESS though a MWh figure was not revealed. The Port Authority, which also runs New York City’s airports, has a goal of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The two aforementioned units will be built in a phase one of construction by March 2025 while a second phase will see 6MW of community solar added to serve the grid operated by utility Con Edison.
