New fire safety measures for battery storage facilities in NYS are recommended

Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday announced a series of new recommendations for enhanced fire-safety standards and project reviews of large battery-storage facilities as the state prepares to vastly expand their number across the state and particularly on Long Island.

The move comes as pockets of opposition to the facilities mount on Long Island, where three towns — Southampton, Southold and Huntington — already have instituted moratoriums on battery storage development in their jurisdiction, and others are considering them. 

The new standards follow release of a preliminary report from a task force formed by Hochul last year to study fires at three battery facilities across the state, including one in East Hampton. A Newsday story cited activists raising questions about the report, including whether companies were prepared to test for lithium in ground samples and the lack of groundwater testing.

The state and East Hampton battery developer NextEra defended their practices and the safety of the facilities, and Hochul in her announcement Tuesday reiterated there were “no reported injuries and no harmful levels of toxins detected” following the fires in Jefferson, Orange and Suffolk counties in 2023.

The task force on Tuesday released 15 draft recommendations for enhanced fire-safety standards, which propose to amend the current Fire Code of New York State to address “preventive and project-permit applications, emergency response planning and local fire department training.”

Among the draft recommendations: requiring industry-funded independent peer reviews for all battery storage facilities proposed in the state over a certain size; expand the requirement for explosion control to battery-storage facility cabinets in addition to other areas of the facilities; and a requirement that “qualified personnel” are available for dispatch within 15 minutes of a reported facility fire and “able to arrive on scene within four hours …”

A full list of the new recommended standards are available here.

Battery fires present a particular challenge for firefighters because of their potential for a phenomenon called thermal runaway, which can cause the facilities to burn at extremely high temperatures and the fires can’t be extinguished like typical fires. In the East Hampton scenario, firefighters were under orders to stand down, a fire official said, while the NextEra/National Grid 5-megawatt storage facility used internal sprinkler systems and other internal controls over 30 hours to put out the fire under the supervision of NextEra personnel.

Gerald Turza Jr., fire and emergency medical services administrator for the East Hampton Village Fire Department, who responded to the fire and conducted two subsequent inspections, said on Tuesday he'd met with the governor's working group in October and said he was “happy to see that some of the items that I addressed are included in the proposed code changes.”

Among his recommendations were the need for “ongoing, recurring training, emergency-response plan accessibility and transparency between the site operators and municipal officials” after a fire.

“It's critical for those of us in the emergency services business to learn from past incidents so that we can both share information and work to improve our response capabilities,” Turza said.

Battery storage units are a critical component of the state and Long Island’s plans to incorporate more carbon-free energy onto the grid over the next two decades. Large battery farms are planned to take the place of small gas- and oil-fired plants to address peak power needs in summer, and also to store power from wind turbines and solar farms in excess of usage needs.

LIPA and the state envision dozens of battery storage facilities on Long Island alone, from Montauk — where a unit already exists — to Glen Head and Island Park. Some planned facilities call for hundreds of megawatts of battery-storage container units, considerably larger than the 5-megawatt unit that burned May 31 in East Hampton, which will remain out of commission until July.

In Brookhaven Town, which created special zoning areas for battery storage, hundreds of local residents have been opposing a 110-megawatt unit proposed alongside the Long Island Expressway South Service Road at Morris Avenue in Holtsville.

The Sachem school district board of education has said it is “committed to taking steps legally in preventing this from happening where it’s currently planned with the safety of our students, staff and school community in mind.”

Brookhaven has signaled no intent to declare a moratorium on battery storage units, while Babylon Town is considering one.

New York State plans to keep open the public comment period for the 15 newly proposed fire-safety standards through March 5.

Fran Lunati, who leads a group of residents who live near the proposed Holtsville facility, said the newly proposed fire standards “don’t give me any more faith in what they plan to do.”

“It’s the placement of them, that’s what really scares me,” she added. “It’s too close to residential areas and too close to the schools. That’s the main thing.”

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.