East Hampton storage battery facility back in operation after 2023 fire

The East Hampton battery storage unit that was disabled for a year after a devastating fire last year is back online, according to LIPA and the contractor, NextEra Energy.

The 5-megawatt unit, which first went into operation in 2018, was returned to service July 3, said Bill Orlove, a spokesman for NextEra, which owns the unit with National Grid Ventures. The fire took place May 31, 2023.

Orlove, in written responses to Newsday, confirmed NextEra “will not charge” LIPA and its ratepayers for the cost of repairing the facility, but he declined to disclose the cost or say what caused the blaze. Nor would he say whether the unit conforms to 15 new fire-safety standards proposed for new battery storage systems by the state in February following a joint task force on battery fires across New York.

The East Hampton unit, at Cove Hollow Road in a residential and business area of East Hampton Village, was built under a $55 million contract to LIPA as part of a plan to shore up the power-hungry South Fork with new green energy sources and bigger transmission lines. The battery is capable of handling excess power from the South Fork Wind Farm which recently began transmitting energy from a wind array off the coast of New England.

Orlove said the project came back online July 3 “after the project was rebuilt according to all applicable regulatory requirements, and pursuant to our contract” with LIPA.

He said the battery’s water-based fire suppression systems “operated as designed and quickly contained the May 31” fire, and “no further emergency response was required.”

Orlove said all the company’s energy storage facilities are “managed, monitored and cooled in a controlled manner to keep project equipment functioning safely.”

Newsday reported that it took 30 hours of continual dousing by the internal water systems at the East Hampton facility to extinguish the fire, and that fire officials had been planning a 1-mile evacuation zone while it burned, but ultimately didn’t enact it.

The fire required a complete replacement of internal battery components, Newsday reported, and one of the firefighters who responded to the blaze charged the battery’s owners “couldn’t provide us with very basic information” about potential toxins released in the smoke, among other things. Newsday reported company testers waited for four months after the blaze to collect soil samples around the site, did not conduct groundwater samples and initially didn’t even test for lithium, according to a state report. Lithium tests ultimately were completed and were found to be below hazardous levels.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation, which investigated the fire, formally closed its probe at the site on Feb. 2, according to the agency’s spill-site database. Probes are closed because needed cleanup and removal actions “have been completed and no further remedial activities are necessary,” or for unspecified administrative reasons.

A second unit owned by the company and National Grid in Montauk, he said, “has similar protections as East Hampton.”

But towns across Long Island are skeptical, and many, including Southampton, Southold, Huntington, Oyster Bay and Babylon, have instituted moratoriums on battery storage development, preventing units from being built. The Sachem Central School District is suing to block development of a 110-megawatt battery facility proposed for Morris Avenue in Holtsville, adjacent to the Long Island Expressway. Local residents have strongly opposed the facility.

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

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