Riverhead considers first utility-scale battery storage facility as Southold extends ban

Riverhead Town is reviewing plans for its first utility-scale battery storage system as its neighboring North Fork town continues to shun such facilities.

Rhynland Energy, a Manhattan-based developer, wants to build a 60-megawatt lithium-ion battery energy storage facility on a 1.7-acre site on Edwards Avenue in Calverton.

The developer met with Riverhead Town officials April 17 — two days after Southold Town voted to extend a moratorium on battery storage systems for a third year.

The project still needs approvals from the Riverhead Town Board and planning board but already has a nod of approval from the Suffolk County Planning Commission.

Both the Riverhead Fire District and town fire marshal have raised concerns about the planned proximity of the batteries to a nearby fuel storage business, and whether volunteer departments were prepared to respond to potential fires at the site.

Fires at battery storage sites, including one in East Hampton in 2023, are a key concern because such fires can be challenging to extinguish. 

Allowed by special permit

Riverhead is among the few Long Island towns that have not enacted a moratorium on battery energy storage systems, instead opting to allow large-scale projects in industrial areas by special permit.

Southold officials based their town's moratorium extension on pending state fire code regulations and a townwide zoning update currently underway. The extension continues to delay a battery facility proposed in Cutchogue.

Battery storage systems work in tandem with renewable energy, storing energy that can be discharged during peak energy demand.

“A lot of [Long Island Power Authority’s] infrastructure is very antiquated,” said Steven Losquadro, an attorney for the developer. “This is designed to strengthen and harden that,” he said, adding that the systems can be beneficial during storms and other emergencies.

To make way for the project, a building leased by the Long Island Farm Bureau would be demolished. Rhynland Energy would build 18 battery cabinets at the site, located north of the Long Island Rail Road tracks and adjacent to the fuel storage site and LIPA substation.

The company's plan was first proposed in 2022. A review of it was held up by a moratorium on industrial development in the hamlet that expired last October.

Riverhead Fire Marshal Andrew Smith, in a letter to the planning department in March, requested the site plan be amended to include a staging area for emergency response for a “prolonged” event at the site, as well as a lockbox to house emergency response documents.

The Riverhead Board of Fire Commissioners said in a similar letter that the district lacks equipment to handle a potential fire at the facility.

Losquadro said site-specific training would be provided to all members of the Riverhead Fire Department and surrounding departments, and that Rhynland has committed to donating $100,000 to the district to buy a hazmat response truck.

Viewed as inevitable

Matt Charters, a senior planner for Riverhead Town, said the systems are “ever evolving” and are now designed to be housed in individual cabinets to prevent thermal runaway, which can quickly become uncontrollable.

The county planning commission conditioned their approval on hazmat training for first responders and containment of stormwater at the site.

“The planning commission would like to see actual containment on site so if there is some sort of emergency and there’s runoff, heavy metals from the battery, that that stormwater’s contained and it’s not running off the property and getting into the groundwater,” Charters said. 

Charters said the town also is recommending a larger buffer of 10 feet, rather than the proposed 5 feet, around the site and has asked the developers for a sound study.

The developer is expected to submit updated plans to the town before a hearing is set, though Town Supervisor Tim Hubbard expects there will be pushback. “There are residents that are going to be very concerned about this and have fears,” he said at the meeting.

But he views the systems as an inevitability.

“We can’t stop them from coming … but we want to make sure it’s done absolutely the safest way it can,” Hubbard said.