Brookhaven 'in no rush" to provide permits for 2 new battery storage plants

Brookhaven Town Supervisor Dan Panico, while stopping short of declaring a moratorium on new battery storage projects in the town, indicated this week that the town was in no rush to provide needed permits for two large facilities proposed for the town.

At a town board meeting Thursday night at which several dozen residents showed up in opposition to the proposed facilities while unionized contractors and green-energy advocates spoke in support, Panico assured residents that permit approvals were not on his short-term to-do list.

"The town is not fast-tracking anything," he said, referencing to the state-approved batteries in Holtsville and Manorville. Noting that neither site has building permits, he said, "The town board, the town of Brookhaven is in no rush to issue building permits for that [Holtsville] site at all."

He called on the state to do more to help extinguish lingering local concerns about battery fires, as well as detailing fire-suppression plans. 

Brookhaven, which is set to be the import site of 924 megawatts of offshore wind power next year, will be the beneficiary of upward of $139 million tax benefits from the Sunrise Wind farm, the excess power from which is expected to be stored in any available batteries. The town also is considered Ground Zero for battery-storage plans on Long Island, with most of the more than dozen facilities proposed in the region slated for Brookhaven.

The Manorville site, a proposed 150-megawatt facility with 196 battery containers at 62 Weaks Ave. near farms and homes, has a prior site plan submitted to the town, but does not have building permits, Panico stressed.

Panico noted that all battery sites proposed for Long Island are over a sole-source aquifer, sharply distinguishing them from others already built across the country. He also noted that "substantial questions" remain from local fire departments about whether or not to apply water to fires at the plants, following contamination at an East Hampton plant that experienced a thermal runaway fire in 2023.

The state issued strict new fire safety standards for batteries in January. 

However, some residents remain unconvinced about their effectiveness. 

"Even though we’re hearing about these new standards, new practices, it’s all risk-mitigating, it’s not safe yet," said Gabriel Piazza of Holbrook, urging town officials to do "whatever we can do to stop the development of these near our schools and our communities."

Seth Rivera, who lives near a proposed site in Manorville and formerly worked for the U.S. Department of Energy, told Brookhaven officials the majority of the community "does not want" the plants and asked why the town would even entertain the permits. 

Rivera said the Key Capture Energy project in Manorville was of "particular concern" given its location near schools and homes, and urged against any fast-track approval for it because "adequate environmental studies have not been completed, risk assessment studies have not been completed" and there are no planned evacuation routes.

"Why are you so willing to go against the entirety of your constituency," Rivera asked board members, to applause. Panico assured him that was not the case. 

Most who spoke in favor of the batteries were contractors and unionized workers who have already built them and are eager to build more, along with green-energy groups who say they'll lessen reliance on fossil fuels and stabilize the grid.

Some who spoke said they were affiliated with Haugland Group, the Melville-based company that built Long Island’s first two batteries, in East Hampton and Montauk. Repeated reference was made during the evening to the East Hampton plant, which is now shut down following reports of water contamination around the facility following the 2023 fire. The Montauk facility is also temporarily shut down following an agreement between battery owner NextEra and Suffolk County. 

Billy Haugland, chief executive of the Haugland Group, in messages to Newsday Friday, acknowledged the company was selected in a competitive process to construct the two existing batteries and, more recently, to rebuild them recently to "safer technology."

"Now each individual battery unit has a suppression capability" built into it, he said.

Lucia Yu, senior manager for development at Key Capture Energy, gave a presentation at the meeting about the safety of the new battery designs, and also met informally with residents after it. She told residents that there’s "no scenario" in which all 196 battery containers at the Manorville site would ever go on fire because of "safety measures that are in place in each individual container."

With a new safer design for the plants and a new approach to fires that would involve allowing them to burn out on their own, Yu said that in the unlikely event of a fire at a new plant, it could fully burn out in 10 hours. The East Hampton plant burned for more than 30 hours.

Asked why KCE wouldn’t just jump ahead to zinc bromide technology which is less likely to cause fires, Yu said, "The whole point of having a large-scale battery project is to stabilize the grid at a rate that’s economic to ratepayers. If we use zinc batteries it won’t be economic for us ..." 

Asked how much people’s bills would go down once the new battery was in place, she acknowledged: "It doesn’t directly correlate with bills decreasing. It helps bills increase at a lower rate than it would otherwise. Because energy costs more and more and if you have more battery storage projects on the grid, there’s less reliance on fossil-fuel peaker plants, which are extremely expensive ..."

Erin Taylor, a Manorville resident, asked Yu why the Weaks Ave. plant wasn’t put in a more industrial area rather than in her neighborhood where schools and farms surround it. Yu noted that it’s near LIPA connection points. 

"Because it’s extremely close to infrastructure it helps reduce costs of the build, and in turn for ratepayers, because we’re paying less to connect to the grid," she said. KCE expects construction to start in 2029.

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

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