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A fire at the battery energy storage system in East Hampton caused its closure for more than a year. It resumed operation on July 3.
Thirteen months after a 5-megawatt lithium-ion battery energy storage system, or BESS, caught fire at a Cove Hollow Road, East Hampton, substation, the installation has been returned to service.
The BESS resumed operation on July 3, “after the project was rebuilt according to all applicable regulatory requirements, and pursuant to our contract with the Long Island Power Authority,” a spokesman for NextEra Energy Resources said in an email this week.
The May 31, 2023, fire at the facility, a partnership between NextEra and National Grid, was one of three at BESS facilities in New York State last year. BESS fires in June and July in Warwick and Chaumont, respectively, contributed to Southampton Town’s August 2023 enactment of a six-month moratorium on BESS applications. That moratorium has been extended twice and remains in effect.
An application for a BESS on North Road in Hampton Bays, close to Montauk Highway, the Long Island Rail Road track and the Shinnecock Canal, was before the town’s Planning Board at the time.
In East Hampton, “the project’s water-based fire suppression systems operated as designed and quickly contained the … fire to the site,” the spokesman said. “No further emergency response was required. All our energy storage facilities are managed, monitored and cooled in a controlled manner to keep project equipment functioning safely.”
