Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) Advocacy

Fact: Failures are rare and getting rarer. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), which maintains the global BESS failure database, found that 0.3% of battery storage projects experienced a failure leading to a fire with potential safety concerns in 2024. Over the same six-year stretch in which global deployment grew from about 11 GWh to more than 300 GWh — roughly a 30-fold increase — failure rates fell by more than 98%. The number of incidents per year stayed roughly flat while the installed fleet exploded in size. That is the signature of a technology getting safer, not more dangerous.

Fact: Moss Landing is the wrong benchmark. That California facility packed battery racks into a repurposed 1950s turbine hall — an indoor design used by fewer than 1% of U.S. utility-scale storage projects — and it was built before NFPA 855, the first national fire safety standard for energy storage, even existed. It also used NMC cell chemistry, which is more prone to thermal runaway. More than 80% of new utility-scale projects now use lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells in separated outdoor enclosures. Fire and Risk Alliance concluded Moss Landing "would not be allowed under today's codes."

Fact: New York already tested this. After the 2023 BESS fires in Jefferson, Orange, and Suffolk Counties, the Governor's Inter-Agency Fire Safety Working Group — DEC, the Office of Fire Prevention and Control, and the Department of Health — conducted air, soil, and water sampling and found no reported injuries and no harmful levels of toxins. A NYSERDA-commissioned study found the gases released by battery fires have average toxicity similar to or lower than a common household or office plastics fire. A 2025 review of post-fire sampling across multiple BESS events found no air, surface water, or groundwater contamination requiring remediation.

Fact: They are trained and equipped precisely because the code requires it. The 2025 Fire Code of New York State (§1207) — adopted on July 25, 2025 and now effective statewide — was written by the Inter-Agency Fire Safety Working Group with FDNY, state agencies, and national laboratories, and it is among the most detailed BESS fire codes in the country. It mandates hazard mitigation analysis, large-scale fire testing, gas detection, explosion control, and thermal management. Islip's own code already requires an approved emergency operations plan filed with the local fire department, plus scheduled drills and first-responder training.

Fact: Short-term help is the point, not a defect. Batteries are often deployed to cover the evening peak, when solar output falls off but demand is still high — exactly Long Island's problem on a July evening. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation credited recent BESS deployments in Texas, California, and the West with markedly improving the ability to manage summer energy shortfall risk, particularly in those evening hours. Batteries also deliver services no gas plant can match at speed: frequency regulation, voltage support, and black-start capability, worth roughly $100/kW-year in capacity and frequency regulation value alone.

Fact: The state's own analysis says the opposite. The Public Service Commission found that New York's 6 GW storage buildout is expected to reduce projected future statewide electric system costs by nearly $2 billion. On Long Island specifically, a NY-BEST/Strategen study found that replacing 2,300 MW of aging peaker capacity with storage would save LIPA customers roughly $390 million over a decade. Storage is also getting cheaper fast: BloombergNEF put the benchmark cost of a four-hour battery project at $78/MWh in 2025, down 27% in one year and the lowest since it began tracking in 2009.

Fact: Long Island runs on an aging fleet of roughly 4,300 MW of fossil-fueled peaker plants, with more than three-quarters of New York's peakers being at least 30 years old. One of them, NYPA's Brentwood station, sits inside the Town of Islip, and a 2023 state law directs NYPA to retire its small gas plants by the end of 2030 where reliability and air quality conditions allow. Something has to cover those peak hours. Batteries are the resource NYISO, NYPA, and LIPA are all planning around — and Islip is part of a constrained load pocket where local capacity matters most.

Fact: Batteries charge during low-demand, low-emissions hours and discharge during the dirtiest, most expensive hours, displacing the oldest and least efficient generators on the system. Strategen calculated that replacing Long Island's peakers with storage would eliminate 2.65 million metric tons of CO₂, 1,910 tons of NOₓ, and 639 tons of SO₂ annually, producing roughly $163 million a year in societal benefits, largely from cleaner air in the communities that currently host those plants. Round-trip efficiency losses are real, but they are far smaller than the emissions avoided.

Fact: Two separate safeguards apply. First, decommissioning is a permit condition: Islip's code requires a decommissioning plan prepared by a licensed New York engineer and a cash bond or fund payable to the Town that must stay valid until the site is fully cleared. Second, these materials have value. Spent cells are shredded into "black mass" and lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, and graphite are recovered through established processes. As of August 2025 there were 39 lithium battery recycling plants operating in the United States, and DOE's Argonne Battery Recycling Center is targeting 90% material recovery.

Fact: The research doesn't support it. A University of Pennsylvania study using a difference-in-differences design across 178 operational utility-scale BESS projects found no statistically significant effect on nearby home prices, with the confidence interval ruling out anything outside a roughly −1.1% to +1.3% range. The result held across individual projects, across years since the project came online, and across census tracts with different demographics. Screening, setback, and landscaping requirements — all already in Islip's code — address the visual concerns that drive most of this worry.

1. Rahul Rao, Are Grid Battery Storage Systems Fire-Prone? Early Data Suggests Their Fires Are Rare, Science Feedback (Dec. 2, 2025) — https://science.feedback.org/are-grid-battery-storage-systems-fire-prone/
2. Fire & Risk Alliance, LLC, Assessment of Potential Impacts of Fires at BESS Facilities (2025), prepared for the American Clean Power Association — https://cleanpower.org/wp-content/uploads/gateway/2025/03/Assessment-of-Potential-Impacts-of-Fires-at-BESS-Facilities_FINAL_Sep-2025.pdf
3. Western Electricity Coordinating Council, Moss Landing BESS Fire Report (Dec. 2025) — https://www.wecc.org/sites/default/files/documents/progress_report/2025/Moss%20Landing%20BESS%20Fire%20Report%20Final%2012.22.25.pdf
4. NYS Inter-Agency Fire Safety Working Group, Air, Soil, and Water Data Findings (Dec. 2023); Gov. Hochul, Initial Findings Released From Inter-Agency Fire Safety Working Group (Dec. 21, 2023) — https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-release-initial-findings-inter-agency-fire-safety-working-group
5. DNV GL, Considerations for ESS Fire Safety: Final Report (Feb. 2017), prepared for Con Edison and NYSERDA — https://www.nyserda.ny.gov/-/media/Project/Nyserda/Files/Publications/Research/Energy-Storage/20170118-ConEd-NYSERDA-Battery-Testing-Report.pdf
6. NYSERDA, New York's Inter-Agency Fire Safety Working Group (2025 Fire Code of NYS, § 1207, adopted July 25, 2025) — https://www.nyserda.ny.gov/All-Programs/Energy-Storage-Program/New-York-Inter-Agency-Fire-Safety-Working-Group
7. North American Electric Reliability Corp., 2025 Summer Reliability Assessment — https://www.nerc.com/globalassets/programs/rapa/ra/nerc_sra_2025.pdf
8. Balducci, Mongird & Weimar, Understanding the Value of Energy Storage for Power System Reliability and Resilience Applications, 8 Current Sustainable/Renewable Energy Reports 131 (2021).
9. NYS Public Service Commission, PSC Approves Bulk Energy Storage Plan — https://dps.ny.gov/news/psc-approves-bulk-energy-storage-plan
10. NY-BEST & Strategen Consulting, Long Island Fossil Peaker Replacement Study (Oct. 2020) — https://ny-best.org/news/533517/Study-Finds-Energy-Storage-Can-Save-Long-Island-Electric-Customers-390-million-over-the-Next-Decade.htm
11. BloombergNEF, Levelized Cost of Electricity 2026 (Feb. 18, 2026) — https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-energy/battery-storage-costs-hit-record-lows-as-costs-of-other-clean-power-technologies-increased-bloombergnef/
12. U.S. Energy Information Administration, Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory (Aug. 2026).
13. New York Power Authority, Small Natural Gas Power Plants — https://www.nypa.gov/Small-Natural-Gas-Power-Plants
14. National Institute of Standards & Technology, Lithium Batteries and the Circular Economy — https://www.nist.gov/circular-economy/lithium-batteries-and-circular-economy
15. U.S. Int'l Trade Comm'n, USMCA Automotive Rules of Origin: Economic Impact and Operation, 2025 Report, Pub. No. 5642 — https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/pub5642.pdf
16. U.S. Dep't of Energy, Energy Department Announces Opening of Battery Recycling Center at Argonne National Lab — https://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-department-announces-opening-battery-recycling-center-argonne-national-lab
17. The Impact of Utility-scale Battery Energy Storage System Projects on Property Values, University of Pennsylvania — https://repository.upenn.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/f1ac4248-d424-4fe4-9d9c-563108cec75f/content
18. Town of Islip, Town Board Resolutions (Aug. 27, 2026), proposed amendments to Islip Town Code § 68-456 — https://www.islipny.gov/community-and-services/documents/meeting-documents-agendas-notices-resolutions/town-board/1750-8-27-2026-town-board-meeting-resolutions/file