Got Electricity? New York’s Grid Is Strained. The Battery Energy Storage Industry Has to Step Up.
A few weeks ago, the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) confirmed what many in the industry already knew. The state is heading into summer with the lowest reliability margin NYISO has ever calculated, raising the risk of curtailments, brownouts, and blackouts.
Demand is growing as electrification accelerates across EVs, buildings, industrial power, and data centers. Supply is tighter because aging peaker plants, many of them sitting in environmental justice communities, have come offline under regulations that should have come decades earlier. New generation is not entering the system fast enough to replace what is leaving.
Battery energy storage systems, also known as BESS, are one of the few tools that can be deployed at the speed and scale needed right now. It can soak up surplus power when the grid produces more energy than is needed, like excess solar in midday or spare hydropower or wind overnight, and discharge it back during the hours that matter most, easing strain on local infrastructure, stabilizing energy prices, and reducing the need to turn on the dirtiest plants on the dirtiest days.
The policy and market case for BESS overall is strong. But, we need to double down on the case for any specific BESS project, and it has to be made in the communities where these systems will live.
I have spent my career on the community side of New York energy infrastructure. At Con Edison, I learned that a utility’s relationship with a neighborhood is built one block association and one community board at a time. In offshore wind, the conversation about the grid stretched from waterfront communities in the boroughs to fishing fleets on Long Island. In large-scale renewable development, the projects that got built were almost always the ones whose developers showed up early, listened first, and treated local concerns as legitimate questions rather than obstacles. The projects that stalled were the ones that took for granted they would be welcomed with open arms.
BESS is at a point where those habits are formed. Every developer in this industry is being watched right now. Communities in Staten Island, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and across the state are reading our materials, attending our meetings, watching how we answer hard questions, and noticing if we do not show up. The technical case for battery storage is compelling, but it does not matter if residents do not trust the people building it.
That trust has to be earned through dedicated, sustained work. It means building real relationships with elected officials, communities, local neighbors, and business and civic organizations before there is a project to defend, not after. It means partnering with fire safety experts and local first responders on training and on the codes that already make New York the most rigorous BESS regulatory environment in the country. It means hiring and sourcing locally where possible, and being honest about what a project will and will not do for a neighborhood. It means saying out loud that there has never been a utility-scale battery storage fire in New York City, and then explaining why, in plain language, instead of leaving residents to piece it together themselves.
It also means investing in public understanding. While battery storage has been around for many years, community BESS is new to most people. The industry cannot expect the public to be fluent in megawatt-hours and UL-certification. We have a responsibility to translate, to educate, and to do it in ways that respect people’s time and intelligence.
At Orenda, we treat that responsibility as the job. We engage officials, first responders, neighbors, and local media in every community that will host our projects, and we use every tool in the responsible development toolbox to explain how the technology works and why community-scale BESS is essential to a cleaner, more reliable, and more affordable grid. This summer we are launching new public education efforts that explain how the technology works, why these systems are needed, and the rigorous permitting and safety standards behind them. We are also investing in industry-wide work to build understanding of BESS across New York.
Incumbent energy technologies have spent decades funding campaigns to make their case to the public. BESS needs to step up and match that level of investment. New York’s clean energy sector has been losing the information war, outspent 28 to 1 by fossil fuel interests. One model worth serious consideration is a checkoff program. The dairy industry’s “Got Milk” campaign is the most familiar example: producers pay a technology-specific assessment into an industry-led board that funds public education, advocacy, and research. BESS should look hard at building something similar.
NYISO’s warning should land with everyone in this industry. The grid does not have margin to spare, and the consequences of inaction will not be felt evenly. They will fall hardest on the same neighborhoods that have lived next to peaker plants for fifty years. Battery storage offers a path to a more reliable, more affordable, and cleaner energy system, but only if developers do the work to bring communities along. How we handle the challenges of project siting over the next few years will determine whether we get there.
To my fellow developers and to the partners who work alongside us, the trade groups, the validators, the utilities, the policymakers, and the community organizations willing to engage in good faith: this is the moment to do the work. We need to continue to show up, organize and build coalitions, fund education, and train first responders. Committed budgets and staff to building trust is necessary and the way to maintain our social license. The state is asking us to help solve a problem it cannot solve alone. The communities we want to build in are asking us to prove we are worth having as neighbors. Both can be true at the same time, and both deserve our best effort.
New York’s grid will not wait, and neither can we.
By Michael Porto, Director of External Affairs, Orenda
