Richard Ellenbogen
The September 18, 2026 fire at Vistra’s Moss Landing battery-energy-storage facility—reported as a 300-MW, 1,200-MWh installation and once described as the world’s largest battery-storage project—should force policymakers to reconsider the assumption that utility-scale lithium-ion storage is ready for dense urban deployment. This is not an argument against all energy storage. It is an argument against treating a technology with unresolved fire-suppression, contamination, and grid-performance issues as a universal substitute for dependable generation.
Watts Up With That has previously published my concerns about battery energy storage systems, or BESS. In my recent article, “Bonfires of the Batteries,” I argued that the rush to install large battery systems in or near populated areas too often relies on reassuring talking points and incomplete consideration of public-safety and environmental risks.
The Siting Problem Cannot Be Wished Away
In January 2026, I prepared a white paper, “The Intrinsic Danger of Siting Utility Scale Lithium Based Energy Storage Systems in Densely Populated Areas,” in response to concerns about a proposed BESS installation in Hauppauge, New York.
The issue was not simply that the project would use batteries. It was the proposed location: a densely developed community near an elementary school, streams, porous soils, and a shallow aquifer. In such a setting, a battery fire is not merely an industrial accident confined to a fenced parcel. It can become an emergency-response, water-contamination, and public-health issue for the surrounding community.
The Hauppauge Fire Department’s website describes concerns following the East Hampton lithium-battery-storage fire, including litigation brought by the Suffolk County Water Authority over alleged groundwater contamination. The allegations deserve particular attention because Long Island depends heavily on groundwater and has soils and hydrogeologic conditions that can make contamination difficult and costly to contain or remediate.
The central problem has three related components.
- Thermal runaway and fire suppression. Lithium Based batteries can overheat, enter thermal runaway, reignite, and release hazardous gases. Newer systems may reduce some risks, but they do not eliminate them. There is no universally effective means of promptly extinguishing a large lithium battery fire. Water may be required to cool adjacent equipment and prevent propagation, but it also creates the possibility of contaminated runoff.
- Contamination after a fire. The January 2025 Moss Landing fire raised concerns about deposition of battery-related metals and other contaminants in adjacent wetlands and coastal areas. Rainfall, tidal action, and surface runoff can move contaminants beyond the original site. What begins as a battery fire may therefore become a broader soil, wetland, groundwater, or surface-water problem.
- Local environmental vulnerability. A site with impermeable containment, substantial separation from homes, no nearby schools, few people, and no vulnerable water resources presents a different risk profile than a BESS located in a dense residential or commercial area over permeable soils and a shallow aquifer. Policymakers should not treat all sites as interchangeable.
The appropriate policy response is not a blanket prohibition on every form of battery storage. It is a restrictive and precautionary siting standard. Utility-scale lithium battery facilities should be limited to locations with very few nearby people and without vulnerable surface-water or groundwater receptors. If a fire occurs, the consequences must be capable of being contained. That is a minimum standard, not an unreasonable demand.
Firefighters Have Other Emergencies
Every high-energy system carries some fire risk. During more than 50 years working with high-energy electrical systems, I have never seen one that was 100 percent fireproof. My first job involved overseeing a project that analyzed and tested energy systems for AT&T/Bell Laboratories, then the world’s largest utility and operator of roughly 90 percent of U.S. telephone service. The engineering principle is simple: a system must be designed around the realistic possibility of failure.
I would not install a system for which there is no viable way to extinguish a conflagration. Doing so in a populated setting is evidence of an unconscionable level of hubris.
The concern is not limited to the affected BESS site. A prolonged battery fire can consume fire-department personnel, apparatus, water supplies, hazardous-materials resources, traffic control, and mutual-aid capacity for many hours or even days.
A recent house fire on Pelhamdale Avenue in Pelham, NY illustrates the point. Engine companies from Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, and Pelham responded. At about the same time, a fire alarm occurred at the New York Athletic Club, and it reportedly took 45 minutes for first responders to arrive. Fortunately, that was a false alarm.
But imagine the implications if multiple departments were committed to a BESS emergency lasting 24 hours or more. Who responds to the next house fire, medical emergency, hazardous-materials incident, or alarm at a school, hospital, or public facility? BESS proponents too often evaluate a site as though the only consequence of a fire is damage to the battery containers. The real consequence may be a reduced ability to protect an entire community. It is even more consequential in areas that depend upon volunteer fire departments.
Batteries Need a Stable Grid
The second major problem is the assumption that batteries will provide dependable support to the downstate New York grid served by Con Ed when the system is under the greatest stress.
BESS can be used in a well-designed grid, but batteries cannot create electricity. They can only store electricity that was previously generated. More importantly, battery systems require a sufficiently stable electrical system to operate, recharge, and synchronize their inverters. Without adequate dependable generation, batteries may not be available when they are needed most.
The early-July 2026 heat-wave event demonstrated the concern. The July 1–4 event had low voltages on the Con Edison system for more than 48 hours. The same underlying conditions that reportedly caused motor variable-frequency drives at the Yonkers sewage-treatment plant to fail—contributing to the discharge of 39 million gallons of raw sewage into the Hudson River—could also undermine battery-storage inverters.
Grid-connected inverters convert battery direct current into alternating current that can operate on the utility system. I own multiple grid-connected inverters at my home and factory. During the July 1–4 period, the inverters repeatedly issued frequency warnings and shut down. After a battery has discharged, an eight-hour storage system cannot help again unless the grid has enough available generation and acceptable voltage and frequency conditions to recharge it. Frequency instability is as function of having insufficient generation to support the load.
The nominal frequency of the U.S. power system is 60 hertz. Under normal conditions, it typically varies within a narrow range, roughly 59.95 to 60.05 hertz . 60 hz +/- 0.05 hz. During the July event, I measured variations ten times larger (59.5 hz – 60.5 hz). 60 hz +/- 0.5 hz. Inverters are designed to disconnect when frequency or voltage moves outside their protection settings. They do so to protect themselves and to avoid worsening a system disturbance.
This is not a minor technical detail. It is central to the claim that BESS can replace dispatchable generation. If the downstate grid lacks sufficient generation and loses voltage or frequency stability, the battery inverters may shut down precisely when policymakers expect them to carry the system.
The Inverter Dependence Problem
The April 2025 Iberian Peninsula blackout should also be a warning. In Spain and Portugal, approximately 9 GW of inverter-based resources reportedly disconnected over a short period, and the system collapsed. Spain and Portugal required external support, including from French nuclear generation, in restoring the grid. The precise technical sequence remains contested, however system frequency graphs showed large fluctuations just prior to the outage. The larger lesson is plain: a grid with extensive inverter-based resources must be designed and operated with great care.
New York’s Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act Scoping Plan moves to a system that depends increasingly on wind, solar, and battery inverters while simultaneously retiring or constraining dispatchable generation. That is not a recipe for resilience unless the system has adequate voltage support, fault-current capability, reserve generation, and other services such as grid inertia traditionally supplied by large rotating generators.
I wrote a paper for the New York State Public Service Commission in 2008, after installing solar arrays, that anticipated local inverter-related issues. At the time, I never believed that policymakers would attempt to operate an entire large metropolitan system with a dominant share of inverter-based generation. Yet that is increasingly the direction of policy.
The downstate system remains 90% dependent on fossil-fuel generation. Charging batteries from that system does not make the energy clean; it adds 15% – 20% charging and discharging losses and increases the carbon footprint of that stored energy proportionally. If batteries are charged primarily from fossil generation, storage shifts electricity in time but increases the generation required to serve the same final load.
Renewable generation is also not a simple near-term answer to the downstate reliability deficit. Offshore wind and major transmission proposals have encountered extraordinary cost and execution problems. In 2023, offshore-wind costs were already far above prevailing wholesale electricity prices. The Clean Path NY transmission proposal encountered material cost difficulties in 2024. Federal policy changes after January 2025 may have added further uncertainty, but New York’s problems predate those changes.
Rooftop solar can make sense in appropriate locations, but it is not a substitute for the dispatchable generation and grid-support services required by New York City and the surrounding downstate region during prolonged heat waves, winter peaks, or low-renewable-output periods.
BESS Is Not a Substitute for Planning
Sodium-based battery systems may be less fire-prone than lithium-ion systems, and safer chemistries deserve serious consideration. But even a less-flammable battery does not solve the fundamental grid problem: storage cannot provide dependable resilience without adequate, stable, dispatchable generation behind it.
New combined-cycle gas generation may take at least seven years to develop, permit, construct, and place into service. New nuclear capacity would likely require far longer—potentially 15 years or more. Meanwhile, New York must confront the present condition of the downstate grid rather than assume that proposed BESS projects will repair deficiencies created by inadequate generation planning.
The state should first ensure that downstate New York has sufficient dependable generation, voltage support, and operational reserves. It should then evaluate storage projects based on demonstrated reliability benefits, not aspirational modeling assumptions. Finally, it should impose siting restrictions that acknowledge the fire, contamination, emergency-response, and public-safety consequences of utility-scale lithium-ion systems.
A BESS installation should not be approved simply because it can be called “clean energy infrastructure.” It should be required to show that it can operate safely, that a credible emergency-response plan exists, that contamination can be prevented or contained, and that it will remain functional under the grid conditions for which it is being proposed.
New York cannot achieve a clean, affordable, and reliable electric system by installing expensive batteries in vulnerable locations while leaving its underlying generation and grid-stability problems unresolved. Batteries can be useful tools, but they are not magic. And at present, in the places where New York most wants to rely upon them, they remain a science project.
Richard Ellenbogen, M.E.E., is President of Allied Converters is an early adopter of renewable technologies at both my home and business more than two decades ago. I support practical environmental improvements. However, experience with high-energy electrical systems, inverters, utility equipment, and real-world operating constraints leads me to a different conclusion than the one often promoted by BESS developers: lithium battery storage is still, in crucial respects, a science project.
