New York’s first state-owned BESS starts up

September 7, 2023: New York’s first state-owned BESS has started operations, governor Kathy Hochul announced on August 25.

The 20MW Northern New York Energy Storage Project, in North Country’s Franklin County, is helping to relieve transmission congestion on the state’s electric grid.

Hochul said the move paves the way for the utility industry and the private sector to better understand how to integrate more clean energy into the power system, especially during times of peak demand.

The facility, maintained and operated by the St Lawrence-Franklin D Roosevelt Power Project, consists of five 53ft walk-in enclosures, each with more than 19,500 lithium ion batteries grouped in modules and stacked in racks.

The board of trustees of the New York Power Authority approved $6 million for the project in 2018 and a further $23.8 million in 2019. NYPA said then that the total estimated project cost was nearly $30 million.

The BESS will serve as a model for future storage systems and create a more reliable and resilient power supply in a region heavily powered by renewable energy, Hochul said.