The backdrop for every battery case on this site. Battery energy storage (BESS) is where New York’s climate goals most directly meet local land-use control.
On December 19, 2025, a lithium-ion BESS at Convergent Energy’s Church Street (“West Warwick 3”) facility in the Village of Warwick (Orange County) caught fire. Air monitoring detected hydrogen cyanide at 0.5 ppm beside the facility (downwind readings were zero). Officials said the fire involved an “unauthorized,” non-compliant system that should not have been operating, and that water infiltration triggered it — the same cause cited in a 2023 fire. The incident became the rallying point for a fresh wave of moratoria. (Village of Warwick; Energy-Storage.news)
Note: the Warwick fire involved an unauthorized, non-compliant system — a detail relevant to whether the appropriate response is enforced safety standards or broad prohibition.
The core question is state siting vs. home rule. Bills S5506 / A8378 would extend the Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES) — which already streamlines large renewables past local approval — to standalone battery storage (qualified systems ≥25 MW). Both remain in the Senate’s Energy & Telecommunications Committee — last action a Jan 7, 2026 referral, and neither has passed either chamber as of mid-2026. (NY Senate, S5506) The outcome bears directly on whether the 6 GW target is reachable.
Each row below has its own case file. Scope is from the town’s actual law text where a case file exists — and several differ from the statewide tracker, which labels a number of these “utility-scale” when the adopted law covers all battery storage. (Carina Energy)
| County | Town | Type | Scope | Case file |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ulster | Plattekill | Ban | ALL_BESS | plattekill-mission-clear |
| Ulster | Town of Ulster | Contested project | — | alcazar-ess-terra-gen |
| Ulster | Saugerties | Contested project | — | saugerties-kce-tomsons-road |
| Ulster | Hurley | Moratorium → drafting ban | Large-scale | hurley-bess-moratorium |
| Ulster | Gardiner | Moratorium (project stalled) | >600 kWh | gardiner-mckinstry-road-bess |
| Dutchess | Stanford | Moratorium | ALL_BESS + wind | stanford-bess-moratorium |
| Columbia | Claverack | Moratorium | Unconfirmed | claverack-bess-moratorium |
| Columbia | Livingston | Moratorium | ALL_BESS | livingston-bess-moratorium |
| Columbia | Stockport | Moratorium | ALL_BESS | stockport-bess-moratorium |
| Greene | Athens | Moratorium | ALL_BESS | athens-bess-moratorium |
| Orange | Chester | Moratorium | ≥600 kWh | chester-bess-moratorium |
| Orange | Montgomery | Ban | All storage (reported) | montgomery-kce-ny-11 |
| Orange | Warwick | Delivered (+ fire) | — | warwick-convergent-bess |
Delivered counter-examples. Warwick (Orange County) is the one Hudson Valley BESS that was sited, approved, and energized — and then became the region’s cautionary fire story. For a clean, uncontested “the process works” build, KCE NY 6 in Erie County (Western NY) is included as an out-of-region comparison.