A 250 MW battery — potentially New York's largest — proposed beside Kingston neighborhoods, now in the scoping phase of a full environmental review the town was pressed into ordering.
Town of Ulster (bordering Kingston & Hurley) · Ulster County · Energy storage · Status: in progress — under review, contested
The Alcazar Energy Storage System is a proposed 250 MW / 1,000 MWh (4-hour) lithium-ion (LFP) battery storage facility — capacity its developer says could serve roughly 250,000 homes. It would put about 12 acres of development on the former John A. Coleman Catholic High School site at 430 & 439 Hurley Avenue (a ~39.8-acre parcel per the SEQRA notice), a strip in the Town of Ulster bordered by the City of Kingston and the Town of Hurley, interconnecting at Central Hudson's Hurley substation. The plan includes roughly 300 battery containers (about 14 feet tall), a substation, and three water-storage tanks. If built, it would be the largest battery storage facility in New York. (NYSDEC Environmental Notice Bulletin)
The developer, Terra-Gen — which advances the project through a wholly-owned project company, Alcazar ESS, LLC — is a 50/50 joint venture of Masdar and Igneo Infrastructure Partners; Masdar's half-stake closed in October 2024. Masdar is a clean-energy company owned by the Abu Dhabi state entities ADNOC, Mubadala (the emirate's sovereign wealth fund), and TAQA — the basis for opponents' "foreign-owned" framing. (Early local coverage called the project "funded by Alcazar Energy"; that appears to conflate the project's name with an unrelated firm and is unconfirmed — see open questions.) Terra-Gen, concentrated in California and Texas, reported roughly 3.8 GW of operating wind, solar and storage across about 30 sites at the 2024 Masdar close; Alcazar appears to be its principal New York project. Terra-Gen bid the project into NYSERDA's bulk energy-storage solicitation. (Masdar)
Fire-safety capacity has become a central thread. The chairman of Ulster Hose Co. No. 1, Clay Harshberger, says the company has struggled to get suppression and training detail from Terra-Gen; the developer points to a code-compliant fire-protection design (LFP chemistry, detection, monitoring, suppression), while state reps Shrestha and Hinchey and County Executive Metzger argue modern LFP systems and NY's fire code make a serious incident rare. NYSERDA is reported to be testing the proposed container technology. (WKIP, Jan 2026)
The developer's current targets are construction around 2028 and operation around 2029 — dates that follow, rather than predate, the environmental review.
comprehensive, code-compliant fire-protection approach
our office has done our due diligence
Terra-Gen has done a significant amount of due diligence
putting it in the middle of a residential area is just insane
industrial-scale, and not one I would want to be located so close to residential areas
not a question of if there will be a fire... the question is when
Two documented interests are in tension. The project would add 250 MW of storage — capacity New York's climate law calls for — at a grid-critical substation, and the developer says it will meet current fire-safety codes. It would also place roughly 300 lithium-ion containers within a half-mile of hundreds of homes, two churches, and three schools, where a local fire company and residents cite fire and toxic-gas risk and question evacuation and emergency response — a tension state officials counter by pointing to LFP chemistry and NY's fire code. The ownership complicates the "clean energy" framing: Terra-Gen is half-owned by Masdar, a company held by Abu Dhabi state entities — a point opponents foreground, though the critique is local. National general-interest press has not covered the project, and no federal (CFIUS) review is on record.
A recurring procedural question runs through the record: whether a project like this is decided through a site-specific environmental review — the path the Town of Ulster has now ordered — or through broader municipal moratoria, and how each affects project timelines and the state's storage targets. Pending state legislation to extend siting authority (ORES) to standalone storage would shift that balance; as of mid-2026 it remained in committee (see the landscape overview).