A Recent Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) Fire

It's been a bit since I had a chance to talk about one of these - or the time, frankly, all things blowing up in the world considered.

But this one kind of hit close to where I grew up - right across the border from our little New Jersey mountain enclave in a small, what I remember as thoroughly charming New York town called Warwick. Dear friends of my folks lived there - he was another Eastern captain, although much senior to my Daddy, and Warwick had some pretty fine dining, too, for our neck of the rural woods. Some of the houses were just glorious, with a fair number dating back almost to the Revolution and even colonial days.

I see the oldest house still standing now is from 1764, according to the historical society.

It was a lovely place to visit.

So when I read Francis Menton's (The Manhattan Contrarian) piece the other day, I was kind of surprised to see the town mentioned as the site of not just one, but two lithium-ion battery energy storage systems (BESS) fires in the past two and a half years, with the most recent being the 19th of December.

Menton's article is geared toward dissuading projects already in work, as New York City plans to plop these facilities in the middle of residential city neighborhoods with little to no forethought about how one handles a fire if one erupts.

That's a legitimate question in spaces as confined as any urban block, packed to the gills with people and combustibles, like the Big Apple. I covered their plans extensively in a post back in August - it surely seems like insanity in lethal action.

Environmental Protection Agency Director Lee Zeldin is working on doing what he can to scuttle it, too.

Many New Yorkers have been telling New York State NO to Battery Energy Storage Systems in their neighborhoods. Legitimate concerns over emergency response and safety from lithium fires are being ignored in pursuit of impossible climate targets the state knows it cannot hit. https://t.co/Mmo3e0gMV4

— Lee Zeldin (@epaleezeldin) August 18, 2025

Menton's article has a map in it that depicts where a much larger facility than the Warwick BESS is going to be located, and he builds a mental scenario that leaves one wondering about 'what would happen if?' with these city facilities being so much larger and more powerful. The map lets you visualize what a toxic cloud would do to Manhattan if the breeze switched the wrong way. Forget about the immediate working-class neighbors, because they're already toast.

...The Convergent Energy Warwick energy storage facility has a capacity of 12 MW and 57 MWh.  Meanwhile, back here in New York City, there are plans, well advanced (although not quite yet under construction), to build a much larger grid battery storage facility in Ravenswood, Queens.  That would be right on the East River, directly across from East Midtown and the Upper East Side of Manhattan:

You can see on the map how close much of Manhattan is to this facility.  To be fair, the wind usually blows the other way, but the parts of Queens near this facility are also very densely populated.  Something called Queensbridge Houses — the largest public housing project in the country — is immediately adjacent.

The planned capacity of the battery storage facility in Ravenswood is 316 MW/2528 MWh — some 25 or more times the size of the facility in Warwick that has now caught fire at least twice.

A New York agency going by the name NYSERDA (New York State Energy Research and Development Authority) is leading the charge to build these energy storage facilities, including in densely populated areas like Queens.  On their website, they have a page touting the new battery storage project at the Ravenswood location.  Believe it or not, their sales pitch is that the new battery facility is cleaner and greener than the prior natural gas power plants on the site.  Here is a quote they take from Queens Borough President Donovan Richards:

“The days of environmental and economic injustice in Western Queens, especially for our historically marginalized public housing families, are coming to an end. As we prepare to transform the Ravenswood Generating Station into a clean energy producer, it’s critical that the surrounding community reaps the benefits of that transition,” said Borough President Richards.

It seems as if the facility at Warwick has been snake bitten since it was built.

Shortly after it opened, on 26 June, 2025, two separate fires erupted due to storm-related damage that then smoldered for more than a week.

Fires at two lithium-ion battery energy storage sites (BESS) in Warwick, N.Y., have been smoldering for more than a week, after officials say a storm-related issue caused the newly installed units to ignite and burn in two separate incidents on June 26.

Located in residential areas – one near three schools, a bus garage and some athletic fields – the sites were constructed and developed by Convergent Energy, a provider of energy storage solutions that was awarded an opportunity to build similar storage sites on Staten Island in 2021.

They were called a 'significant health concern' at the time, and the fire department had had no training on how to handle a fire at the BESS, God forbid something went wrong. 

...And now, the company’s Warwick facilities, one of which was put into operation in May, are being dubbed a significant health concern for the Orange County community.

“Residents in town reported a burning glue-like smell on Wednesday, which is now gone as the fire at the school complex smolders,” News 12 Westchester reported. “Authorities said they had to let it burn out on its own, because water would make it worse. Fire officials said Thursday that the smell was likely the odor of the batteries’ plastic covers burning.”

Michael Contaxis, chief of the Warwick Fire Department, addressed community safety concerns during a Warwick Village Board meeting on July 3. According to the Warwick Advertiser, Contaxis said that while the local fire department took action to mitigate the risk to the community, it was provided no formal training on these systems by Powin, the manufacturer of the energy storage systems housed in the Convergent Energy facilities. He also explained how battery fires cannot be handled with water and need to burn out on their own.

It sounds as if the fire department was hopeful that the stench was just the batteries' plastic covers burning off - not that they were sure they were.

Folks in Staten Island were fighting off these facilities at the time, and using the Warwick fire as an example of what could go wrong. Not to mention what was wrong with how the installation and placement of these were being handled by local authorities and the state, without any seeming forethought about safety or the quality of the facility itself.

Everything swung on promises by whatever approved Green grifters were putting them in.

...And as similar BESS units continue to crop up across Staten Island, the fires and resulting poor air quality sparked concerns for borough residents.

“This is exactly what we were afraid of, this is what they wanted to put in our parking lot,” one Bulls Head resident said when discussing the Warwick incident, referring to the proposed construction of a BESS facility in a vacant portion of Our Lady of Pity church parking lot that was thwarted by community opposition in January.

...“If you put a deck on your house, it is scrutinized from every angle,” Borough President Vito Fossella previously told the Advance/SILive.com. “But we have residents who are quite literally waking up with these battery systems in their backyards.”

Alas, poor Warwick - they know the anxiety well.

On the 19th of last month, their facility had another fire.

Late on the evening of December 19, 2025, a fire occurred at the Church Street Battery Storage Facility in Warwick, New York, operated by Convergent Energy & Power. While no injuries were reported and the fire was confined to a single container, the incident remained active into the following day and prompted a multi-agency response, air quality monitoring, and renewed scrutiny of battery energy storage system (BESS) safety in the community. 

For Warwick residents and local leaders, the fire carried added weight. The town has experienced multiple battery storage incidents in recent years, and each new event raises difficult questions about risk, emergency response, and whether existing BESS designs are suitable for locations near homes, schools, and small businesses.

Oh, NOW it 'raises a question about whether BESS designs are suitable for locations near homes, schools, and small businesses'?

I guess better late than never, right?

It does seem that Warwick has upped their detection game in the intervening couple of years.

That 'burning battery covers' best guess probably doesn't fly anymore after what they just found in the air from this last little fire.

Hydrogen cyanide detected in air samples after Warwick lithium-ion battery fire

Orange County officials have confirmed that hydrogen cyanide was detected in air-quality samples taken during a lithium-ion battery storage fire at a Convergent Energy and Power facility in Warwick earlier this month — one of three such fires connected to the company’s sites in the area over the last two years.

The fire broke out during heavy rain on Dec. 19 at the company’s 28 Church St. battery storage facility. According to Orange County emergency management officials, hydrogen cyanide was recorded at 0.5 parts per million at a meter placed just outside the facility while the fire was burning — about half of the maximum allowable amount under federal guidelines. Downwind monitors, they say, measured zero. Monitoring continued through Dec. 21 as battery temperatures dropped enough for crews to begin cleanup and investigation.

And what is with this place that it can't handle some heavy rain? That's all part and parcel of being an outdoor facility, or so you would think.

And wouldn't this make you feel warm and fuzzy if you lived nearby?

...Officials are not confirming the presence of any additional chemicals during the latest fire, and final reports on the air quality or cause have not yet been released.

As always, The Stache has a good, short report on this.

But holy smokes -  expand on this, as Menton did, and, say, drop it across the river in Long Island City just over from Manhattan.

It is not going to turn out as well one of these days as these hazards get moved into, literally, backyards with no space around them.

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