Battery Facilities Becoming Essential Infrastructure, But Residents Fear Risks

The latest building proposal facing pushback in Boston isn’t for apartments, offices or labs — it's for a 50-foot-tall facility filled with batteries.

On a 3-acre site on Electric Avenue in Brighton, Flatiron Energy proposed a 62K SF battery energy storage system that has been met with opposition from community members worried it could cause fires. The facility is expected to be the first of many to move forward in Boston as the city looks to electrify its buildings and modernize its grid.

"We have a growing reliability crisis in New England," Flatiron Chief Development Officer Brett Cullen told Bisnow. "Setting aside any concerns of climate change, there's serious headwinds associated with aging infrastructure."

These BESS facilities are needed to support the state's push to reduce fossil fuels and electrify buildings, with Boston this year enacting a net-zero requirement for new large real estate projects.

Boston City Councilor Liz Breadon, who represents the Allston-Brighton neighborhood, estimates the city will need at least 10 of these facilities to meet its electrification goals.

However, the first project has faced pushback from residents over safety concerns, with some citing a fire incident that occurred in January in California, where a battery plant burst into flames and forced the evacuation of 1,200 residents. After the fire was put out, it reignited in February.

"There have been real fires. There’s been explosions," Brighton resident Jessica C. Kraft told The Harvard Crimson. "There’s been serious public health concerns linked to these facilities. The toxic chemicals released in these events could pose serious health threats to not only residents or first responders, but also the environment."

Breadon said residents support sustainability goals and new measures to ensure climate change mitigation, but the difficulty of putting out fires started by lithium batteries makes them hesitant to support a development like Flatiron's.

"Part of the issue is that we don't really have any city regulations for a facility like this to guide the process," Breadon said.

But that could soon change, as state and local officials have begun drafting regulations to better streamline the development process of BESS facilities. The state has devised draft proposals to rewrite the siting regulations for these developments as part of the first step in larger regulations on energy efficiency.

"Battery storage systems will lower costs for customers and make our grid more reliable," a spokesperson for the state’s Energy Facilities Siting Board said in a statement to Bisnow. "With the new siting and permitting regulations going through the public process, we can ensure that these projects can come online in the near term while still being inclusive to community input."

BESS facilities have several different uses, including boosting energy reliability in certain regions during weather events and power outages. The systems work with local utilities to store extra power from utilities or sustainable power sources like solar or wind energy to then power nearby residents and businesses.

These systems have historically acted as add-ons for consumers and utilities but are increasingly becoming an integral part of the state and city's sustainability strategies as more electricity is needed.

Across the United States, nearly 12 gigawatts of new BESS facilities were added in 2024, a 55% increase from the previous year, Energy Storage News reported. The majority of this capacity was developed in California and Texas. Researchers forecast the country will add another 18.2 gigawatts in 2025.

Though Texas and California have been early adopters, Cullen said Massachusetts has been at the forefront of developing this type of energy storage through progressive sustainability policies and clear mandates. The state had seen more than 150 battery storage proposals as of May 2024, MassLive reported.

In 2018, the Massachusetts Legislature established a goal to have 1,000 megawatt hours – a metric for measuring energy output – of energy storage by 2025. Massachusetts, in partnership with neighboring states, received a $389M grant from the U.S. Department of Energy in August to invest in energy storage and transmission.

Other battery energy storage developers have come to the state to build, including Texas-based Jupiter Power, which last year proposed the largest battery farm in New England attached to The Davis Cos.' 20-acre development on Everett's waterfront.

The project has faced pushback from city officials, including Everett Mayor Carlo DeMaria, who argued the battery facility isn’t the kind of economic development needed to boost the city. But Jupiter argues that the facility would benefit the city.

“It’s going to have a massive increase in revenue for the community,” Hans Detweiler, senior director of development at Jupiter Power, told the Boston Globe. “It’s a highly compatible use with a broad range of other types of future development in the area.”

Eversource is planning a facility on American Legion Highway on the border of Hyde Park, Mattapan and Roslindale. The company has yet to file a proposal, but it would be regulated by the state rather than city officials because it is a public utility, Breadon said.

Boston is taking resident feedback on new regulations for battery storage facilities. Oliver Sellers-Garcia, the city's Green New Deal director, has been looking for a third-party consultant to provide technical assistance for the city as it prepares to consider proposals from larger companies.

The city is working with the Boston Fire Department to develop "comprehensive guidelines, including proper zoning, and educational materials for both building-level and utility-scale BESS projects." 

"These efforts aim to ensure staff and residents have the resources they need to make informed decisions on this new technology," a Boston Planning Department spokesperson said in a statement to Bisnow. "This work will be completed in the coming months, and then staff will be better positioned to evaluate site specific proposals like the proposal on Electric Avenue."

Through the city's push to be carbon neutral by 2050, systems like the ones Flatiron has proposed in Brighton will be crucial to help reliably transport power to residences and businesses and make sure that the grid isn't overloaded.

Flatiron is working on similar projects in Chelsea and Uxbridge. The company has marketed the safety of these facilities, saying that each project has "state-of-the-art battery storage safety systems and fire & smoke suppression apparatus."

The project in Uxbridge has been fully approved and is expected to generate electricity for more than 40,000 homes, and the project in Chelsea has received discretionary approval and is going through final designs.

Aside from standalone battery storage facilities, developers have begun implementing battery energy storage systems into their projects, including Dream Collaborative, which worked with the Preservation of Affordable Housing on The Kenzi in Roxbury, the first all-electric mid-rise multifamily development in the city.

Rand Lemley, sustainability lead at Dream, said the project faced several hurdles given how new the technology is. He said it was hard for local officials and residents to understand the safety measures the team implemented into the project, but with new regulations it could be easier for similar projects to move forward.

"I do think that the more batteries the city sees, the more comfortable Boston fire will be with their existence," Lemley said.