ALBANY, N.Y. — The annual New York energy storage conference came with excellent timing this year, as progress at the state level was matched by looming obstacles at the federal level.

As the 2025 edition of Capture the Energy Conference & Expo kicked off, the on-again-off-again global trade war had been paused, removing for now the threat of crushing tariffs on battery components.

But given the mercurial state of affairs, and the ongoing debate over tax credits, few people expect the picture for energy storage and the batteries it relies on to be settled.

“I think every analyst’s favorite word at the moment is ‘uncertainty,’” Iola Hughes, head of research at Rho Motion, said as she launched into a rapid-fire update on tariffs and their effects.

There is no immediate way around tariffs, she added: “Even by 2026, we’re only looking at around 20% of demand being met by domestic cells, based on the current pipeline of gigafactories being built out.”

The May 13-15 conference was the 15th and the largest yet for the New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology Consortium (NY-BEST).

As its name implies, NY-BEST supports the development and deployment of all storage technologies. But batteries account for the vast majority of storage capacity being added to the grid, so the conversation at Capture the Energy tends to be focused heavily on them.

“In 2024 we saw lithium-ion battery demand surpass 1 TWh for the first time,” Hughes said. “This was a milestone narrowly missed in 2023, and I think, really, that’s just a sign of how much this market has progressed over the last few years.”

Doreen Harris, president of the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority, delivered a keynote address assuring an audience of hundreds that the state remains wholly committed to energy storage deployment, as storage will be needed in the tens of gigawatts if New York is to accomplish its transition to a grid heavily reliant on intermittent renewables.

But Harris had to cut herself short so she could catch her flight to Washington and continue to lobby for saving the policies that will help make that sort of buildout possible.

Amid the federal uncertainty, New York continues its part, with orders from the Public Service Commission pushing the process forward and $200 million awarded to support construction so far.

“And now, rounding out this trifecta, just yesterday we issued a draft [request for proposals] for our bulk energy storage solicitation,” Harris said.

New York’s first energy storage target is 1.5 GW by the end of the year. It has doubled its 2030 goal to 6 GW of new storage.

In June 2024, the PSC approved the roadmap for reaching 6 GW (Case 18-E-0130). It approved the implementation plans for storage projects totaling 5 MW or less in February 2025 and for bulk storage (greater than 5 MW) in March 2025.

Just recently, the Department of Public Service issued a progress report showing the state of storage in New York as of the end of March: 509.2 MW deployed, and 893.3 MW awarded or contracted.

The average total installed project cost ranges from $524/kWh (for bulk projects serving wholesale markets and receiving incentives) to $1,198/kWh (for customer-sited standalone behind-the-meter projects used for peak load reduction).

Supply chain constraints, inflation and high demand for cells drove up costs, the report notes, and these high costs have been a continuing barrier to timely buildout of storage in New York.

But right up there with cost is public opposition.

Battery energy storage system (BESS) fires, while rare, leave a strong negative impression, amplified by the fact that most people know nothing about grid-scale batteries or the risks associated with them.

New York has a strong home-rule tradition, and that fear of the unknown has translated into numerous moratoria on BESS development.

John Zahurancik, president of the Americas for Fluence, said BESS fires have developed an outsized profile as a result of the unfamiliarity and insecurity public officials and their constituents have with these facilities.

“We don’t call a news conference when a transformer blows up, even a big transformer. We don’t close highways when transformers blow up,” he said. “But we’ve done some of those things with energy storage recently.”

There is uneven quality control by some manufacturers, Zahurancik added, and it is incumbent on developers to not just rectify that but to prepare for all contingencies in the event of a fire, right down to emergency phone numbers going missing or not being answered.

“Another one of our revelations was, people don’t always do what you expect them to do in a moment of crisis,” he said. “That may not seem like a very deep revelation, but there’s a lot of truth to it. And so you can’t really control all the actors, so you have to design systems that are overly safe against people, and you have to drill and constantly talk about, ‘What are you going to do in these events?’”

An entire panel discussion was devoted to winning over community support for BESS proposals.

“Our knee-jerk response as an industry has been to talk about facts, to bring in technical studies and peer-reviewed reports and know that the facts are on our side, and sort of flood the misinformation with the facts. And unfortunately, that’s not a great strategy,” said Lauren Glickman, vice president of policy and communications at Encore Renewable Energy. “It’s really important to build bridges by coming around and [connecting] with individuals and bringing empathy to a lot of these conversations and finding shared values.”

Nadia Pabst, senior vice president of government and corporate affairs at Aypa Power, said she defines success as community members having a better understanding of what energy storage is and how it fits into the broader energy transition. “Ultimately, we’re all working towards a decrease in blackouts and brownouts across the country and increased grid reliability.”

Without a compelling narrative, Pabst added, it is hard to compete with the prevailing misinformation.

Sam Brill, vice president of strategic development at NineDot Energy, said developers should make local officials their first point of contact for a new proposal — because they will not appreciate learning about it through word of mouth but also because they can suggest who best to talk to in the community.

Glickman also stressed that community relations should not end when the project reaches commercial operation status. “Trust is something that’s earned, but it’s also something that can be lost. So if you earn it, but then disappear, you’re not going to be seeing it.”

Key Capture Energy provided speakers for the panel discussions during the conference and maintained a table at the expo portion of the event. Senior Director of Development Kolin Loveless told RTO Insider he sees two sources of community opposition: individual uncertainty and actively spread misinformation.

New Yorkers’ uncertainty about fire safety grew from three unrelated BESS fires in rapid succession in three widely separated parts of the state in 2023, as well as a horrifying spate of e-mobility battery fires in New York City that had nothing to do with BESS except that both types of batteries contained lithium.

Loveless hopes the fire safety review panel the state convened after the 2023 fires will calm the uncertainty or fears. Until then, the permitting structures in New York will make the fears more impactful here than elsewhere.

“Part of that is home rule and the way that is structured, and a part of that has been [in] a lot of the other states where we are operating, they either don’t have major permitting regimes — Texas does not require permits in a significant way, and so there’s not that same question — [or there are] state-run processes for energy projects.”

KCE started in Albany nine years ago, and its headquarters is just down the hill from the event venue; its operational projects are all in New York and Texas, but its development pipeline stretches from Maine to California. So it is exposed to a wide range of public policies and popular sentiments.

Loveless made a point Zahurancik also made: Execution is important. A lot of the fires have been in first-generation BESS projects, and a lot can be learned from them.

“We’re already rolling out Gen 3, 4 and 5. And what we’ve done, actually, as an industry, pretty well, is learn from what happened before and implement those things into all the different codes that we follow. The next step is basically forcing the market to follow.”

An entire bucket of community opposition in the state has been hesitation more than opposition, he said, as some local officials await the results of the New York Inter-Agency Fire Safety Working Group’s efforts.

A key recommendation was that project permit applications undergo a peer review. That might ease the hesitation, but it might not.

“In a way you’re effectively asking every town in New York to be able to make its own assessment,” Loveless said. “The idea behind what the Fire Safety Working Group has worked out is a peer review process, so they don’t need that expertise. But I don’t know that jurisdictions are all fully comfortable. Some are, some are not. So that’s the challenge that we’re all working through. And unfortunately, for projects, that’s a binary outcome.”