NYISO Study Puts Arthur Kill II Deliverability Upgrades at $216 Million for 180 MW on Staten Island
- Capacity & Wholesale Markets News Policy & Markets
Marin Holt
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- Deliverability upgrade cost: $216 million
- Project capacity: 180 MW
- Upgrade cost per kW: $1,200 per kW
- Proposed commercial operation: June 1, 2028
- NYISO queue position: C24-131
NYISO staff have found that system deliverability upgrades for the Elevate Arthur Kill II battery project could cost roughly $216 million, RTO Insider reported on October 11, 2026. The project is a 180 MW battery in Richmond County, New York, on Staten Island. It sits in the NYISO interconnection queue as C24-131, which it entered on September 5, 2024. The queue record lists a proposed commercial operation date of June 1, 2028, names Consolidated Edison as the transmission owner, and puts the point of interconnection at the Fresh Kills 345 kV substation.
Divide the upgrade figure by the capacity and the result is $1,200 per kW. MGRID calculated that ratio from the two published figures. It is not the project total interconnection cost. It covers one component, the system deliverability upgrade, which NYISO studies and prices on its own track.
Why It Matters
Deliverability is what lets a battery sell capacity. NYISO studies a project against its Deliverability Interconnection Standard, and a developer that wants Capacity Resource Interconnection Service rights has to fund the upgrades the study identifies. A project that skips those upgrades still interconnects and still sells energy. It just does not earn the capacity revenue that New York City storage economics lean on.
That makes $216 million a gate price rather than a construction cost. The figure decides whether a 180 MW battery inside the ConEd load pocket competes for capacity or settles for an energy-only business. Staten Island is exactly where New York wants storage, because the load pocket is constrained and the retiring plants sit there.
How the Number Compares
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory studied project-level interconnection costs in NYISO from 2006 to 2021. For projects studied since 2017 the mean cost was $167 per kW and the median was $115 per kW, in real 2022 dollars. Projects still active in the queue averaged $145 per kW. Completed projects averaged $234 per kW. More than half of the in-service projects studied since 2017 came in under $100 per kW, and the single worst outlier in the dataset cost almost $1,000 per kW.
Arthur Kill II clears that outlier. The comparison is not like for like, and the direction of the mismatch matters. The Berkeley figures cover total interconnection cost, both point-of-interconnection work and network upgrades, in real 2022 dollars. The $216 million covers deliverability upgrades alone, in 2026 dollars. A subset of the cost in newer dollars still lands above the worst full-cost project Berkeley found across 15 years of NYISO studies.
Berkeley also recorded who pays for network work at all. The share of NYISO projects responsible for network upgrades rose from 73 percent in the 2006 to 2016 period to 90 percent in the 2017 to 2021 period. Arthur Kill II is not an exception to that trend. It is the trend arriving at a number large enough to kill a project.
What Is Not Yet Known
The $216 million is a study result, not a bill. NYISO allocates deliverability upgrade costs across the projects in a Class Year, in proportion to each project effect on deliverability. The share Arthur Kill II carries depends on which other projects stay in that group and which withdraw. Developers routinely drop out once a study prices them, and each exit reshuffles the remainder.
The sponsor name also needs care. RTO Insider attributes the project to Elevate Infrastructure. The NYISO queue record lists the developer as Lighthouse Arthur Kill II, LLC. Those are consistent with a project company sitting under a sponsor, and MGRID could not independently confirm the ownership chain. The RTO Insider article is paywalled beyond its opening, so the study name, docket and the cost breakdown behind the $216 million were not available for this report. A smaller first phase, Arthur Kill I, is a 60 MWh co-located storage facility at the same site.
Critical Perspective
NYISO put the deliverability upgrades for 180 MW at roughly $216 million, or $1,200 per kW. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory measured the mean NYISO interconnection cost at $167 per kW for projects studied since 2017, and that figure covers total interconnection cost rather than deliverability alone. NYISO spreads these upgrades pro rata across a Class Year, so each developer that withdraws after seeing its number reshuffles the bill for whoever stays. If $1,200 per kW is now the price of capacity rights in the ConEd load pocket, how many of the projects sharing that Class Year will still be there when the invoice lands?
Sources
- RTO Insider, NYISO Study Shows High Upgrade Costs for Arthur Kill Battery Project, October 11, 2026
- NYISO interconnection queue record C24-131, Elevate Arthur Kill II
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Interconnection Cost Analysis in the NYISO Territory, March 2023
