A Fifth of Adirondack Park Towns Have Paused Battery Storage, and New York Has 576 MW Built Against a 6 GW Goal
- Energy Storage Regulatory State & Local Regulation Utility-Scale BESS
Marin Holt
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- 9 minutes read
- Park moratoriums: Twenty-one of the park's 101 towns and villages, since January 1, 2026
- Bans: Fort Ann, Gloversville, Forestport
- Newest pause: North Elba, one year, voted October 13
- New York storage online: about 576 MW as of August 31
- State goal: 6 GW by 2030
About one-fifth of the 101 towns and villages in the Adirondack Park have passed moratoriums on battery energy storage systems this year, according to local laws filed with the New York Department of State and reviewed by the Adirondack Explorer. Twenty-one municipalities in the park have filed local laws since January 1 delaying battery storage builds, with pauses that run from six months to a year. Three towns that sit partly inside the park, Fort Ann in Washington County, Gloversville in Fulton County and Forestport in Oneida County, have gone further and banned battery systems outright.
The count keeps growing. North Elba, which includes the village of Lake Placid, voted on October 13 to approve a one-year moratorium after receiving two solar farm applications in Ray Brook that would use around 25 megawatts and include a battery unit. Town Supervisor Rick Preston told WCAX the town’s zoning had gaps on energy projects. “We don’t see a battery energy storage system being suited for North Elba or the village of Lake Placid. We just don’t have the acreage for it,” he said. North Elba follows Champlain and Ticonderoga. In Ticonderoga, a six-month moratorium passed in March is ending soon, and the town is considering another six months. Hadley’s board is working on a renewal.
The pauses land on a state that is far behind its own target. New York’s goal is to have 6 gigawatts of energy storage online by 2030. As of August 31, the state’s total storage capacity was about 576 megawatts. William Acker of the New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology Consortium testified in January that more than 100 municipalities had passed moratoriums stalling over 1 gigawatt of battery projects. Carina Energy’s BESS Moratorium Monitor counted 98 active municipal restrictions across 37 New York counties in May, and New York accounts for 65% of the roughly 150 municipal moratoriums tracked nationwide across 17 states. NYSERDA estimates the 6 GW target would spare ratepayers at least $2 billion in transmission infrastructure costs.
In St. Armand, Essex County, Carson Power had an initial proposal to install a 20-megawatt facility near the Mount Pisgah Ski Area. The town passed a one-year moratorium in March and voted for a ban in June, but it failed to evaluate the local law through the State Environmental Quality Review Act, so the board is redoing the review and plans to pass the ban again. Supervisor Davina Thurston said the appropriate action is to move forward with a town-wide ban. Jennifer Manierre, NYSERDA’s director of clean energy and siting, visited the town on September 1 to speak about the state’s safeguards. Thurston said the ban would prevent the Carson Power project from being built. Carson Power did not respond to the Explorer.
In Northampton, Fulton County, the Adirondack Park Agency permitted the first large-scale battery energy storage system in the park, a 10-megawatt, four-hour system, also proposed by Carson Power. It is the first and only utility-scale battery storage approval the agency has issued. The town passed a one-year moratorium in March after a hearing where more than 160 residents attended and not one spoke in support. Resident Sara Will-White sued the town, the APA, Carson Power and the landowner, and a Fulton County state Supreme Court justice issued a temporary restraining order that has delayed the project without a decision on the lawsuit.
Not every town is closing the door. In Dannemora, Clinton County, Supervisor Joey Varin is working with Brookfield Renewable Partners on a battery proposal for the tailings pile of the former mining operation at Lyon Mountain, and the developer is in talks with New York State Electric and Gas about upgrading a nearby substation. “I’ve been asked by a number of people outside of our area to put a moratorium on,” Varin said. “I said no.”
Why It Matters
New York rewrote its fire code to answer exactly the fears driving these votes. The code, effective January 1, 2026, requires developers to fund a peer review of their projects, to train local fire departments and to provide a battery fire expert on site within four hours of any fire, with qualified personnel available for dispatch within 15 minutes of a fire alarm. A third fire occurred in Orange County in December 2025, weeks before it took effect, and rural volunteer fire departments with roughly 20 members still see a multi-day battery fire as beyond their capacity. The code changed the rules without changing the votes.
The structural gap is jurisdiction. The state Office of Renewable Energy Siting can override local permitting authority for energy projects exceeding 25 MW, but only when battery storage is co-located with a qualifying renewable generation facility. Standalone batteries, which are most of the projects the towns are pausing, answer to local zoning. Senate Bill S5506 and Assembly Bill A8378 would extend ORES jurisdiction to standalone battery storage systems, and both remained in committee as of May 2026. Until that changes, the 2030 storage goal depends on town boards that are currently voting the other way.
Critical Perspective
Twenty-one of the park’s 101 towns and villages have filed battery storage moratoriums since January, and the 576 MW New York had installed on August 31 is less than one-tenth of the 6 gigawatts it has promised for 2030. California’s Moss Landing fire in January 2025 touched off the same kind of local pauses, yet California keeps permitting large batteries because its biggest projects answer to state agencies under the California Energy Commission’s opt-in process rather than to town boards, which is exactly the authority New York’s Office of Renewable Energy Siting lacks for standalone storage. Northampton shows how the sequence runs in the Adirondacks: the Adirondack Park Agency issued its first and only utility-scale battery permit, a 10 MW four-hour Carson Power project, and a town moratorium plus one resident’s lawsuit have kept it from breaking ground. If a fully permitted 10 MW project cannot get built inside the Blue Line, what does a 6 GW target actually mean for the rest of the state?
Sources
- Adirondack Explorer (via Times Union / Yahoo News): In Adirondacks, battery storage moratoriums and bans stack up (Oct 18, 2026)
- WCAX: North Elba approves one-year moratorium on battery energy storage systems (Oct 16, 2026)
- Environment+Energy Leader: Battery Storage Moratoriums Now Cover 98 New York Municipalities as Adirondack Towns Join the List (May 2026)
