Some residents in the Travis section of Staten Island held a meeting this week to discuss concerns about a proposal to bring a Battery Energy Storage System, also known as a BESS site, to the neighborhood.

“Everything they say is going to be fine doesn’t turn out that way and we are very skeptical” Linda Duane, a Travis resident, said.

The project is called Swiftsure. The developer, a Chicago-based company called Hecate Grid, says the system would produce enough energy to power 500,000 homes.

“On Staten Island, there’s a limited amount of transmission that supports getting power on and off the island. And so the reason why we develop infrastructure like this and why we have a business model like this is to support grid reliability,” Hecate Grid Senior Director of Developement Kent Truckor said.

But at a civic meeting, residents remembered past problems with different developments in the area.

“We had the dump here my whole life. We finally got the dump closed,” Duane said.

If successful, the grid would be built where this vacant lot sits on Victory Boulevard, South of Travis Avenue.

According to a representative for the company, the technology used for these storage sites has not yet been finalized, though lithium-ion is primarily used in these systems.

Debbie Bostwick’s home is near the site.

“It’s terrifying to know I’ll be living across the street from that,” Bostwick said.

She says concern comes as battery fires continue to make headlines and after learning a battery storage site in Warwick, NY, caught fire over the summer.

“I’m concerned about the fire potential. The fact that the fires are not easily extinguished, the fire department may have trouble putting these fires out, the toxicity post fire, the environmental impact,” Bostwick said.

We shared those concerns with the company. A representative says they have operated similar sites since 2019 without a fire or safety incident. Similar sites run by other companies are already in operation on Staten Island.

“We will have staff on site as well as a 24/7 remote operations crew to support the operations of it. We work directly with FDNY early on in the process to specify our spec equipment that’s already approved by them. So we can only use equipment that’s approved by FDA and why some of the most stringent requirements in the country and then we’ll work with FDNY for a site specific emergency response plan, so we can identify exactly what needs to be done from all the counterparties should there be an incident that we need to address,” Truckor said.

According to the Staten Island borough president’s office. This site is one of 38 BESS proposals on the island.

“Some of them are proceeding and some of them are not proceeding and they range from [the] size of four megawatts up to this one which is 650 megawatts. That’s good for about half a million homes to give a reference Staten Island has 180,000 homes,” Director of Land Use for the Staten Island Borough President Vincent MacDermot said.

“I would rather have the black outs or the brown outs than have to deal with this,” Bostwick said.

The project is still in the initial stages of development and the company is working on getting permits at the state level. Hecate Grid to start construction by 2025.

The site is a mile from the Con Edison fresh kills substation. Hecate Grid says this will be their first BESS site in the five boroughs.