Startup NineDot Energy just raised $431 million to build batteries in New York City’s vacant nooks and crannies — an endeavor that will help the metropolis fend off looming electricity shortages.
The debt financing announced Monday will support the Brooklyn firm’s plan to develop 28 battery projects totaling 494 megawatt-hours of energy storage capacity over the next two years. NineDot estimates that’s enough storage to meet the peak energy needs of about 100,000 households.
NineDot is one of several companies deploying “community battery systems” — grid-tied energy storage installations that can fit into roughly an acre of land or less — in New York City. These systems sop up excess energy from the grid when power is abundant and send it back when demand is high, like on hot summer afternoons when millions of air conditioners crank up. Bigger batteries may be able to store more energy, but community-scale systems can be more realistic to quickly deploy in über-dense places.
The decade-old startup’s latest round of construction finance, led by Natixis Corporate & Investment Banking, brings its total funding to just over $1 billion, said David Arfin, NineDot’s CEO and co-founder.
NineDot already has seven projects operating — including a 12-megawatt-hour battery and solar installation at a former parking lot in the Bronx and a 20-megawatt-hour battery system in Staten Island — or in advanced stages of construction in New York City, he said. By 2028, it plans to have 37 community storage systems with a combined capacity of 1.6 gigawatt-hours up and running across the five boroughs, he said.
It isn’t easy to find spots to build batteries in New York City, said Adam Cohen, NineDot’s chief technology officer and co-founder. It can be even harder to find space on Con Edison’s power grid to connect them, he said.
But the utility is under mounting pressure to expand its energy storage capacity — and that’s driving companies like NineDot to seek out vacant or underused lots in the country’s densest urban environment.
New York law sets a statewide goal of 70% renewable electricity by 2030, and state policy calls for building 6 gigawatts of energy storage by 2030. Upstate New York has plenty of land for utility-scale wind, solar, and battery farms. But downstate New York and New York City are where power demand is greatest and the generation mix is the dirtiest — and there’s not yet enough transmission grid capacity to solve those problems with clean power from the north, Cohen said.
Meanwhile, the New York City area faces an energy crunch as power demand surges and aging fossil-fueled plants in the boroughs prepare to shutter. In October, the state’s grid operator warned that New York City and Long Island might face “reliability violations” as soon as this summer.
Late last year, state regulators ordered Con Edison to seek out “a broad array of potential non-emitting solutions” that could quickly bolster reliability.
“You could solve that with new transmission,” Cohen said — except that’s hard to build. The Champlain Hudson Power Express, a major transmission line from Canada to New York City, is nearing completion and scheduled to start delivering hydropower and wind power in May. But another major transmission line being planned to carry power into the city was canceled in 2024.
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