Ulster County officials are pitching new uses adjacent to what’s now being called an emergency communications center next to the Thruway and Paradies Lane in New Paltz, and as is typical, they’d like to avoid the back-and-forth of having to run their idea by town planning board members. What’s proposed are solar panels for the communications center and also batteries to store electricity from renewable sources.
The county’s planning director, Dennis Doyle, went to the May 7 town council meeting to ask that a balance-of-interests test be applied. This is a process used to evaluate if a project being organized through one level of government serves the public good and can thus be exempted from review at another level. This property, a former apple orchard, is known to have toxic soil that must be addressed for any construction. There are also tracts of wetland that limit what can be built, based on current laws.
Amanda LaValle, the deputy county executive, later explained how these two projects work together. “The planned battery energy storage project and the on-site solar installation serve different but complementary purposes,” she said. “The solar associated with the building is being developed as a behind-the-meter system intended to offset the building’s electrical demand and support the facility’s net-zero energy goals. At times, excess electricity generated by the solar array may be exported to the grid through net metering.”
“The proposed utility-scale battery installation, located elsewhere on the site and interconnected to the electric grid through the Ohioville substation and 115 kV transmission infrastructure, is not designed to be directly charged by the building solar array. Rather, the battery system would operate as part of the broader electric grid. Battery storage plays an increasingly important role in modernizing the grid by helping balance electricity supply and demand, improving reliability, and supporting the broader deployment of renewable energy resources such as solar and wind, whose generation can fluctuate throughout the day.”
Under this scheme, soil containing heavy metals would be moved and isolated, and solar panels would be mounted on the ground of two-and-a-half acres in the northern portion of the fallow land. This project has a short deadline, as it must be operational by the end of 2027 in order to take advantage of tax credits that are expiring.
The batteries, which would be on about two acres in the southwest portion of the site along the Thruway ramp, would be owned and operated via a corporation called Key Capture. Doyle asserts that case law suggests that the balance-of-interest test could be applied despite there being a private entity involved; in this situation, an easement would be used to allow for that arrangement. County officials are going to declare their intention to make the county the lead agency reviewing the environmental impacts, and Doyle wants immunity from town zoning to move both of these projects along.
Public hearings are required before any such waivers can be granted. Jen Metzger, the county executive, released a statement that included information to mollify concerns about battery fires. It read in part, “Our emergency response agencies have the training and protocols needed to respond if ever required, though incidents with this newer lithium-iron-phosphate technology are extremely rare.”
A request sent to mayor Alex Wojcik to confirm that village firefighters — who protect the remainder of the town under a contract agreement — have the training and equipment necessary for any such fires, did not receive a response in time for this story.
Doyle said at the meeting that county officials would attend these hearings to answer questions about the construction and operation of these facilities. The director will likely repeat talking points about the benefits, including “deeper penetration” by renewable energy into the electric grid in a fashion that would yield no emissions and low noise. Lithium-iron batteries do not use rare-earth minerals or heavy metals, according to Doyle.
While county property is not taxable, Doyle said that a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) could be imposed regarding the land with batteries upon it. This would not have to be run through the county’s industrial development agency, the members of which have long been seen as unresponsive to local needs by town elected officials.
Proposed battery plants in Town of Ulster, Saugerties continue controversial push forward
The Key Capture project in New Paltz arrives as two other battery storage projects move through review elsewhere in the county, both larger and more controversial.
In the Town of Ulster, Terra-Gen, a U.S. developer half-owned by the Abu Dhabi state-backed firm Masdar, is seeking approval for a 250-megawatt facility at the former Coleman high school. If built as proposed, it would be the largest battery storage facility in the state. The site is particularly attractive to developers for its proximity to Central Hudson’s Hurley substation, but in nearby Hurley, town officials have pushed back hard.
“They want to go up and down the Hudson Valley, and what bothers me is that it doesn’t benefit anybody along the route because all this electricity is going somewhere else,” said supervisor Mike Boms. “It’s not staying in Ulster. It’s not staying in Hurley. It’s not staying in Kingston. It’s just going down to those big data centers in New York City.”
Despite attempts by Hurley officials and community members to halt the project, Ulster officials continue to push it forward. The development is currently working its way through the State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) process, with the Ulster town board finalizing the written scope that will guide the project’s draft environmental impact statement. Once that scope is adopted, Terra-Gen will prepare the DEIS, triggering another round of public hearings and comment. A final EIS and a findings statement from the town board would follow, after which the planning board and town board would still need to act on site plan approval and a special use permit before construction could begin.
In Saugerties, another Key Capture project is on the table, this one a 100-megawatt facility with the catchy title KCE NY 34. The plan would develop 11 acres of currently-vacant land behind the McDonald’s near the Thruway interchange (again, adjacent to a Central Hudson substation). It would be less than a mile from Cantine Field and Saugerties High School. Though he has expressed some concerns of his own regarding the pace of battery storage development, supervisor Fred Costello said the town’s building department determined a BESS is an allowable use in the industrial zone, a conclusion the zoning board of appeals has since upheld.
Opposition in Saugerties has been vocal. A developer-led information session in February drew skeptical residents, a Change.org petition against the project has gathered hundreds of signatures, and at an April town board meeting nearby neighbors complained about the prospect of continuous noise from fans, compressors, and relays on a hillside above their homes.
Key Capture’s development strategy in Saugerties was to ask the town to issue a negative SEQR declaration when filing its initial application in December of 2025, which would obviate the need for a full EIS. The town board has not yet made that determination.
— Zac Shaw
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