Con Edison has completed construction of a large battery system on substation property to support increased electric reliability for more than 350,000 customers in eastern Brooklyn and southwest Queens.
The system, which underwent an extensive safety review by the FDNY, can provide 5.8 megawatts – that’s 5.8 million watts - to customers for four hours. That will take stress off Con Edison’s electric delivery system in the area when the demand for power is high, which occurs in the late afternoon and evening hours during the summer.
“We are using battery technology and other measures to help maintain our industry-leading reliable electric service in areas where our analysis shows the need for energy will grow,” said Matthew Ketschke, Con Edison’s president. “Projects like this one help us defer the cost of making traditional upgrades to our infrastructure, thereby saving money for customers and helping us keep our service affordable, which is a priority.”
Ketschke announced completion of construction this morning at the City University of New York’s Solar and Storage Summit at John Jay College in Manhattan. Con Edison is a sponsor of the annual event, which features discussions about the transition to a new energy future.
Energy storage is among numerous tools Con Edison uses to keep its service the most reliable in the United States. The typical Con Edison customer would experience an outage once every nine years based on 2024 data, not counting outages from severe weather, according to data in a report the New York State Public Service Commission issued last week.
The company’s electric delivery service is nine times more reliable than the service in the rest of the state and nine times more reliable than typical service across the United States.
The new battery system is at a Con Edison substation complex in the Brownsville area of Brooklyn. It is owned and operated by Con Edison, which has a long history of running large energy projects safely.
Placing the system on utility property saved the company from having to obtain additional land at a cost to customers. It also minimizes neighborhood inconvenience that might occur with an installation on a property that is not used for utility purposes.
A battery storage unit being placed into a Con Edison substation in Brooklyn.
The neighborhoods in Queens that will benefit from the system include Howard Beach, Ozone Park, South Ozone Park, Richmond Hill, Woodhaven, and others. In Brooklyn, the areas include Crown Heights, Flatbush, East Flatbush, Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York and others.
Con Edison will charge the battery system at night when the demand for power is lower and electricity is less expensive. The system is able to store enough electricity to run 58,000 microwave ovens or 116,000 flat-screen TVs. It’s enough to charge more than 1.1 million cellphones.
Con Edison has used innovation and modern technologies for the past decade to maintain reliable service in the area. The company’s Brooklyn-Queens Demand Management Program provided customers with enhanced incentives to make energy efficiency upgrades and take other steps to manage their usage.
That program became a model for electric delivery companies across the country.
Con Edison also has a battery system at a substation in the Fox Hills area of Staten Island, and one in Ozone Park, Queens. The Fox Hills energy storage system can hold 7.5 megawatts, and the one in Ozone Park can hold 2 megawatts.
Con Edison has also enabled nearly 100 megawatts of private customer energy storage interconnections across its service territory to date, with the total amount of storage approximately doubling in 2024.
Additionally, the company has supported three small energy storage demonstration projects with a business partner at customer properties located on the North Shore of Staten Island, in Woodside, Queens, and on City Island.
Con Edison is a subsidiary of Consolidated Edison, Inc. [NYSE: ED], one of the nation’s largest investor-owned energy companies, with approximately $15 billion in annual revenues and $71 billion in assets. The utility delivers electricity, natural gas and steam, and serves 3.7 million customers in New York City and Westchester County.