![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-1244590781.jpg\")
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The Massachusetts State House in Boston.Matt Stone\/MediaNews Group\/Boston Herald via Getty<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tGet your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.<\/a><\/p>\n This story was originally published by\u00a0Canary Media<\/a>\u00a0and is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration.<\/p>\n Enormous new batteries keep appearing on the grid, making it devilishly tricky to keep track of which is the biggest in a\u00a0given region. That\u2019s certainly the case in New England, where acute power needs and robust state climate goals are fueling a\u00a0buildout of big batteries that keep breaking capacity records.<\/p>\n Canary Media recently covered the inauguration of the\u00a0175-megawatt Cross Town battery<\/a>\u00a0in Gorham, Maine, which was the largest in New England when it began operating in late November. But that trophy has already passed to a\u00a0250-megawatt facility<\/a>\u00a0in Medway, Massachusetts, southwest of Boston and about\u00a010\u00a0miles from the Patriots\u2019 Gillette Stadium.<\/p>\n The Medway battery came online fully on\u00a0February\u00a025<\/a>, according to developer\u00a0VC\u00a0Renewables, a\u00a0subsidiary of global energy trader Vitol. \u201cTo be fair, I\u00a0don\u2019t expect Medway to hold that title for very long, either,\u201d said Tom Bitting, managing director at Advantage Capital, which supported the project with a $158\u00a0million tax equity deal.\u00a0\u200b\u201cThere are other batteries being developed in New England that are bigger, but I\u00a0think it is all just a\u00a0sign that we need all of it, and there\u2019s huge demand for\u00a0it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cStore all that solar energy that we\u2019re producing in the middle of the day and bring down the cost of operating the system for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n For instance,\u00a0Jupiter Power<\/a>, a\u00a0heavyweight in\u00a0Texas\u2019 booming grid storage market<\/a>, is developing the\u00a0700-megawatt\/2.8-gigawatt-hour\u00a0<\/a>Trimount battery plant at a\u00a0former oil-storage site in Everett, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. Jupiter aims to finish the project in\u00a02028\u00a0or\u00a02029. Trimount is slated to be among the largest stand-alone batteries in the whole country\u2014Vistra\u2019s battery in Moss Landing, California, set that record with\u00a0750\u00a0megawatts\/\u200b3\u00a0gigawatt-hours, before much of that capacity burned up\u00a0in a\u00a0disastrous fire<\/a>.<\/p>\n The wave of battery megaprojects marks a\u00a0new chapter for the region, which until recently was focused on building small-scale batteries. Massachusetts encouraged this by requiring energy storage alongside many distributed solar projects that received payments through the state\u2019s main solar incentive; this rule led to a\u00a0buildout of systems in the range of\u00a01\u00a0to\u00a05\u00a0megawatts.<\/p>\n Bigger batteries started taking off in the late\u00a02010s out West: In California, Arizona, and Nevada, where developers can sign long-term contracts to deliver grid capacity; and in Texas, where they can bid into a\u00a0uniquely competitive market.<\/p>\n The first three big batteries in New England\u2014Plus Power\u2019s\u00a0Cranberry Point<\/a>\u00a0and Cross Town, as well as Medway, which was previously developed by Eolian\u2014won seven-year contracts<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a02021\u00a0to provide capacity for the New England grid, but the grid operator subsequently shortened that kind of contract to one year. After that change, developers have struggled with the lack of long-term capacity revenue; they can still charge up when prices are low and sell when they\u2019re high, but that\u2019s an unpredictable revenue stream that financiers might not want to underwrite.<\/p>\n Massachusetts has succeeded in building a\u00a0robust fleet of small-scale solar\u2014on recent sunny spring days, it has generated close to\u00a0half the region\u2019s demand. But leaders knew they needed batteries to keep cleaning up the grid in the hours when solar doesn\u2019t produce. So they created a\u00a0new policy driver for storage investment called the Clean Peak Standard, which officially took effect in\u00a02020.<\/p>\n The rule orders utilities to serve a\u00a0percentage of their peak-demand hours with clean electricity, and the target grows with each passing year. Companies that use batteries to save solar energy for the evening\u2014when electricity consumption rises as people get home from work and school\u2014earn credits that they can sell to utilities, providing some revenue certainty outside the wholesale market.<\/p>\n The administration of Gov. Maura Healey, a\u00a0Democrat, views storage as a\u00a0key lever to improve energy affordability, Undersecretary of Energy Michael Judge said, because it makes better use of existing grid infrastructure to meet peak demand.<\/p>\n Batteries can fit a\u00a0lot of power into a\u00a0relatively small footprint, without smokestacks or pollution.<\/p>\n \u201cStore all that solar energy that we\u2019re producing in the middle of the day and bring down the cost of operating the system for everyone,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u200b\u201cYou don\u2019t have to run these peakers, and you get all the emissions benefits and integration of clean energy benefits, too.\u201d<\/p>\n It took several years for the rule to actually spur batteries in the multihundred-megawatt range, but now that era has begun. Advantage Capital, for example, factored in revenues from the Clean Peak Standard when it analyzed and underwrote the investment in the Medway project, Bitting noted. A\u00a0total of\u00a0725\u00a0megawatts of battery storage had qualified for the Clean Peak Standard as of early March, according to state\u00a0data.<\/p>\n Stand-alone grid battery projects are also bolstered by a\u00a0federal tax credit that can cut investment costs by\u00a030 percent, an incentive that the Trump administration\u00a0preserved in last summer\u2019s budget law<\/a>\u00a0even as it slashed support for wind, solar, and electric vehicles.<\/p>\n Clean Peak cash alone doesn\u2019t pay the bills; battery developers still need to make money in the marketplace. Though New England lacks long-term capacity contracts, storage companies in the region have at least two factors working in their favor: some of the nation\u2019s\u00a0highest electricity prices<\/a>\u00a0and growing demand for\u00a0power.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to get additional generation online in an area with high population density, because regardless of what type of power generation you\u2019re building, it requires a\u00a0lot of space,\u201d Bitting said. Batteries, though, can fit a\u00a0lot of power into a\u00a0relatively small footprint, without the smokestacks or pollution that make it hard to build new fossil-fueled plants in populous areas.<\/p>\n Batteries compete directly with gas power plants to serve the peak hours of demand, when prices are highest. That\u2019s especially valuable in New England, where gas supplies are stretched thin between power generation and home heating on the coldest days of the\u00a0year.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen it\u2019s cold, the households are going to continue to demand it,\u201d Bitting said.\u00a0\u200b\u201cBut if we can ease some of the peak on the utility side, that will provide a\u00a0relief valve to supply.\u201d<\/p>\n Jupiter Power\u2019s colossal Trimount project will continue New England\u2019s foray into large batteries, with the ability to discharge enough power for roughly\u00a0500,000\u00a0homes, per the developer. Trimount was the largest of four battery projects\u00a0selected in December<\/a>\u00a0from Massachusetts\u2019 statewide solicitation to bring on more Clean Peak power. Previously, battery owners could sell off their Clean Peak credits on a\u00a0quarterly or annual basis. The\u00a0new solicitation<\/a>\u00a0was designed to produce\u00a0\u200b\u201ccost-effective\u201d long-term contracts for storage, giving developers more stable revenue to plan around. Furthermore, Healey doubled down on grid storage in a\u00a0March\u00a016\u00a0executive order<\/a>\u00a0that calls for another\u00a05\u00a0gigawatts installed by\u00a02035.<\/p>\n \u201cThat kind of policy signal, combined with the state\u2019s grid reliability challenges and its decarbonization commitments, creates the conditions for investment at scale,\u201d Hans Detweiler, senior director for development at Jupiter, said in an\u00a0email.<\/p>\n Massachusetts officials also hope to speed development with new permitting rules, which run large battery applications through a\u00a0state-level body instead of piecemeal local processes. Community members still get to weigh in, but the program has a\u00a0clear\u00a015-month timeline and allows just a\u00a0single appeal to the state Supreme Court, to ensure a\u00a0more timely resolution of conflicts in the permitting process.<\/p>\n The true test of all these policies will be whether the recent megabatteries kick off a\u00a0trend, or remain bold outliers in the region\u2019s energy system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Massachusetts State House in Boston.Matt Stone\/MediaNews Group\/Boston Herald via Getty Get your news from a source that\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,128],"class_list":{"0":"post-624379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}