KeyCapture Energy official warns New York faces a storage-driven reliability gap; details industry safety practices

ALBANY — Joel Viduna, executive vice president and board member at KeyCapture Energy, told the New York State Senate Energy and Telecommunications Committee on an unspecified date that battery energy storage systems are an essential tool to address an emerging reliability shortfall in New York and described how modern projects are sited, built and regulated.

Viduna told the committee that KeyCapture has 14 operational battery projects totaling about 600 megawatts, including three in New York and 11 in Texas, and that the company has several dozen projects under development across more than 15 states. He said storage helps shift energy from times of surplus to times of peak demand and can respond far faster than other grid resources.

"Battery energy storage is unique in that it can instantly dispatch and can ramp up or down from idle to either full charging or discharging operation in mere milliseconds," Viduna said. He added that storage is well suited to New York because much of the state's generation is upstate while most demand is downstate, and transmission constraints mean short-duration capacity shortfalls downstate can last two to four hours — a gap storage can fill.

Why it matters: Viduna cited the New York Independent System Operator(NYISO) 2024 reliability needs assessment, saying it identifies a reliability need in New York City beginning in summer 2033 and projects a statewide margin…