Plans to develop one of New England’s largest battery storage facilities on a plot of land in Killingly have fallen through, according to documents submitted to the Connecticut Siting Council.
An attorney for the project, known as Windham Energy Center, notified the siting council in a letter last month that the developer had decided to withdraw its application to build the 325-megawatt facility. The decision came after town officials raised concerns about the proposed facility, particularly the risk of fire, and requested more information from developers.
The attorney, Ken Baldwin, said on Monday that he was not authorized to talk about the project and referred requests for comment to the Israel-based developer, Sunflower Sustainable Investments.
Representatives for that company did not responded to multiple requests for comment.
The company’s decision to withdraw its application was first reported by New London’s The Day newspaper.
It was not the first time developers had sought to use the property, which is located next to existing Eversource transmission lines, to supply power to the regional electric grid.
In 2016, Florida-based NTE Energy proposed building a natural gas-fired power plant on the same location. That plan drew intense criticism from environmental groups, with protests held both in Killingly and at the state Capitol in Hartford.
While the siting council gave its approval to that project in 2019, it continued to be a source of debate for several more years until federal regulators dealt a final blow to NTE’s efforts in 2022. Last year, Windham Energy Center’s developers filed their application to use the site as a battery storage facility.
According to Windham Energy’s application, the project would have cost an estimated $200 million and taken a little more than a year to build. The plans called for lithium-ion batteries housed in dozens of prefabricated storage containers, as well as an electrical substation connecting to the regional grid.
Almost from the start, however, the project faced difficulties due to the fact that NTE Energy continued to hold the certificate of approval from the siting council to develop the property for a power plant — despite having since gone out of business. In November, Baldwin filed a request with the siting council to reopen that approval process for the purpose of resolving the issue.
In the meantime, Killingly officials began to raise a number of concerns about the project in filings made with the siting council. Those concerns touched on noise and gases that could be emitted from the facility, as well as the potential for intense battery fires known as “thermal runaways.”
Local officials asked for the developers to provide more information and, in some cases, to alter their plans to address those concerns — such as through the construction of vegetation barriers. In January, Baldwin indicated that the company was willing to take additional steps to address some of the local concerns.
But before those issues were resolved, Baldwin sent the letter on June 3 withdrawing the application.
Melanie Bachman, the executive director of the siting council, said in her acknowledgment of that letter that Windham Energy would have to submit new applications should it seek to restart the approval process.
Representatives from Killingly, including Acting Town Manager Frances Conroy and Economic Development Director Jill St. Clair, were not available for comment on Monday.