A proposed battery storage system in the city of Vergennes has met resistance from residents who fear the site could catch fire and blanket the area with plumes of toxic gases.
The five-megawatt battery installation proposed by Virginia-based company Lightshift Energy would be located at 99 Panton Road, a vacant parcel across the street from Collins Aerospace and not far from busy Route 22A.
Inside a fenced-in lot, five shipping container-size batteries would soak up excess solar power from the electric grid during the day and release it when needed as a way to keep electricity costs down.
Similar systems are already up and running in Vermont, and proponents say they’re safe. But neighbors in Vergennes aren’t convinced. Pointing to fires sparked by grid batteries in other states, they’re urging Vermont utility regulators to block the facility, which they say does not belong near homes and businesses.
Leading the opposition is Carrie Hathaway, a Waterbury resident who, along with her husband, has spent several years rehabilitating a 1798 farmhouse on an abutting parcel. The couple plan to move into the farmhouse once renovations are completed. They’ve also received approval to move forward with a five-home subdivision that would place houses less than a football field from the proposed site. One will be for their daughter, her husband and their three grandchildren, Hathaway said.
“Simply put: It doesn’t fit here,” Hathaway said last week. “These facilities are supposed to be out in a field somewhere, away from citizens.”
These facilities are supposed to be out in a field somewhere, away from citizens.
Carrie Hathaway
The project is still in its early stages. The company has notified the Public Utility Commission of its intention to file a full petition soon, which will trigger a monthslong review process. From there, it would take between nine months to a year to install the batteries, which would connect to the Green Mountain Power grid.
Lightshift already has approval to construct a three-megawatt system in Northfield and a 16-megawatt installation that will soon come online at GlobalFoundries in Essex Junction. The company operates seven other battery systems: one in Virginia and six in Massachusetts.
Logan Dye, a company representative, told Seven Days that Lightshift picks sites that are close to electrical substations, in areas with high demand and significant renewable energy resources.
The Vergennes project is located near two solar arrays on U.S. Route 7. It would sit on a vacant lot “requiring only minimal clearing, minimizing any environmental impacts of the project,” Dye wrote in an email. He added that the project would conform to industry standards and would be “safely designed, built, and operated without posing an undue risk to public health and safety.”
Battery storage has become a valuable tool for getting the most out of Vermont’s electric grid, according to TJ Poor, director of regulated utility planning at the Vermont Department of Public Service.
The state currently has 85 megawatts of battery storage capacity, representing about 10 percent of its average summer peak, a far greater percentage than the rest of New England. That figure is set to grow: Vermont projects representing another 30 megawatts are now in permitting or under construction.
Much of the capacity stems from smaller, in-home Tesla Powerwall battery units leased out by GMP, Poor said. But about a dozen finished or pending projects are greater than one megawatt, and several are five megawatts or more.
The ability to store power has become essential to the push for a greener grid by seeking to address one of renewable energy’s biggest limitations: unpredictability. Wind and sun aren’t always available, and their electricity production doesn’t always match the timing of peak demand.
Battery energy storage systems, or BESS, can make power grids more reliable. And utilities can use them to save money by drawing them down during peak usage periods instead of paying higher-demand prices from the regional grid.
Similar battery arrays have been cropping up across the U.S. as power companies seek to curb rising energy bills and meet growing electricity demand, some of which is driven by massive data centers. Grid batteries are now one of the electricity sector’s biggest growth industries: Companies expect to install 18,200 megawatts of capacity in 2026, enough to hold the equivalent of three hours’ worth of output from 18 large nuclear reactors, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The industry faces obstacles, however, including opposition from communities where grid batteries are proposed.
The concerns largely center around safety. Most of the batteries rely on lithium-ion technology, which carries the risk of what’s known as “thermal runaway,” a chain reaction that can cause a battery to overheat, catch fire and, in some cases, explode. Failed lithium-ion batteries have been blamed for two fires, one in 2019 and another in 2022, at the Burlington International Airport headquarters of Beta Technologies.
The fires can last for hours and emit toxic gases. They are also tough to extinguish; in many cases, firefighters wait until they burn out. A giant battery facility in Moss Landing, Calif., caught fire last year, forcing about 1,500 people to evacuate.
Experts say technological advancements have made lithium-ion batteries safer in recent years. But some municipalities have passed moratoriums to keep storage systems from being built.
That’s not an option in Vermont, where energy storage projects are exempt from local zoning codes. Assessing safety risks instead falls to the three-member Public Utility Commission.
The commission has already received a handful of public comments about the Vergennes project, although it has yet to come up for a formal review. Two comments are in favor, while the owner of WowToyz, a toy manufacturing company located near the Lightshift site, submitted one of seven against it.
Hathaway is now trying to gin up more opposition. She has distributed brochures highlighting the safety risks of the battery systems and is collecting signatures for a petition calling for a halt to the project.
She argues that a fire could result in toxic plumes spreading to nearby Otter Creek. And she’s zeroed in on a recommendation from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that encourages emergency responders to set up a 330-foot buffer zone around an active battery system fire. Some of the homes proposed in her development project would fall within that range.
The 330-foot figure refers to what the EPA recommends during an active fire at a large-scale facility, however. The agency specifically cited as an example one of the world’s largest battery installations, which is more than 100 times the size of the Vergennes project.
Lightshift says it nevertheless takes the safety concerns seriously.
“It is something that keeps our leadership up at night: making sure that we’ve done everything in our power to make the safest facility for the local community that they are sitting in,” Dye told the Vergennes City Council in October.
Still, the company has downplayed the risks of a fire breaking out.
Dye said Lightshift’s batteries rely on an alternative form of lithium-ion that makes them less likely to burst into flames. The containers are built in a way to prevent fire from spreading between them, he said.
The company has promised to meet with emergency responders to discuss plans should a fire break out. The recommendation? “Contain it and let it burn,” Dye told the council.
The city hasn’t yet taken a formal position on Lightshift’s proposal. City manager Ron Redmond said he’s working to schedule a meeting between Lightshift and the fire department and will then schedule public meetings to solicit feedback.
The project’s approval would likely spell doom for Hathaway’s housing development, she said, and not just because of the safety concerns. Her plans call for clear-cutting trees that currently serve as a buffer between her property and land where the batteries would sit. That means the homes, which could be valued between $600,000 and $900,000, would overlook the site.
Buyers may think twice about spending that much on a home when “you’ve got this atrocity in your backyard,” she said. ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Charged Up | Neighbors protest a plan for a big battery array in Vergennes”
This article appears in March 4-11 • 2026.
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