A March 13 article in NY Focus revealed that the push for battery farms is not coming from ConEd. In fact, ConEd doesn’t want them! “ConEd says the battery rush has been a victim of its own success. So many new projects are seeking to plug into the grid, the utility says, that they risk overloading local infrastructure and causing outages. To avoid that, in recent months the company has started asking developers to pay tens of millions of dollars for upgrades if they want to move ahead with their projects.” This means battery farm projects are not being held up by red tape, but by the cost. Instead of breathing a sigh of relief, the electeds are siding with the battery farm builders! Brooklyn State Senator Kevin Parker authored an op-ed for Crain’s where he noted, “I am leading the effort among elected officials and advocates calling on Con Edison to reverse this unilateral change and work collaboratively with grid experts to ensure new energy storage projects can affordably interconnect.” This triggered an Albany protest which is covered on p28.