Complete civil packages for battery energy storage in Allegany County, New York: pad subgrade and mass grading, foundation excavation, access and crane pads, collection trenching, ductbank, SWPPP, and substation civil.
Backwell is a civil site work general contractor serving battery energy storage developers and EPCs building in Allegany County, New York. We contract the complete civil package under one agreement, with Backwell superintendents and lead operators on site.
Allegany County straddles the NYISO Zone A and Zone C boundary, and its storage activity has concentrated at one node. Zenobe Americas has a 100 MW and 400 MWh four hour battery queued at the Moraine Road 115 kV Substation on NYSEG, listed in Zone C, with commercial operation targeted for July 2028, and the 93.5 MW Moraine Solar Energy Center is queued at the same Moraine 115 kV bus with commercial operation targeted for September 2028. Alfred Oaks Solar, 100 MW with 20 MW of co-located battery storage in the Town of Alfred, received an Office of Renewable Energy Siting final siting permit announced in September 2024. PowerBank Corporation announced a hybrid project on Salt Rising Road in the county in 2026, up to 5 MW AC and 20 MWh of four hour storage paired with 500 kW of solar, with a lease executed and the project in pre construction. The county is rural, NYSEG territory with a municipal utility at Wellsville, and interconnection capacity rather than land sets project size.
Publicly reported battery energy storage in and around Allegany County:
Project details come from public filings and reporting and are listed to show where the work is. Backwell is not affiliated with these projects or their developers.
Allegany County lies entirely on the glaciated Allegheny Plateau and is the highest and most dissected of the five Western New York counties, with long ridges separated by deeply cut north and south trending valleys on the Genesee River, Oil Creek, and Van Campen Creek. Upland soils are dense till of the Volusia, Mardin, and Lordstown series, with fragipans commonly in the 16 to 36 inch range that perch water and generate persistent seeps on the side slopes, and Lordstown soils running shallow to shale on the ridge crests. Valley bottoms carry Chenango and Howard gravelly outwash with a shallow water table, and floodplain alluvium along the Genesee. Bedrock is Devonian shale, siltstone, and sandstone of the Canadaway and Conneaut groups, weathered and close to the surface on the ridges. The county overlies the historic Allegany oil field, so legacy wells, gathering lines, and brine handling are genuine subsurface conditions in the southwestern towns. Design frost depth is commonly taken at 42 inches or more.
Level pad area has to be cut into sloping ground, and on ridge sites the cut usually reaches weathered shale within a few feet, so rock excavation for footings, duct banks, and grounding grid should be carried in the estimate rather than treated as an unknown. Fragipans perch water above the dense till, which means underdrain interception at the back of cut faces and a positive outlet are what keep a pad subgrade stable through a wet spring. Valley bottom sites trade rock for a shallow water table in outwash gravel, easy trenching but continuous dewatering and floodplain review. Legacy oil and gas wells in the southwestern towns need to be located and plugged or avoided before grading, which is a survey and records task that belongs at the front of the schedule. Long sustained access road grades drive heavier stone sections, larger culverts, and an erosion control package that is the dominant stormwater cost.
Concrete is placed by our subcontractor partners under the same contract, so the foundations follow the earthwork without a separate award. We price the civil package as one scope under one contract, which gives the EPC a single point of responsibility for the civil critical path instead of managing separate clearing, earthwork, and underground subcontracts.
Battery storage in New York is governed by Section 1207 of the 2025 Fire Code of New York State, which the State Fire Prevention and Building Code Council adopted on July 25, 2025 with an effective date of December 31, 2025. Section 1207 carries material based on the 2023 edition of NFPA 855 and renumbers what the 2020 code placed at Section 1206. Systems must be listed to UL 9540. Large scale fire testing under UL 9540A, reported to and approved by the fire code official, is what permits reduced separation distances and quantities above the table limits, and a hazard mitigation analysis is required to exceed the maximum allowable quantity. Outdoor installations carry a ten foot clearance to lot lines, public ways, buildings, stored combustibles, and other exposure hazards, with ten feet of combustible vegetation cleared on each side. New York added a mandatory peer review at Section 1207.12 for systems above the Table 1207.5 quantities, covering the site plan, the emergency operations plan, and the UL 9540A report. Those provisions fix pad layout and access road geometry before any earthwork is priced.
Battery storage siting in New York runs on the Fire Code of New York State, which adopts the International Fire Code provisions for stationary energy storage, together with NFPA 855 and the UL 9540A test reporting the authority having jurisdiction will ask for. The civil consequences are set early and they are ours to build.
We build to the approved civil drawings and the fire code commentary that comes with the permit. We do not stamp the design.
Local law. As of September 2026 the towns of Angelica and Allen carry active battery energy storage moratoria, and the Willing moratorium, which covered all battery storage, has expired. The remaining towns in the county have no active restriction on record. Source: https://carina.energy/bess-moratoriums/new-york/
Backwell superintendents, project managers, and lead operators run every site. We mobilize company equipment for the core scope and scale each project with leased production fleets, qualified regional subcontractors, and agency-placed field staff, all under Backwell supervision and a single contract.
Contractor licensing. New York does not issue a statewide general contractor license for commercial construction. Licensing is handled locally, so individual cities, towns, and counties may require contractor registration or a local license, and a few trades are licensed at the state level, including asbestos handling and crane operation. Separately, contractors and subcontractors performing public work, and work covered by Article 8 of the Labor Law, must be registered with the New York State Department of Labor under its statewide contractor registry, which took effect December 30, 2024. Owners, EPCs, and integrators on battery storage projects will typically ask for that DOL registration number along with insurance and, where required, bonding.
Construction stormwater. SPDES General Permit for Stormwater Discharges from Construction Activity, permit number GP-0-25-001, issued by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. It took effect January 29, 2025, replacing GP-0-20-001, and runs through January 28, 2030. Coverage is triggered at one acre of soil disturbance, or less if part of a larger common plan, and requires a Notice of Intent plus a SWPPP prepared and implemented under the DEC design manual. Coverage under the prior permit did not carry over automatically, so active sites had to refile. Backwell carries the SWPPP scope, installs and maintains the controls, keeps the inspection log, and closes the permit out with final stabilization.
Prevailing wage. Standalone battery storage sits outside New York Labor Law Section 224-d. That section applies to a covered renewable energy system as defined in Public Service Law Section 66-p, and that definition lists generating technologies only, so energy storage is not included and Section 224-d contains no storage clause. Prevailing wage still reaches many storage projects by other routes. Labor Law Section 224-a expressly excludes an energy storage system with a capacity equal to or under five megawatts alternating current, which means a larger storage system on a privately contracted project that meets the public funds and cost tests can be covered. The Public Service Commission order of June 20, 2024 establishing the updated energy storage goal states that projects of one megawatt alternating current and larger will be subject to prevailing wage requirements, so incentivized projects carry it as a program condition rather than by statute. Storage co-located with a covered renewable generator follows that generator. Separately, contractors and subcontractors performing public work, and work covered by Article 8 of the Labor Law, must be registered with the New York State Department of Labor under the statewide contractor registry effective December 30, 2024. The applicable trigger should be confirmed project by project. Backwell produces certified payroll, pays the applicable wage determination, and supports apprenticeship labor-hour compliance.
All New York battery storage civil work or the New York solar civil cluster.
Send plans, a scope of work, and the schedule through the form below or call (315) 400-2654. We review the civil package, walk the site if it is at that stage, and return a scoped proposal with a schedule of values, stated fill allowances, and unit rates for overages. A one-page capability statement is available for prequalification files.
Backwell contracts the complete civil package for utility solar around Allegany County, NY: clearing and grubbing, mass grading, access roads, collection trenching, SWPPP and erosion control, fencing, and substation civil, all under one contract. Allegany County, NY utility solar civil site work →
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