Complete civil packages for battery energy storage in Chenango 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 Chenango County, New York. We contract the complete civil package under one agreement, with Backwell superintendents and lead operators on site.
Chenango County already hosts one of the larger operating retail storage installations in the Southern Tier. DG New York CS, LLC completed a 5 MW ac, 15 MWh battery project at Norwich under the NYSERDA Retail Storage Incentive program, interconnected at the NYSEG East Norwich substation, and a smaller 250 kW installation is in service at Greene. MN8 Energy's Puckett Solar, 20 MW, is operational in the county. Northland Power's High Bridge Wind at 100.8 MW is carried as under development, and an earlier version of that project was contracted as High Bridge Wind and Battery with a 5 MW, 20 MWh storage block, which shows the co location intent at that site. The county straddles NYISO Zone C and Zone E, sits on NYSEG distribution, and carries no active battery storage moratorium as of September 2026. That combination of proven interconnections and a clear local path is unusual in this region.
Publicly reported battery energy storage in and around Chenango 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.
Chenango County is glaciated Appalachian Plateau with broad rounded hills and the Chenango, Unadilla and Susquehanna valleys cutting through it. Mardin, Lordstown and Volusia dominate the uplands. Mardin is moderately well drained dense till with a fragipan generally 14 to 22 inches down, Volusia is its somewhat poorly drained equivalent, and Lordstown is moderately deep over shale and siltstone. Oquaga is extensive on the eastern hills and is moderately deep, commonly less than 40 inches to rock. Wellsboro, Lackawanna and Morris carry fragipans as well, and Chippewa occupies poorly drained till depressions. Valois occurs on kame terraces, and Chenango and Howard gravelly loams occupy the valley outwash along the rivers. Bath sits on convex upper slopes. Relief from the valley floors near 1,000 feet to the hilltops above 2,000 feet is moderate but continuous. Design frost depth is roughly 48 inches.
Fragipan management is the central civil task across Chenango County. Mardin, Volusia, Wellsboro, Lackawanna and Morris all perch water on a dense restrictive layer within two feet of grade, so enclosure pads need upgradient curtain drains, an underdrained granular section and graded fall away from the equipment slab, and stormwater must be handled as detention rather than infiltration. Chippewa positions should be avoided for pad locations or undercut and replaced. On Oquaga and Lordstown hill positions rock is inside normal trench depth, so conduit, ground grid and foundation excavation should be priced with ripping and hammer work, with the shale reused as road base. Valley outwash along the Chenango and Unadilla rivers grades and drains well and is the preferred pad ground where a parcel allows it. Higher elevation and colder winters shorten the practical earthwork season here.
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 no Chenango County municipality appears on the statewide battery energy storage moratorium tracking with an active utility scale moratorium. The Town of Chenango has an adopted renewable energy systems chapter in its code, so site plan and special use review are the governing local steps.
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.
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