Complete civil packages for battery energy storage in Ontario 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 Ontario County, New York. We contract the complete civil package under one agreement, with Backwell superintendents and lead operators on site.
Ontario County is where the Rochester load center meets the northern Finger Lakes, and it is split between two utilities, which gives developers two separate interconnection paths inside one county. The county already hosts one of the earliest large battery installations in the region: Tesla Energy Operations placed a 2,080 kW system in Farmington on the RG&E system in 2018, tied to the Mortimer circuit, and that Hook Road corridor near an existing RG&E substation has since drawn further battery and transformer work. Distribution scale storage is now routine in Canandaigua, Victor, Shortsville and Stanley, spread across RG&E and NYSEG feeders. Retail growth along the Route 96 and Thruway Exit 44 corridor keeps load rising, and the county planning board has been reviewing battery storage referrals and town level battery ordinances for several years. For civil work the pattern is small to medium pad sites tied to existing substations, with strong aggregate supply and good haul routes in every direction.
Publicly reported battery energy storage in and around Ontario 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.
Ontario County runs from the flat Ontario lake plain in the far north through a broad belt of calcareous till plain and drumlinized uplands, then into the steep glacial trough shoulders around Canandaigua Lake. The workhorse soils are the Honeoye and Lima series on the rolling till uplands, both deep, moderately well to well drained silt loams over calcareous glacial till, with the Kendaia and Lyons series in the swales and Conesus on intermediate slopes. Palmyra and Alton gravelly outwash follows the meltwater channels near Farmington, Shortsville and Manchester, and Howard gravelly soils occupy the kame terraces near Canandaigua. Bedrock is Onondaga limestone and Salina Group shale in the north and Hamilton Group shale to the south, generally five to fifteen feet down on the till uplands and shallower on the escarpment shoulders. Frost design depth is forty two inches. Slopes above ten percent are common on the lake shoulders.
Honeoye and Lima till holds bearing well and cuts cleanly, so enclosure pads and transformer foundations in the Farmington, Victor and Canandaigua belt are usually conventional cut and fill with a compacted subbase rather than full undercut. The catch is that till with a dense lower horizon sheds water laterally, so subsurface drains and a graded stone base under every pad are needed to keep spring water from perching under the slabs. Palmyra and Alton outwash is the best ground in the county for access roads and for infiltration practices, and it is also a ready aggregate source. On the lake shoulders near Canandaigua, slope and shallow shale push work toward benched excavation, retained cuts and rock contingency for cable trenching. On the north end lake plain, expect clayey subgrades and seasonal water and plan for stone platforms and engineered outlets.
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. Ontario County has no county wide battery law, and siting is a town matter reviewed through the Ontario County Planning Board referral process. A statewide moratorium database shows the Town of West Bloomfield with an active utility scale battery restriction and the Town of Naples under review as of the August 2026 update. Several Ontario County towns have adopted or extended twelve month moratoriums on large scale battery installations while drafting permanent ordinances.
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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