Complete civil packages for battery energy storage near Penn Yan, NY: pad subgrade and mass grading, foundation excavation, access and crane pads, collection trenching, ductbank, SWPPP, and substation civil.
Backwell contracts complete civil site work packages for battery energy storage developers and EPCs building near Penn Yan in Yates County, New York. One contract covers site preparation through final stabilization, with Backwell field leadership on site.
Penn Yan sits at the head of Keuka Lake on Route 14A, Route 54 and Route 54A, with the Greenidge 115 kV substation at Dresden roughly ten miles east on Seneca Lake and Thruway Exit 42 north at Geneva for heavy haul. Battery systems are already interconnected here on the NYSEG Rushville Tap 589 and Flat Street 597 circuits. The village holds the county industrial ground and the Penn Yan Airport. Terraces around the lake head carry Howard gravelly soils with good bearing, while the ground rising away from the village turns to till over shale with slopes that force benched grading.
Publicly reported battery energy storage in and around Yates 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.
Yates County is high glacial till upland cut by the Keuka Lake trough and bounded by Seneca Lake on the east. The upland carries Honeoye, Lima, Lansing and Conesus silt loams over calcareous till, with Howard gravelly loams on the kame terraces and outwash near Penn Yan and Branchport, and wetter Kendaia and Lyons soils in the flats. The Keuka and Seneca shoulders are steep, often exceeding fifteen percent, and there the soil mantle thins over Hamilton Group shale and siltstone that can sit within two to five feet of the surface. Water tables are shallow in the upland swales and on the terrace flats near the lake heads. Bedrock in the county is dominantly shale with some limestone toward the Seneca Lake side. Frost design depth is forty two inches, and the county sees heavy lake influenced snowfall.
Two conditions drive cost here. First, slope: anything on the Keuka or Seneca shoulders needs benched excavation, retained cuts or engineered fill to build a level enclosure pad, and access roads need switchback geometry and heavy erosion protection rather than a straight cut across the hillside. Second, shallow shale: medium voltage collection trenching and deep foundation excavation on the upper slopes should be priced with rock excavation, not common excavation. On the terraces near Penn Yan and Branchport the Howard gravels give good bearing, easy access road construction and useful on site aggregate. Stormwater design has to handle concentrated runoff into small steep tributaries feeding the lakes, which means level spreaders and outlet protection rather than simple ditching. Winter access planning matters because the snow load and drifting are significant.
Full detail on the Yates County market is on the Yates County battery storage civil page.
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. Yates County leaves battery siting entirely to its towns and villages, and no Yates County municipality appears in the statewide battery moratorium database as of the August 2026 update. Towns here generally review battery storage under existing site plan and special use permit provisions, and several have adopted the New York model battery energy storage system law framework.
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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