Complete civil packages for battery energy storage in Washington 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 Washington County, New York. We contract the complete civil package under one agreement, with Backwell superintendents and lead operators on site.
Washington County is one of the few places in the region where a large renewable siting permit has actually issued. The Office of Renewable Energy Siting and Electric Transmission granted Boralex LLC a final siting permit for the Fort Edward Solar Project, a 100 MW facility in the Town of Fort Edward expected to be operational by 2030, carrying more than 14 million dollars in payment in lieu of taxes and host community benefits. That permit establishes the pattern for how large energy sitework gets approved here: state siting, long lead, and a construction window opening years after the queue entry. Standalone battery entries in the county, including NY16 Energy Storage, NY13 Energy Storage and Springer Storage, have all been withdrawn from the NYISO queue, and the Village of Hudson Falls has adopted a local law banning large scale battery energy storage systems. The near term civil opportunity in this county is solar and transmission sitework rather than standalone battery pads.
Publicly reported battery energy storage in and around Washington 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.
The western third of the county lies in the Champlain lowland, where calcareous glaciolacustrine and estuarine clays of the Vergennes and Covington type form a nearly level plain along the Hudson and the Champlain Canal from Fort Edward north through Kingsbury and Whitehall. These are very deep, moderately well to poorly drained clay soils with slow permeability and high frost heave potential. Limestone, dolostone and marble bedrock underlie much of that lowland and comes near the surface on the low ridges, where shallow series appear. East of the lowland the land rises into drumlinized till uplands through Argyle, Salem and Greenwich, with stonier, denser till and moderate depth to bedrock. The far eastern border towns sit against the Taconic range with steep slopes and bouldery till. Design frost depth here is commonly taken at 48 inches or deeper given the northern exposure.
The Champlain lowland clays are the governing condition. Expect a soft, frost susceptible subgrade that will not support delivery traffic through spring, so pads and access roads need undercut, geotextile separation and an imported aggregate working platform placed and maintained from the start rather than patched later. Clay spoil is generally unsuitable as select backfill, which drives import and export volumes. Trenching in these clays requires shoring and dewatering, and open cut slopes flatten quickly. Where limestone and marble ridges come near grade, foundation and trench lines will hit rock at shallow depth and hammer work should be carried. Stormwater design leans on conveyance, sediment basins and slow release rather than infiltration, since permeability is low. In the till uplands, stone content and boulders drive screening and handling.
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. The Village of Hudson Falls has adopted a local law banning large scale battery energy storage systems, finding that they present unique and substantial risks to public health, safety and welfare. Other towns in the county continue to regulate through site plan and solar chapters rather than a countywide rule. Sources: https://poststar.com/news/local/government-politics/article_9302fe7b-7677-476a-9f29-e0ef7d504c50.html and https://www.govtech.com/products/hudson-falls-n-y-to-discuss-battery-storage-system-ban
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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