NineDot cuts ribbon on Bronx site it says will deliver nearly 20 MW

NineDot Energy cut the ribbon on September 23, 2026 on a battery storage site in Hunts Point, the Bronx, that the company calls its largest, according to a release it issued the following day. NineDot says the system will be fully operational in time for the summer of 2027 and "will deliver nearly 20 megawatts of power to the local Hunts Point community, enough energy to power nearly 20,000 homes during peak grid hours." The release gives no energy capacity in megawatt-hours (kW vs kWh), no equipment supplier, no cost and no commissioning date beyond that summer, and it does not say what the ribbon-cutting marked beyond the celebration, though a quote it carries from Julie Tighe of the New York League of Conservation Voters congratulates NineDot "on the completion of this project." NineDot's own projects page, as read on September 25, 2026, lists the site as "Casanova (Hunts Point)" with the status "Under Construction," a label the page uses alongside "Began Operations" entries for its other sites; the page does not say what remains to be done.

The state's incentive record fills in some of what the release leaves out, as of a date before the ribbon-cutting. NYSERDA's energy storage incentive dataset on data.ny.gov, in rows carrying a September 4, 2026 reporting period, lists four "Retail Storage" applications by "Nine Dot Energy LLC" at 633, 635 and 637 Casanova St and 641 Casanova Street, as the rows write them, in the Bronx, each with the status "Approved," each approved on August 28, 2025, and each listing 4,896 kW AC of power capacity, 19,584 kWh AC of usable installed energy storage, $2,448,000 of NYSERDA funding, lithium-ion technology and CATL as the battery cell manufacturer. The release gives no address; what ties these rows to the site is the projects page's "Casanova (Hunts Point)" name, the four lots' sum against the release's nearly 20 megawatts, the shared approval date, and the "LOT 641" sign on an enclosure in the release's own photograph. The dataset's column definitions say "Approved projects have reserved a NYSERDA incentive application but are not yet completed," that a blank completion date, which all four rows have, marks a project NYSERDA has not yet recognized as interconnected and operational, and that retail projects are up to 5 MW, the only stated reason the site appears as four applications. By our addition the four rows come to 19,584 kW AC, 78,336 kWh and $9,792,000 of incentive, which is exactly four hours of storage at full power. NineDot's four other applications in the same ZIP code, on Spofford Ave and Whittier St as the rows write them, are not counted here. One conflict between the two first-party documents stands: the projects page calls Casanova a "battery storage and solar project," while all four NYSERDA rows say the system is not paired with solar.

The release quotes ten people, among them NineDot co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Adam Cohen, Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson, Assembly Member Amanda Septimo, Council Member Justin Sanchez and David Sandbank of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. Its photo caption is a separate list of nine people at the ribbon, which adds John Rhodes of the state Department of Public Service, NYCEDC's Giacomo Landi, NineDot CEO David Arfin and Maria Reyes of the NYC Climate Justice Hub, none of whom is quoted.

The release describes the site as replacing the former home of a fuel oil trucking company and frames it against Hunts Point's history: more than 10,000 diesel trucks a day, two gas-fired peaker plants in nearby Port Morris, and asthma-related emergency room visits in the combined Hunts Point-Mott Haven area at two to three times the citywide average in 2023, all as the release states them. Septimo's quote ties storage to "retiring peaker plants" and to electrifying "polluting sources like diesel refrigerators and trucks." Sanchez pointed to workforce training NineDot is engaged in, giving as examples a solar and storage engineering curriculum created and run at five career and technical education high schools in partnership with Solar One, and support for The HOPE Program.

NineDot says that during the July 1 to 4, 2026 heat wave its community battery systems exported nearly 34 megawatts during the peak hours across nine projects, supporting the local distribution system of Con Edison, the utility whose trenchless depot charging work with First Student in Brooklyn The Duck Curve covered on September 18, 2026, and the statewide transmission system. NineDot says it currently has eleven operating projects at six locations totalling 39 MW in Staten Island and the Bronx, which it calls the largest battery fleet operating in Con Edison's New York City service territory, with more than 60 additional projects in development and a pipeline it puts at greater than 1 GW. Set against that fleet, the nearly 20 MW NineDot says the site will deliver is about half of the 39 MW operating total, by our division; the release does not say whether the 39 MW already counts Hunts Point. The company says it is on track for 400 MW in operation, construction or development by the end of 2026, without breaking that down by stage.

The state target, the financing and the ranking claims

NYSERDA's Energy Storage Program page, as read on September 25, 2026, says that on June 20, 2024 the New York Public Service Commission approved the Order Establishing Updated Energy Storage Goal and Deployment Policy, which formally expands the state's goal to 6,000 megawatts of energy storage installed by 2030 and authorized funds for NYSERDA to support, among other things, 1,500 megawatts of new commercial and community-scale energy storage and 3,000 megawatts of new large-scale storage. NYSERDA says these projects will reduce projected future statewide electric system costs by nearly $2 billion. NineDot describes its projects as community battery energy storage systems; the four Casanova applications sit in NYSERDA's Retail Storage program.

Natixis Corporate & Investment Banking said on February 9, 2026 that it had closed $431 million in construction financing for a portfolio of 28 battery storage assets NineDot is developing and constructing across New York City, supporting an aggregate capacity of 124 MW and 494 MWh, through a construction and term loan facility, a tax-credit-transfer bridge loan and a letter-of-credit facility. That portfolio works out to just under four hours of storage per megawatt, by our division of the two figures Natixis gave, against exactly four hours for the four Casanova rows; whether the Hunts Point site sits inside the 28 financed assets is not something either release states.

Natixis calls NineDot the leading developer of community-scale battery storage systems in the New York City area "based on the Con Edison interconnection queue," which it says spans the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island as well as Westchester County. NineDot's September release calls itself "the leading developer of community battery energy storage systems (BESS) in the New York City metro area," with no basis stated, and says separately that "based on public interconnection queue data," its portfolio of mature community battery storage projects "is second to none in ConEd's New York territory." Where a basis is given, it is queue position, not operating megawatts.