Battery storage fire at Chaumont Site 1 prompts shelter-in-place order
EIR-0125Provisional entry. Confirmed: a battery storage fire occurred at a solar-plus-storage site with a one-mile shelter-in-place order and limited reported damage; not yet confirmed: the root cause, exact commissioning status of the project, and full extent of any damage. No further update is scheduled; the entry stays provisional until new information is published.
In 2023 a fire was reported at an outdoor battery energy storage system co-located with a solar photovoltaic array at the Chaumont Site 1 / Tops Markets solar-plus-storage project in the Town of Lyme, Chaumont, Jefferson County, New York, United States, operated and integrated by Convergent Energy and Power and owned by NSF Chaumont Site 1. The storage system, supplied by GE, used nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) cells and was a small utility-scale installation of single-digit megawatts with a few hours of duration. Available sources indicate the system had been in service for less than six months, and it is not clear whether the wider project had reached full commercial operation. Local authorities issued a precautionary shelter-in-place order for residents within about one mile of the site while the fire was dealt with. Reported physical damage was limited to part of the installation. No injuries or fatalities were reported in available sources.
Not reported in available sources. Sources noted only that the system was recently installed, in service for less than six months, with some ambiguity over whether construction and commissioning were fully complete.
- Where a system is within its first months of service, or where commissioning and early operation overlap, agree in writing which party is monitoring cell and module data, at what interval, and who is authorised to isolate or shut down a unit out of hours.
- Emergency response plans for storage sites near housing should be agreed with the local fire and emergency authorities in advance, and should set out the trigger conditions, radius and communication route for a shelter-in-place instruction so the decision is not made from scratch during an event.
- At co-located solar and storage sites, response planning and site drawings should cover both the storage enclosures and the generation plant, including how to de-energise or isolate direct current sources that remain live in daylight.
- Keep enclosure spacing, access routes and water supply arrangements documented and available to responders at the gate, so that a defensive strategy can be adopted without delay where manual intervention is not appropriate.
Published 2026-09-07. Written from public reporting. Descriptive, not investigative. See the data accuracy disclaimer.