Fire at Church Street Battery Storage Facility, Warwick, New York, involves unauthorized system
Dec 2025Published 7 Sept 2026Responsible editor: Chief Editor
- Where
- Church Street Battery Storage Facility, Village of Warwick, New York
- Operator
- Convergent
- What
- Fire broke out inside a single battery container on 19 December 2025
- Injuries
- None reported
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What happened
A fire broke out on 19 December 2025 inside a single battery container at the Church Street Battery Storage Facility in the Village of Warwick, New York. Convergent is reported as the site's operator. The blaze triggered an alarm and activated the site's emergency response plan. No injuries were reported and the fire stayed confined to one unit. Hazmat teams conducted continuous air monitoring, detecting hydrogen cyanide at 0.5 parts per million near the site, about half the federal safety limit, while downwind monitors recorded zero readings.
Village officials later said the system had been activated and fully charged without notifying the village, and that the operator did not hold a required Certificate of Compliance at the time, meaning the facility should not have been operational. According to reporting cited by the source, this was the third BESS fire in the Warwick area within a two year period; it is not yet clear from available sources whether this occurred at the same site as an earlier 2025 Warwick container fire already in this register.
Contributing factors
Officials suggested water infiltration may have caused the fire, echoing two earlier 2023 incidents at sites operated by the same company in the area following heavy rain. Severe weather before the December fire may also have contributed. The facility was reportedly operating without the required Certificate of Compliance and had been activated and charged without notifying village authorities.
Lessons learned
- Operators must hold a valid Certificate of Compliance before activating or charging a battery storage system.
- Local authorities must be notified before activation or recharging of a BESS, especially after outages or repairs.
- Battery containers must be assessed for water ingress resistance in areas prone to heavy rainfall.
More lessons on design, standards and commissioning, emergency response and public communication, from every incident on the register.
Not yet known
- Exact cause of the fire
- Battery container model and age
- Duration of downtime or cost of damage
- Whether this was the same site as the earlier 2025 Warwick fire
This entry is updated when these are reported. Get an alert for the next one like it.
Source
Other entries that name Warwick
- Single container fire at West Warwick 3 Battery Storage Site in Warwick, New York
- Third battery fire at Warwick storage site raises safety questions
- Battery Storage Fire and Fume Release at Two Warwick, New York Sites
- Manufacturing defect in Powin battery units blamed for Warwick storage fires
- Battery storage fire burns for a second day at Warwick energy storage facility, New York
Published 2026-09-07. Written from public reporting. Descriptive, not investigative. See the data accuracy disclaimer.
