NineDot Energy, a developer of battery storage systems focused on the New York City market, announced Thursday it has signed Starbucks as an anchor subscriber to its initial project in the Bronx.
"We’re excited to be a leading community battery storage subscriber in New York City in support of community-scale battery storage,” Starbucks Chief Sustainability Officer Michael Kobori said in a statement.
NineDot’s first project is in the Pelham Gardens neighborhood, but the company has about 30 more storage systems under construction across the city and more in the evaluation and design phase. The company says it is on track to develop 400 MW in the state by 2026, with a typical project sized around 5 MW and capable of discharging for about four hours.
“NineDot has a strong pipeline of battery energy storage projects that can support Starbucks throughout the New York City area,” NineDot CEO and co-founder David Arfin said.
New York wants to have 6,000 MW of energy storage capacity installed by 2030, and has developed incentives and market signals to enable development of the resources. NineDot operates storage under the state’s Value of Distributed Energy Resources program, which provides credits for discharging energy during times of high grid demand. The company then allocates the credits to offset subscriber utility bills and defray the costs of acquiring the storage.
The company has been expanding with support from private equity and the state. In 2022, Carlyle invested $100 million in NineDot and electric vehicle charging company Fermata Energy. And in July, NineDot announced it closed on a $25 million revolving credit facility from the New York Green Bank.
NineDot was also part of the team that launched New York City’s first vehicle-to-grid electric vehicle charging installation, in Brooklyn. The company worked with Fermata Energy and Revel on the project, with partial funding from the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator program.
