Jupiter Power holds first meeting with Glenwood Landing community
In an effort to provide transparency and address public concerns regarding the approximately 275-megawatt battery energy storage system planned for the area, Jupiter Power held an open house on May 21 to inform residents of Glenwood Landing and nearby communities about the proposed Oyster Shore Energy Storage project.
The open house featured a series of detailed storyboards and presentations, guiding attendees through various aspects of the project. Hans Detweiler, Jupiter’s senior director of development, explained the setup was designed to cover all questions residents might have.
“We have these storyboards, these posters with information about the project,” Detweiler said. “We walk people through them, and they can ask all their questions.”
Detweiler highlighted several benefits of the project, emphasizing the importance of fast-acting energy solutions for grid resilience. He also noted that the project site, currently an oil terminal with a 100-year history of contamination, would undergo accelerated cleanup once acquired by Jupiter.
“Batteries can support a reliable grid at a fraction of a second scale,” he explained, “This is good for Hempstead Harbor and people concerned about water quality.”
The proposed site will connect directly to the existing Shore Road substation, eliminating the need for additional power lines and reducing fuel trucks from local traffic flow. Detweiler assured attendees that Jupiter is open to community input regarding the use of the remaining space on the site, particularly the concrete delivery dock across the street from the site.
“We’re asking the public what they would like it to look like,” he said. “We could make that look a lot nicer, like a more wildlife-friendly habitat.”
Paul Rogers, a founding principal of Energy Safety Response Group, an energy storage safety company hired by Jupiter for the project, attended the open house to address safety concerns. Rogers, a former lieutenant with the New York City Fire Department, emphasized the stringent safety measures in place for the project.
“Our big thing is looking at it from the point of view of someone who will be up close and personal with these things,” Rogers said. “So, we always make sure that they are communicating with the firefighters and making sure that they are putting in emergency response plans that are actually coherent for first responders to understand.”
Rogers reassured attendees that the batteries used in the project would be of the highest quality, in stark contrast to the unlisted, low-quality batteries often linked to e-bike and consumer product fires. He detailed the testing procedures that ensure safety, including large-scale fire tests to validate the systems’ resilience.
“The whole goal is to keep the failure or the spread within the unit,” Rogers explained. “Number one is isolate where we’re looking for it to actually not spread, and number two, if it does spread, we want the container to consume itself, stopping it before it gets out of control.”
Local resident Sean Trager attended the open house with cautious optimism. He praised the transparency and accessibility of Jupiter’s representatives, adding that while the company still had a way to go to sell the project to the community, what he had seen so far had impressed him.
“I’m inclined to certainly do more research, but at first glance I think that this is a great opportunity to decommission and remediate the existing land,” Trager said. “Beyond that, to get away from our dependency on burning oil, and if nothing else, we won’t have 30 or 40 trucks moving across our waterfront every day, and we’ll have this beautiful new site that’s very much cleaned up in comparison.”
Trager highlighted the potential environmental and aesthetic benefits of the project. The current oil terminal site, which he said is seen as an eyesore by many in the community, would be transformed into a cleaner, more appealing space according to Jupiter officials at the event.
“The rendering of that new space was both encouraging and enlightening,” he remarked. “If you can put that facility or the rendering of what we saw on our waterfront as opposed to what’s currently there, that’s like night and day.”
Detweiler confirmed that Jupiter has not yet finalized the purchase of the site but has an option to do so. The company applied to the town in December 2022 and has since made significant redesigns based on feedback from town officials. The project’s timeline is currently aligned with a town-imposed moratorium, allowing time for community engagement and the release of final safety task force results.
Detweiler assured the community that the site’s tax contributions would remain stable or increase, alleviating concerns about potential economic impacts. This is especially important for the school district, which is still reeling from the loss of funds from the 2022 settlement between the county and Long Island Power Authority.
“Global (which currently owns the site) pays about $325,000 in taxes a year,” Detweiler said. “With our investment, those taxes would go up or stay the same, but they’re not going down.”
