Massachusetts sets big battery goals — and the policies to back them up

Just outside Boston, a developer is getting set to build a 700-megawatt storage facility that is expected to dwarf every other battery project in New England. One town over, another energy company just closed on $850 million in financing to build a 250-MW battery. Down near the Rhode Island border, ground has been broken on a 200-MW storage facility that is expected to be up and running by the end of the year.

These and roughly a half dozen other projects at various stages are taking advantage of policies Massachusetts has put in place to help reach its goal of getting 5 gigawatts of battery storage capacity online by 2030, with another 5 GW to follow by 2035. 

While several larger and generally sunnier states top the list for installed storage capacity — California boasts a whopping 23 GW — Massachusetts’ ambition and policies put it at the forefront of the push to get more batteries on the grid. Thirteen states have set procurement targets for battery storage, but Massachusetts’ total of 10 GW by 2035 is the highest. And its policy landscape is setting the state up for success, observers say. 

“Massachusetts is really a leader in this space,” said Erin Smith, energy and grid policy director for the Environmental League of Massachusetts. ​“We’re ahead of the pack as it relates to encouraging battery buildout.”

Massachusetts has ambitious clean energy goals and some of the highest electricity prices in the country. Batteries, the state figures, can help with both. They can store energy when power is cheapest and cleanest — like on sunny days when solar farms are producing in abundance — then send it back onto the grid during times of heavier demand, cutting down on the need to generate pricier, dirtier power. Battery systems can also bolster resilience, reducing outages during increasingly extreme and erratic weather. 

“If we have storage on the system, we can deploy it at different times to manage our load,” said Elizabeth Mahony, commissioner of the state Department of Energy Resources. 

So for the past 11 years, Massachusetts has been working to encourage the development of large-scale batteries, beginning with the launch of the Energy Storage Initiative in 2015 under then-Gov. Charlie Baker (R). The state blew past its initial target of installing 1 GW of storage capacity by 2025, topping 1.6 GW. 

Progress has only accelerated since then, thanks to a trio of state policies making it easier and more profitable to locate batteries in the state. The Clean Peak Standard, which went into effect in 2020, is a first-in-the-country program that pays renewable energy facilities and energy storage owners to send power onto the grid during times of peak demand. It provides an additional revenue source that can make battery developments more financially viable.

“Those credits are incredibly important to financing and developing these projects,” said Aaron Lang, a partner at Boston law firm Foley Hoag who counts several battery developers among his clients. 

New siting and permitting reforms that went into effect on July 1 are also making Massachusetts more attractive to storage developers by streamlining and speeding up the approval process, Lang said. The new rules give the state Energy Facilities Siting Board authority to approve large energy projects, including storage facilities with a capacity of 100 MW or higher, rather than making developers work with the disparate permitting processes of individual municipalities. Decisions must be made within 15 months of application.

“It ensures we can bring more clean energy, including batteries, online sooner,” Smith said.

The state has also undertaken a series of procurements aimed at securing large-scale storage capacity. In December 2025, Massachusetts selected four projects totaling 1.3 GW of capacity to move ahead to contract negotiations with the major utilities. A second solicitation received 35 bids before it closed earlier this month; selected projects are set to be announced in February. 

Together, these actions create a climate that storage developers can rely on, said Hans Detweiler, vice president of development for Jupiter Power, the company behind the 700-MW Trimount project just outside Boston, where construction is slated to begin next year.

“Moving through permitting and state solicitations takes years, so developers need confidence that the policy framework will remain stable over that period,” he said. ​“The Healey administration has consistently supported a procurement process that brings cost-effective resources to the grid to reduce electricity costs for consumers.”

Even with all the state’s efforts, however, barriers remain. Perhaps the most pressing is the cost of interconnecting major projects like these to the grid. 

In September, developers canceled plans for a 125-MW battery system in the town of Tewksbury, citing the unexpectedly high cost — $65 million — of the upgrades necessary to hook into the grid. And that number is on the low end. Grid operator Independent System Operator New England recently completed a study of likely interconnection costs for a number of proposed projects, most of which were battery developments sited in Massachusetts. Many of the estimates topped $200 million, ​“quite a bit higher than developers anticipated,” Smith said. 

“We have an older grid here in New England, and it genuinely does require some upgrade costs to accommodate the influx of batteries,” she said. ​“How to allocate grid upgrade costs is going to be a debate.”

Many battery proposals are also running into ardent community opposition. Locals in the central Massachusetts town of Oakham are fighting a plan to build a 180-MW battery system, pointing to the risk of fires, which could contaminate a nearby reservoir that supplies drinking water to dozens of communities. Last year, similar concerns helped derail a proposed project in the city of Westfield. 

These fears may seem reasonable, especially in light of highly publicized battery fires like the one in Moss Landing, California, but they do not reflect the reality of storage system safety today, said Todd Olinsky-Paul, senior project director for the Clean Energy States Alliance, a coalition of state energy agencies. 

“It’s something new. People are nervous about it,” he said. ​“They may be hearing misinformation about possible environmental impacts.”

Battery boosters are hopeful that transparency and education can help blunt these objections. The battery fires that have made headlines in recent years almost all used a different kind of technology than those used in current installations. Safety protocols have also improved over the years, making fires even less likely. 

Despite these potential hurdles, the state’s commitment to easing the way for battery developments bodes well for the future, Lang said. 

“The policy framework in place is certainly having an influence on bringing developers to Massachusetts. It holds a lot of promise,” he said. ​“I am optimistic that the challenges can be overcome.”