At a heated community board meeting on Sept. 24, residents of Woodlawn Heights in the Bronx debated with representatives from a renewable energy company. But the topic wasn’t high energy costs or carbon emissions. It was a proposed battery storage facility that the company, Orenda Power, plans to build in a vacant lot.
Three representatives of Orenda Power, including its president and chief executive officer Bill Grinstead, presented for roughly 15 minutes to the Community Board, and took questions from its members for nearly an hour.
Orenda’s representatives asserted that the benefits at the site, 249 East 233rd St., would outweigh its risks; it would store energy that could be deployed to support a strained energy grid on hot summer days. When pressed on Orenda’s reasoning for selecting the Woodlawn site, Grinstead cited its proximity to preexisting feeders, or high-voltage electric lines that distribute power throughout the Con-Edison energy grid…