Glen Cove’s City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to extend its moratorium on battery energy storage systems for another year, keeping a ban in place through April 28, 2027, as officials say they still need more time to study the safety risks those facilities carry.
The extension, approved at the council’s April 14 meeting, covers any application for a facility that holds electrochemical devices that charge or collect energy from a power grid and then discharge that energy back to parcels, dwellings, or utilities. It’s the second consecutive year-long ban the council has passed. The first was enacted at a May 2025 meeting, after Mayor Pam Panzenbeck said the council had been quietly discussing the issue for some time before taking formal action.
No members of the public spoke at Tuesday’s public hearing.
The moratorium text makes the council’s rationale plain: “The City Council finds that to ensure the public health, safety and welfare, a thorough examination of the risks of these facilities must be ascertained prior to the submission of any applications requesting approval for this use.”
Glen Cove doesn’t currently have any battery storage proposals on the table. But the shadow of a nearby project hangs over the conversation. Jupiter Power Company once proposed a 275-megawatt lithium battery storage facility in Glenwood Landing, just outside Glen Cove’s boundaries, that would have sat close to the Glen Head and Glenwood Landing elementary schools. That plan was abandoned, but residents have made clear they don’t trust it won’t come back, whether from Jupiter Power or another developer looking at Nassau County’s north shore. The concern, as Long Island Press reported, is that the abandoned proposal could be a preview of what’s coming, not a closed chapter.
Glen Cove isn’t alone. All three Nassau County towns have temporary bans against battery energy storage systems in effect, reflecting a broader unease across the county’s municipalities about how these facilities should be sited, regulated, and reviewed before any project gets off the ground. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has guidelines for energy storage projects, but local governments have pushed back on the idea that state-level review is sufficient protection for communities sitting near potential sites.
Battery energy storage systems have become a flashpoint across Long Island as utilities and developers look for ways to meet New York’s energy storage targets, which call for 6,000 megawatts of capacity statewide by 2030. The technology lets the grid bank power during low-demand periods and release it during peak hours, which is useful in theory. The problem, as many residents and local officials see it, is that lithium battery installations carry fire and chemical exposure risks that aren’t well understood at the neighborhood scale, and the regulatory frameworks haven’t caught up.
The extension takes effect upon filing with the Secretary of State.
The council also promoted two members of the Glen Cove City Police Department at Tuesday’s meeting. Salvatore Bifone was elevated to the rank of lieutenant and Peter Michaleas was appointed to sergeant. Both promotions passed unanimously, with family and friends of both officers in the room to watch the ceremonies.
Council members praised both men individually before the vote, and Panzenbeck said each officer brings an impressive record to their new rank. The mayor thanked them for their service to the community.
It was a different kind of business than the moratorium vote, but it drew genuine warmth from the dais. Community policing is personal in a city Glen Cove’s size, and a promotion ceremony where neighbors fill the council chambers seats says something about how those relationships work. Bifone and Michaleas both rose through a department that serves roughly 28,000 residents in a Nassau County city that sits between the suburban sprawl of the Island’s interior and the older, denser neighborhoods along the north shore waterfront.
The battery moratorium will get its next review well before April 2027. If Glen Cove follows the pattern from 2025, the council could revisit the issue sooner if a new proposal surfaces anywhere close to the city’s borders. For now, the ban holds, and the council’s message to prospective developers is that the application window is closed while the safety questions remain open.