This story by Sophia Keshmiri was first published in the Addison Independent on June 11, 2026.
VERGENNES — The company that proposed building a battery energy storage system at 99 Panton Road in Vergennes has put the project on pause.
The Wednesday announcement comes on the heels of a tense informational meeting in the Little City the previous week that featured pushback from residents who’ve expressed safety concerns about the battery energy storage system infrastructure, which has the potential to save locals money.
“We’ve heard from the community, and for now we are pausing the project as we continue ongoing conversations,” a Lightshift spokesperson said in an email to the Independent.
“We will keep meeting and engaging with residents to determine a path forward for this important work, including the possibility of another location.”
When asked to elaborate about what “pausing” the project means, and if the company has terminated its 45-day advance notice submission with the Vermont Public Utility Commission and if it will definitely not pursue a project at 99 Panton Road, the spokesperson said, “unfortunately, that’s all I can share right now.”
When asked if Lightshift had withdrawn its 45-day notice, or terminated or paused its project in any official way with the PUC, a representative said, “an advance submission filing can remain open in our system until the expiration of the valid period for the type of case it is, or when a petition for the project is filed,” and noted that Lightshift’s expires on December 17 of this year. The person added, “if a petition for the project is not filed by that date, the advance submission will automatically close.” Such a petition, which Lightshift previously said it hoped to file for before the end of the year, would kickstart the PUC’s regulatory role.
While the 4.99-megawatt, five-shipping-container-sized facility could reduce electric bills for Vergennes residents and Vermonters, improve delivery to homes and businesses, hasten integration of renewable energy on the grid and contribute significantly to the city’s grand list, it’s a project that’s generated frustration, anger and fear.
Concerns about the possibility of a fire at the facility and opposition to the project, which were catalyzed in December when the company filed the 45-day notice letter with the PUC — the body that regulates such projects — were front and center during a June 3 informational session. Roughly 35 people attended in person, with others tuned in via Zoom.
The meeting was marked by interruptions from attendees, and visible and audible frustration from the audience and panelists.
Panelists — Lightshift co-founder and Managing Partner Michael Herbert, Chief Technology Officer Joe Leavitt and Director of Market Development Laura Coriell, plus co-founding principal of Energy Safety Response Group Paul Rogers — spent a significant portion of the more than two-hour meeting discussing safety and trying to reassure residents.
Panelists said the systems are safe and cited rigorous testing of the technology, which is designed to prevent fires from spreading from unit to unit and features around-the-clock remote monitoring. The batteries will automatically shut down if that connection is lost. Additionally, Rogers, who has a quarter-century of experience as a New York City firefighter, said a fire would be less likely to occur than an airplane crash.
A professor in the electrical engineering department at the University of Vermont previously compared the danger posed by battery energy storage systems to gas stations.
If a fire did occur, the company asserted, the toxins released are no worse than during a house fire.
What is different is how first responders address the flames. The protocol is to monitor them until they die out.
Vergennes Fire Chief David DiBiase met with Lightshift and previously gave the project his seal of approval from a safety perspective. He reasserted his comfort in a public statement dated June 3 that was distributed at the informational session.
“From where we sit, VFD has no safety objections to this project. Our operational familiarity with this corridor informs our view that the risk profile here is consistent with, and in our judgement no greater than, other facilities already operating in close proximity to residential areas in this part of the city,” the statement reads.
“We are not in a position to weigh in on zoning, and we won’t. But within our lane, we are comfortable with what we have seen.”
During the meeting, one of the resounding themes was that attendees were particularly concerned with the proposed location. Though the 99 Panton Road parcel that Lightshift has been eyeing is industrially zoned, it abuts land that is zoned as medium-density residential.
Among those who have taken issue with the project are three would-be neighbors: Rebecca Chauvin, owner of WOWTOYZ; the owners of the Strong House Inn; and Waterbury resident Carrie Hathaway, who owns a farmhouse near the site and plans to build five homes that would neighbor the battery facility.
After the meeting, Herbert told an Independent reporter, “We have explored a lot of alternative sites, like I said, this site checked all of our boxes for a good site for one of our projects.”
He added, “We’re always open to talking to landowners about sites for our projects, we’ve done that a lot in Vergennes, in the surrounding county, in the state of Vermont. I think it’s not as easy as some would make it seem to find a good site for these kinds of projects, and so, I think we believe in the criteria of this site being good for energy storage, and we’re open to talking about other locations. I wouldn’t necessarily say alternative locations, but we’re always open to that conversation as developers of these projects.”
Though residents were concerned with the proximity of residences and businesses, Lightshift has pursued a battery storage project next to an elementary school in Groton, Massachusetts.
“We completed a unique 3 (megawatt) battery storage system that combines a peak shaving application with a dedicated microgrid providing backup power to a local school. This innovative project highlights how energy storage can simultaneously provide critical backup power, community savings and grid reliability,” according to the company’s website.
Rogers told attendees “they’re everywhere already.”
Even in New York City’s tightly packed skyscrapers.
“When we put them outside, we’re like, we’re not worried,” he said.
“We were more concerned about putting them in the high-rise building. That was what our goal was when we first looked at these things.”
Years in the making
Although Lightshift introduced the project to the Vergennes City Council during a meeting in October 2025, Lightshift’s interest in the Little City long predates that. The company has been working on a Vergennes project for five years and approached Green Mountain Power three years ago.
“The company filed an interconnection request in 2023,” according to a GMP spokesperson. “The PUC approves or disapproves projects, and if a project in a utility’s service area gets regulatory approval, the utility is required to connect it to the grid.”
City Manager Ron Redmond said he invited Green Mountain Power to attend the June 3 meeting but that the electricity utility declined.
When asked what makes Vergennes worth five years of research, Herbert said, “It is an area within the state of Vermont that has very high penetration of solar generation. It has, if you look at the solar hosting map, Green Mountain Power, all the lines are bright red, the substation is overloaded, the lines are overloaded. And building projects like this is something that can relieve that constraint and do it much more cost-effectively than expanding the substation or adding additional distribution lines, so it’s a very good site on those grounds.”
He added, “It kind of needs to be connected to that substation or one of the lines, like very close to that substation, to be able to offer those types of benefits to the power group.”
During the meeting, an attendee asked how much the company would profit off the project, to which Herbert said it was too early in the process to have an estimate.
“Because we don’t know how much the project’s going to cost, because we haven’t bought the equipment yet, we haven’t signed a contract with any utility yet,” he said during the meeting.
When asked by an Independent reporter after the meeting what similarly sized projects have generated, he said, “I don’t have a number off the top of my head that I would be comfortable sharing.”
