Massachusetts battery storage projects fail at the local level, not the technical one. Under the 2024 siting law and 980 CMR 16.00, large facilities now hold two public meetings before they file, and the EFSB consolidated permit runs on a clock. The PR Bunker, led by Don Martelli, is the community relations counsel that gets battery energy storage developers through that process: mapping the town before the first meeting, briefing the fire chief, answering the safety questions in plain English, and staying through the vote, with 165 million square feet of permitted Massachusetts development behind it.
"Battery storage projects in Massachusetts are not dying on the engineering. They are dying at the first public meeting, when a resident asks the fire chief what happens if the batteries catch fire and the chief says nobody has briefed him yet."
The siting law turned community engagement into a filing requirement. The two public meetings now come before the application.
Before founding PR Bunker I ran a large Boston agency as its president, a firm known for winning town meeting votes. Today I am also president of the Revere Chamber of Commerce, which means I sit on the community's side of the table too. Battery storage is where fear moves fastest, because the questions are about fire and nobody in town has seen one of these facilities before. The playbook that permitted 165 million square feet is the same one, run earlier and with the fire department first.
Before the first meeting: who carries the room, where the opposition will organize, which officials residents trust, and what the fire, noise, property value and decommissioning questions will be before anyone has heard the project's name.
The fire chief is briefed before residents ask him anything. The emergency response plan is written in plain English, and the thermal runaway question gets a straight answer: what the codes and testing require, and what the department will do on the worst day.
The two meetings 980 CMR 16.00 requires, designed so they produce a record of engagement rather than a fight. Format, notice, who speaks, how questions get answered, and what goes into the filing afterward.
The fire, noise, decommissioning and who-profits questions answered directly, in words residents understand, plus the first-meeting FAQ that closes the misinformation gap before the Facebook group fills it.
Fire chief, select board, planning board, conservation commission and the abutters, one at a time, before the public meeting. Nobody who matters learns about the project from a headline.
When the town has already voted the project down or put a moratorium on the warrant: what went wrong, who still needs to hear from you, and whether there is a path back.
Massachusetts needs battery storage to hit its clean energy targets, and towns are saying no to it one project at a time. The 2024 siting law and its regulations at 980 CMR 16.00, effective February 27, 2026, require community engagement before a large facility files, including two public meetings, and the Energy Facilities Siting Board now issues a consolidated permit on a fixed timeline. The engagement is no longer a courtesy. It is part of the record the Board reviews.
980 CMR 16.00 requires large facilities to hold at least two public meetings in the host community before filing. What happens at those meetings goes into the application.
The Siting Board now issues one consolidated permit for large clean energy facilities on a statutory clock. Local permits fold into it, but the local record still shapes the outcome.
Fire, noise, property values, decommissioning, who profits, and why here. Every one has an answer. The project fails when residents hear those answers first from the opposition.
The fire chief is the official residents trust most on a battery project. Brief the chief, walk through the emergency response plan and NFPA 855 compliance, and do it before the first meeting.
Inverters and HVAC run at night. Residents want the decibel number at their property line and what it means at 2 a.m., not a modeling report.
Who takes the batteries out, when, and who pays if the owner is gone. A funded decommissioning bond answers the question before it becomes a vote against you.
That is what the law requires. Getting there is a community relations job, and it is the one The PR Bunker does.
The PR Bunker does, led directly by Don Martelli: community mapping before the first meeting, fire chief and official briefings, plain-language safety materials, the two public meetings 980 CMR 16.00 requires, and the vote itself, for battery energy storage projects across Massachusetts. Most battery storage opposition is a process failure rather than a substance one, and the fix is getting to the town before the fear does.
Honestly: thermal runaway is a real risk in lithium-ion batteries, and residents are right to ask about it. It is mitigated by the codes the project has to meet, NFPA 855 for installation and UL 9540A testing for how a system behaves in a fire, along with spacing, detection and suppression design. The communications point is simpler than the engineering. The fire department has to be briefed before residents ask, because the chief is who they will believe.
Two, at minimum, under 980 CMR 16.00 for large facilities. How they are run matters more than the count. A meeting that produces a record of questions asked and answered helps the application. A meeting that turns into a fight follows the project into the hearing.
Before site control is public, and well before the first required meeting. The window between the land-record filing and the first public session is where most projects lose the town. Starting at the meeting is starting late. When you hire The PR Bunker you get Don Martelli in every room. No junior handoffs.
Fire first: what happens if the batteries catch fire, what the fire department knows, and whether there is an emergency response plan. Then noise from the inverters and HVAC, property values, decommissioning, who profits, and why here. Every one has an answer. The project fails when residents hear those answers first from the opposition. Start with The Questions Residents Actually Ask About Battery Storage, which goes through each one and how to answer it.
The 2024 siting law and its regulations at 980 CMR 16.00, effective February 27, 2026, require developers of large facilities to run a community engagement process before filing, including at least two public meetings in the host community, and to document that engagement in the application. The Siting Board reviews the record. The plain-English version is What the Massachusetts Siting Law Requires for Community Engagement
The consolidated permit now runs on a statutory clock once the application is complete, which is a change from the open-ended reviews that came before. The pre-filing engagement period comes on top of that, and it is the part the developer controls. Run it well and the clock starts on a clean record. Run it badly and the fight follows the project into the hearing. The stages are in The EFSB Pre-Filing Timeline in Plain English, and the engagement rules are in the siting law's community engagement requirements.
Stop and find out why before doing anything else. Most no votes on battery storage come down to a fear nobody answered in time. Go back to the fire chief, the select board and the abutters one at a time, fix what the project got wrong, and decide honestly whether there is a path back. Your Project Got Banned. Now What? is the rebuild playbook, and the wider practice is at Community Relations & Public Affairs.
It depends on what the town actually needs, which is rarely a check. Common pieces are host community payments, funding for fire department training and equipment, a funded decommissioning bond, noise and screening commitments beyond the minimum, and a named local point of contact for the life of the project. The package works when it answers the questions residents raised, not when it arrives as a purchase. Those questions are in The Questions Residents Actually Ask About Battery Storage.
Community mapping, fire and safety communication, the required public meetings, the vote. You get me in every room. No junior handoffs.
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