Hearth at world’s largest battery facility is a clear vitality setback

A hearth on the world’s largest battery storage plant in California destroyed 300 megawatts of vitality storage, pressured 1200 space residents to evacuate and launched smoke plumes that would pose a well being risk to people and wildlife. The incident knocked out 2 per cent of California’s vitality storage capability, which the state depends on as a part of its transition to make use of extra renewable energy and fewer fossil fuels.

The hearth began the afternoon of 16 January, burning by means of a concrete constructing filled with lithium batteries on the Moss Touchdown Vitality Storage Facility in Monterey county, California. Different buildings on the positioning, together with extra battery storage amenities and a pure gasoline plant, weren’t affected. By the morning of 17 January, native officers reported minimal flames and smoke.

“This is really a lot more than a fire, it’s a wake-up call for this industry,” mentioned Glenn Church, a member of Monterey county’s board of supervisors, throughout a press convention. “If we’re going to be moving forward with sustainable energy, we need a safe battery system in place.” After the press convention on the morning of 17 January, the blaze flared up once more that afternoon, resulting in an extension of the evacuation order.

As a result of lithium fires burn at excessive temperatures and emit poisonous substances equivalent to hydrogen fluoride, firefighters let one of these blaze burn itself out relatively than partaking with it immediately. There have been no reviews of accidents related to the fireplace, and air monitor techniques didn’t detect any indicators of hydrogen fluoride. However the smoke plumes from the fireplace are prone to have contained heavy metals and PFAS, higher generally known as without end chemical compounds, says Dustin Mulvaney at San Jose State College in California.

Native officers are presently advising residents of Monterey county to remain indoors and preserve their doorways and home windows closed. Inhaled heavy metals and PFAS may pose a well being threat to space residents and farm staff. These substances may additionally impression wildlife equivalent to the ocean otters that dwell within the wetlands of the close by Elkhorn Slough salt marsh, says Mulvaney.

The destroyed constructing was one in all two Moss Touchdown battery amenities owned by the Texas-based firm Vistra Vitality. Its amenities beforehand skilled much less critical incidents that concerned overheating batteries and malfunctions within the hearth suppression system. However the facility that went up in flames this week has a water-based suppression system and it’s unclear why it failed, mentioned Vistra Vitality officers throughout the press convention. They’re nonetheless investigating the foundation reason behind the fireplace.

Regardless of this incident, utility-scale battery techniques for electrical energy grids have skilled a 97 per cent drop in failures worldwide – which are sometimes fire-related – between 2018 and 2023, in accordance with a report by the Electrical Energy Analysis Institute, a non-profit organisation based mostly in Washington DC.

“This massive decrease has been observed in spite of the fact that deployments of utility-scale storage continue to increase at high rates,” says Maria Chavez on the Union of Involved Scientists. “Battery storage systems are designed with multiple levels of safety features that aim to prevent and mitigate issues like fire risk – unfortunately, accidents like the one at Moss Landing facility can still occur.”

California can be higher ready than most US states to answer such incidents: it has a state legislation requiring native governments to develop emergency response plans with battery builders, says Mulvaney. He described the necessity to be taught from occasions like this in designing future battery storage techniques.

However the lack of most or all the 300-megawatt facility at Moss Touchdown will put a critical dent in Vistra Vitality’s general 750-megawatt on-site vitality storage capability, and California’s complete 13,300-megawatt vitality storage capability.

Moss Touchdown has been serving the state’s electrical energy grid by storing renewable vitality and decreasing dependence on fossil fuels equivalent to pure gasoline crops, says Mulvaney. Reconstruction and constructing again battery capability may take a number of years – a giant ask, contemplating California is already going through the necessity for intensive rebuilding elsewhere as a result of Los Angeles wildfires.

“We can’t have battery fires like this,” says Mulvaney. “We can’t lose 300 megawatts of batteries overnight like this.”