Fireplace 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, compelled 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 fireplace began the afternoon of 16 January, burning by means of a concrete constructing stuffed with lithium batteries on the Moss Touchdown Vitality Storage Facility in Monterey county, California. Different buildings on the location, together with extra battery storage services and a pure fuel 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 resembling hydrogen fluoride, firefighters let this sort of blaze burn itself out quite than partaking with it straight. There have been no experiences of accidents related to the hearth, and air monitor methods didn’t detect any indicators of hydrogen fluoride. However the smoke plumes from the hearth are more likely to have contained heavy metals and PFAS, higher often known as ceaselessly chemical substances, says Dustin Mulvaney at San Jose State College in California.

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

The destroyed constructing was one among two Moss Touchdown battery services owned by the Texas-based firm Vistra Vitality. Its services beforehand skilled much less severe 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 basis explanation for the hearth.

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

However the lack of most or the entire 300-megawatt facility at Moss Touchdown will put a severe 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 resembling pure fuel vegetation, says Mulvaney. Reconstruction and constructing again battery capability may take a number of years – an enormous ask, contemplating California is already going through the necessity for intensive rebuilding elsewhere because of the Los Angeles wildfires.

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