California’s Battery Storage Fireside: Precursor Or Outlier?

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A fireplace broke out on the Moss Landing Power Plant, not too faraway from San Francisco, on January 16, 2025, prompting the evacuation of roughly 1,500 residents and the non everlasting closure of Freeway 1. No person was harmed throughout the incident. Given the massive growth in grid storage battery methods, is that this one factor all people must be fearful about, and is it extra prone to recur? No and no.

Firefighters allowed the blaze to burn out, citing the challenges of extinguishing lithium-ion battery fires. Authorities lifted evacuation orders the subsequent day after air top quality exams confirmed protected conditions. The first half facility has 300 MW of functionality and about 40% of it was destroyed, roughly 120 MW. Half 2 and three added one different 450 MW. Given the value that batteries have been providing in flattening the duck curve throughout the state, that’s going to have some grid impacts. Nonetheless, the state has over 10,000 MW of battery functionality, so missing 1.2% of it isn’t going to be an infinite deal.

Within the USA California is the storage chief, unsurprisingly, nonetheless there’s one different 5,500 MW or so scattered spherical totally different states. Globally, there are about 400,000 MW of battery functionality on grids, so this represents 0.03% of the world’s current functionality. In numerous phrases, this isn’t portion of California’s, the USA or the world’s battery functionality that’s out of service. To put US battery storage methods in context, the roughly 15,500 MW it has deployed is decrease than a single December public sale in China, throughout which 76 bidders averaged US$66 per kWh for 16,000 MW of requested functionality.

Let’s do some powerful statistical comparisons to some newest hydrogen for vitality data out of South Korea. Testing on 147 hydrogen buses after one exploded at a refueling station in December found that 11%, one in 9, have been leaking. Testing on hydrogen autos throughout the nation found that 1,463 out of 9,482, 15.4%, have been leaking. There have been three explosions and fires on the 203 hydrogen refueling stations throughout the nation that I’m acutely aware of, so 1.5% of them, killing two people and hospitalizing 9 thus far. Statistically, hydrogen cars and their refueling methods appear a minimum of equally extra prone to see fires as gasoline cars, although the numbers of cars and stations are so small that the laws of small numbers cognitive bias have to be considered so we don’t over rely upon the knowledge. We now have vastly further surety in regards to the quite a bit lower cost of fires in electrical cars than any cost of points about hydrogen cars on account of there are 40 million battery electrical cars on roads globally.

You wouldn’t perceive it from many media commenters, fossil gasoline propagandists and hydrogen followers in any case. On LinkedIn, many people are battling the flames of disinformation. I’ll share the insights from diverse people proper right here.

Half 1 of the flexibility, commissioned in December 2020, is housed inside a repurposed turbine developing on the previous Moss Landing Power Plant in California. The ability accommodates 4,500 battery racks organized in sections, each equipped with devoted cooling and hearth suppression methods. On the time of constructing it was one among many largest battery storage providers on this planet. There have been just a few earlier thermal incidents in 2021 and 2022 which have been contained and attributed to a faulty sprinkler system.

As one among many earliest storage methods, the flexibility predates major practices for battery methods. Authorities having jurisdiction in the mean time are mandating Big-Scale Fireside Testing (LSFT) to verify safety and compliance. Typical evaluations, resembling UL 9540A, assess thermal runaway and hearth propagation on the cell, module, and system ranges. Nonetheless, these exams won’t always finish in exact hearth conditions, leaving uncertainties about real-world hazards. To deal with this gap, LSFT procedures, similar to the CSA TS-800:24, have been developed to simulate and contemplate the outcomes of a very involved hearth in a single BESS unit on adjoining objects and exterior exposures.

Further, modern grid storage methods are normally outside on concrete pads with containerized and air gapped battery objects. Tesla was a western chief in containerized batteries with its Megapack, as Wärtsilä’s Vice President of Vitality Storage & Optimization Andy Tang instructed me various years previously after we recorded a CleanTech Focus on, nevertheless it certainly’s now the dominant model by far on account of they’re typically in-built factories and delivered like one other container. The air gaps signifies that if thermal runaway happens in a single container, it’s quite a bit a lot much less extra prone to unfold to totally different containers. The 182.5 MW of Tesla Megapacks on the Moss Landing facility are deployed like that and have been unaffected by the fireside.

Subsequent up is that as an older facility, the batteries have been nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) lithium ion batteries. The dominant chemistry for modern grid storage batteries, and an increasing number of for electrical cars, is lithium iron phosphate (LFP), which has a quite a bit lower chance of thermal runaway.

EPRI and TWAICE used their world data set of battery incidents, utilized by the enterprise for root set off analysis, to judge the change in statistical chance of battery vitality storage methods over time, making it publicly obtainable in May of 2024. The chance of failures has plummeted ensuing from altering chemistries, air gapped open air containerized deployments and the model new necessities for battery and thermal administration methods to world enterprise is using.

Remember that these aren’t fires which destroyed battery methods, nonetheless all failures of each sort in battery methods. The blue bars, by one of the best ways, aren’t GW, nonetheless incidents. Given the massive scale of the enterprise, a worldwide database having one failure of any kind per GW of deployed functionality makes it clear that grid storage batteries are extraordinarily protected.

That’s the data from the AutoinsuranceEZ look at of automotive fires for autos. They took data from the US Nationwide Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) to search out out the number of fires for numerous drive trains. Statistically, it’s clear that battery electrical autos are vastly a lot much less extra prone to catch hearth, although the traits of the fires are fully totally different. Specialised hearth extinguishers designed for lithium-ion batteries, hearth blankets to incorporate and isolate burning EVs, and superior cooling brokers are being deployed to boost firefighting effectiveness. Furthermore, hearth departments are current course of specialised teaching to cope with thermal runaway risks and the complexities of extinguishing EV fires, which incessantly require prolonged cooling intervals and fully totally different methods compared with customary vehicle fires.

Identical to the comparability between EVs and internal combustion autos, it’s worth asking what the comparability is between pure gasoline electrical period mills and battery grid storage. Curiously, there is no such thing as a such factor as a world data set on turbine fires and failures, so researchers ought to assemble their very personal. That acknowledged, a paper supplied on the sixth European Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Administration in Portugal in July of 2023 on reducing fires at turbine providers is pertinent.

“There are a selection of explosion incidents which have occurred in gasoline power vegetation and resulted in various accidents and monetary losses before now. In 2010 a catastrophic explosion has taken place in North Carolina that killed 6 workers and larger than 50 people have been injured, when a cleaning course of was initiated throughout the gasoline pipe using pure gasoline at extreme pressure it begins to ignite and it precipitated an explosion in response to NBC Connecticut, 2020. Currently the number of gasoline turbine explosion incidentshas significantly decreased after the properly being and safety legal guidelines. Nonetheless various accidents have occurred. In 2019 an infinite explosion occurred in New Orleans throughout the US that destroyed a severe electrical power plant. It was introduced on by an operator error, and it resulted in injuring two workers with excessive burns (David, 2021). Moreover, in response to New Indian Xpress 2020, an explosion of a gasoline power plant in Karnataka was initiated by an undetected oil leakage that precipitated a fire and 15 workers have painful burn accidents. The ultimate accident precipitated the fatality lack of 1 employee and two others have been severely injured ensuing from a leakage downside of one among many pumps that precipitated an infinite explosion in Mumbai 2022 (Mendonca 2022).”

These are merely the huge ones at these providers. As there is no such thing as a such factor as a statistical data on prevalence of fires at gasoline mills, it’s inconceivable to draw a clear conclusion, nonetheless when the entire focus of the placement is shifting a flammable and explosive gasoline into the placement and burning it, my assumption is that it’s pretty possibly extra possible from an incident per GW perspective.

As a distinction, there are no recorded fatalities ensuing from fires at working grid battery storage system providers that I have been able to find. That is sensible on account of battery methods are secure state. There are some shifting parts throughout the HVAC components, nonetheless that’s it. They’re lights out providers with no employees on web site moreover potential security guards, not like gasoline period providers. A 565-MW gas-fired combined-cycle power plant may need spherical 27 full-time employees, and so they’re clearly further uncovered to hazard must an incident occur.

As quickly as as soon as extra, battery fires have distinctive traits and there are potential properly being points, subsequently the precautionary evacuation. Air top quality monitoring at Moss Landing has to date detected no necessary ranges of toxic gases resembling hydrogen fluoride or particulate matter.

Within the meantime, when used as directed, combustion of pure gasoline releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gasoline contributing to native climate change, along with nitrogen oxides, which could sort smog and acid rain. Incomplete combustion could produce carbon monoxide and trace portions of dangerous pure compounds. Furthermore, methane leaks all through manufacturing and transport can significantly amplify greenhouse gasoline emissions.

Nitrogen oxides contribute to respiratory factors resembling bronchial bronchial asthma and bronchitis by forming ground-level ozone and advantageous particulate matter. Publicity to these air pollution has been linked to cardiovascular diseases and elevated hospital admissions, considerably amongst weak populations. Pure gasoline vegetation can emit trace portions of hazardous air air pollution, along with benzene and formaldehyde, which have been associated to long-term properly being risks resembling most cancers.

Points about occasional battery fires, in numerous phrases, are vastly out of proportion to the harm introduced on by what they displace. The properly being problems with officers and the briefly displaced residents — they’ve been once more dwelling after in some unspecified time in the future — are ensuing from this being an unknown quantity, nonetheless the fastened properly being impacts of the 1,060 MW, twin turbine, pure gasoline period facility that’s moreover positioned on the Moss Landing facility. This aspect of the story is completely missing as all people focuses on the weird and short-lived battery hearth. The pure gasoline portion of the plant is making native residents and their kids sick.

The 2022 functionality concern of the Moss Landing facility was about 58%, fairly typical for vegetation throughout the USA. Nonetheless, the flexibility has decommissioned seven of its oil and gasoline burning period objects. That’s correct, it was burning oil, which is relatively quite a bit worse than even the nonetheless harmful burning of pure gasoline for human properly being. An infinite part of the story of the battery methods in California is that they are displacing burning fossil fuels for electrical power, so all people’s air top quality has gone up considerably, along with that of the 1,500 residents evacuated throughout the time of the fireside. The two remaining gasoline mills on the power are high-efficiency, low-emission combined cycle objects. Furthermore, the plant employs dry low nitrous oxide combustors to attenuate emissions that set off smog.

All of that’s to say that the Moss Landing hearth is an individual bites canine story. It’s unusual, so it should get various press. It’s moreover being amplified by delayers and deniers, every institutional and explicit individual. It feeds the affirmation biases of those who assume batteries are dangerous hearth hazards and it suits the narratives of the fossil gasoline enterprise and a reasonably distinctive share of right-wing media. Complete, the Moss Landing battery system is part of what’s making all people in California breath less complicated and battery storage methods are protected grid components.