California’s Battery Storage Hearth: Precursor Or Outlier?

Be part of on daily basis info updates from CleanTechnica on email correspondence. Or observe us on Google Data!

A fire 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 momentary closure of Freeway 1. No person was harmed inside the incident. Given the massive progress in grid storage battery packages, is that this one factor everyone must be concerned about, and is it extra more likely 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 prime quality exams confirmed protected conditions. The first part 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 price that batteries have been providing in flattening the duck curve inside 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 a large deal.

Within the US 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 US or the world’s battery functionality that’s out of service. To put US battery storage packages 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, had been leaking. Testing on hydrogen autos inside the nation found that 1,463 out of 9,482, 15.4%, had been leaking. There have been three explosions and fires on the 203 hydrogen refueling stations inside the nation that I’m aware of, so 1.5% of them, killing two of us and hospitalizing 9 to date. Statistically, hydrogen vehicles and their refueling packages appear not lower than equally extra more likely to see fires as gasoline vehicles, although the numbers of vehicles and stations are so small that the laws of small numbers cognitive bias should be taken into consideration so we don’t over rely upon the data. Now we have now vastly further surety regarding the so much lower cost of fires in electrical vehicles than any cost of points about hydrogen vehicles because of there are 40 million battery electrical vehicles on roads globally.

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

Half 1 of the facility, commissioned in December 2020, is housed inside a repurposed turbine developing on the previous Moss Landing Power Plant in California. The flexibility incorporates 4,500 battery racks organized in sections, each outfitted with devoted cooling and fireplace suppression packages. On the time of constructing it was certainly one of many biggest battery storage facilities on the planet. There have been a number of earlier thermal incidents in 2021 and 2022 which had been contained and attributed to a faulty sprinkler system.

As certainly one of many earliest storage packages, the facility predates important practices for battery packages. Authorities having jurisdiction are literally mandating Large-Scale Hearth Testing (LSFT) to ensure safety and compliance. Typical evaluations, equal to UL 9540A, assess thermal runaway and fireplace propagation on the cell, module, and system ranges. Nonetheless, these exams won’t on a regular basis result in exact fireplace 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 take into account the outcomes of a very involved fireplace in a single BESS unit on adjoining objects and exterior exposures.

Extra, trendy grid storage packages are often out of doors 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 suggested me only a few years up to now as soon as we recorded a CleanTech Communicate, however it absolutely’s now the dominant model by far because of they’re usually inbuilt factories and delivered like each different container. The air gaps signifies that if thermal runaway happens in a single container, it’s so much a lot much less extra more likely to unfold to totally different containers. The 182.5 MW of Tesla Megapacks on the Moss Landing facility are deployed like that and had been unaffected by the fireside.

Subsequent up is that as an older facility, the batteries had been nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) lithium ion batteries. The dominant chemistry for up to date grid storage batteries, and increasingly for electrical vehicles, is lithium iron phosphate (LFP), which has a so much lower probability of thermal runaway.

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

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

That’s the data from the AutoinsuranceEZ analysis of auto fires for autos. They took data from the US Nationwide Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) to seek 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 more likely to catch fireplace, although the traits of the fires are completely totally different. Specialised fireplace extinguishers designed for lithium-ion batteries, fireplace blankets to incorporate and isolate burning EVs, and superior cooling brokers are being deployed to reinforce firefighting effectiveness. Furthermore, fireplace departments are current course of specialised teaching to cope with thermal runaway risks and the complexities of extinguishing EV fires, which often require prolonged cooling intervals and completely totally different methods as compared with typical vehicle fires.

Identical to the comparability between EVs and inside combustion autos, it’s worth asking what the comparability is between pure gasoline electrical expertise mills and battery grid storage. Curiously, there is not a worldwide data set on turbine fires and failures, so researchers should assemble their very personal. That acknowledged, a paper provided on the sixth European Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Administration in Portugal in July of 2023 on lowering fires at turbine facilities is pertinent.

“There are a variety of explosion incidents which have occurred in gasoline vitality vegetation and resulted in quite a few accidents and monetary losses before now. In 2010 a catastrophic explosion has taken place in North Carolina that killed 6 employees and larger than 50 of us had been injured, when a cleaning course of was initiated inside the gasoline pipe using pure gasoline at extreme stress it begins to ignite and it prompted an explosion in step with NBC Connecticut, 2020. Simply recently the number of gasoline turbine explosion incidentshas significantly decreased after the properly being and safety legal guidelines. Nonetheless quite a few accidents have occurred. In 2019 a big explosion occurred in New Orleans inside the US that destroyed a big electrical vitality plant. It was attributable to an operator error, and it resulted in injuring two employees with excessive burns (David, 2021). Moreover, in step with New Indian Xpress 2020, an explosion of a gasoline vitality plant in Karnataka was initiated by an undetected oil leakage that prompted a fire and 15 employees have painful burn accidents. The ultimate accident prompted the fatality lack of 1 employee and two others had been severely injured ensuing from a leakage issue of certainly one of many pumps that prompted a vast explosion in Mumbai 2022 (Mendonca 2022).”

These are merely the massive ones at these facilities. As there is not a statistical data on prevalence of fires at gasoline mills, it’s unimaginable to draw a clear conclusion, nonetheless when your complete focus of the placement is shifting a flammable and explosive gasoline into the placement and burning it, my assumption is that it’s pretty perhaps extra possible from an incident per GW perspective.

As a distinction, there are not any recorded fatalities ensuing from fires at working grid battery storage system facilities that I have been able to find. That is wise because of battery packages are robust state. There are some shifting parts inside the HVAC elements, nonetheless that’s it. They’re lights out facilities with no employees on website in addition to doable security guards, not like gasoline expertise facilities. A 565-MW gas-fired combined-cycle vitality plant might want spherical 27 full-time employees, they usually’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, due to this fact the precautionary evacuation. Air prime quality monitoring at Moss Landing has up to now detected no essential ranges of toxic gases equal to 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 can 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 equal to bronchial bronchial asthma and bronchitis by forming ground-level ozone and great particulate matter. Publicity to these air pollution has been linked to cardiovascular illnesses 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 equal to most cancers.

Concerns about occasional battery fires, in several phrases, are vastly out of proportion to the harm attributable to what they displace. The properly being problems with officers and the briefly displaced residents — they’d been once more dwelling after sooner or later — are ensuing from this being an unknown quantity, nonetheless the mounted properly being impacts of the 1,060 MW, twin turbine, pure gasoline expertise facility that’s moreover positioned on the Moss Landing facility. This facet of the story is completely missing as everyone focuses on the weird and short-lived battery fireplace. The pure gasoline portion of the plant is making native residents and their kids sick.

The 2022 functionality problem of the Moss Landing facility was about 58%, fairly typical for vegetation inside the USA. Nonetheless, the facility has decommissioned seven of its oil and gasoline burning expertise objects. That’s correct, it was burning oil, which is somewhat so much worse than even the nonetheless unhealthy burning of pure gasoline for human properly being. An enormous part of the story of the battery packages in California is that they are displacing burning fossil fuels for electrical vitality, so everyone’s air prime 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 scale back emissions that set off smog.

All of that’s to say that the Moss Landing fireplace is an individual bites canine story. It’s unusual, so it is going to get loads of press. It’s moreover being amplified by delayers and deniers, every institutional and explicit particular person. It feeds the affirmation biases of people who suppose batteries are dangerous fireplace hazards and it suits the narratives of the fossil gasoline enterprise and a reasonably distinctive share of right-wing media. Basic, the Moss Landing battery system is part of what’s making everyone in California breath less complicated and battery storage packages are protected grid elements.