One of world's largest lithium battery plants ablaze in Moss Landing Besides horrible environmental issues. Wonder if this will affect consumers.
Calling it a plant isn't clear. That could mean a factory or a power generator. The site is an electric grid storage site, not a place batteries are made.
Yes, it's an energy power plant w/lithium battery (LG) storage facility onsite. The batteries are used during peak energy consumption, when energy generation can't keep up with demand. Moss Landing Power Plant - Wikipedia
"Monterey County Sheriff Tina Nieto said there had been no injuries reported and that none of the air quality monitoring systems picked up on any dangerous gasses in the air. Despite that, she said the county wanted to await the arrival of a more advanced monitoring system Friday afternoon before lifting the evacuation order." Fire at Moss Landing battery plant flares again after officials earlier said ‘most of the fire is out.’ Evacuations, road closures continue – The Mercury News More details on the fire and site at that article.
Exactly... The headlines for this event are so stupid! Journalists seem to become increasingly uneducated these days. This is one of the first major battery-based power stations to come online in a 1/2 dozen years and thus a major fire at the oldest and once largest battery power supply stations in the country brings up all kinds of question about their long term safety because you usually can't put out a Lithium-Ion fire. I'm sure all the people living next to these new types of facilities will are calculated to be a much higher liability than they were a week ago.
Consumers of what? I thought they learned their lesson when the tesla batteries went up in flames there in 2022. This used to be a PGE power plant going way back. They don’t own it anymore I don’t believe. Not a battery making plant. So when she calls it a plant, it used to be a power plant. Not sure what the owner is doing with it. Maybe it still is a power plant.
To clarify, these massive battery facilities store energy when electricity demands are low and send their power to the grid when demands are high. Replacing electrical power generation with electrical power storage at scale makes the entire power grid, way, way, way more efficient. More information about this particular plant it here: Moss Landing Power Plant - Wikipedia
Ok, this makes sense: The fire started at around 3 p.m. Thursday afternoon at a power plant and battery facility operated by Texas-based Vistra Energy. The plant is a natural gas-powered electricity generation plant in Moss Landing, an unincorporated area of the county. In a statement Thursday, Vistra said its personnel "called for assistance from the North Monterey County Fire District after a fire was detected in the 300-MW Phase I energy storage facility at the Moss Landing Power Plant site." I've seen other, modular storage unit fires: Tesla energy storage consist of independent modules spaced apart. So one module can burn up without taking out the whole facility. As for the Moss Landing plant: The fire images show the main facility during. This begs the question, did they stack power modules inside the main building? Bob Wilson
Tesla Moss Landing power storage facility fire shuts down Highway 1; Residents told to shelter in place - CBS San Francisco
I don't think the PG&E battery, made with Tesla megapacks, is the one burning. There are two grid batteries at the site, and it is the smaller one. The one that can have the biggest title is owned by Vistra and uses LG packs. The earlier reports are cited that one as burning.
Roof top solar on every house in America (except possibly the Pacific Northwest, which has hydro electric and wind, anyway), with a couple of days of battery storage on site, preferably from an electric car. No need to beef up transmission lines. The current system should be enough to supply factories and apartments. That is the future if there enough visionaries.
There shouldn't be any fire to begin with. How do you divide a BEV into individual compartments? Typically the BMS and other safety features will detect a thermal runaway and shut it off, which didn't happen here. Also, it looks like these are LG pouch cells, which are apparently not that safe. Tesla uses LG cells. I don't know if they use the pouch cells. Moss Landing: World’s biggest battery storage project is now 3-GWh capacity
Excellent technical description of the Moss fire problem: I've seen the fire department stand by for burning tire, lumber, and chemical fires. Especially ammonium nitrate fires. Bob Wilson
What do they want instead? natural gas? nuclear? Wind and solar aren't going to work without some type of back up. Hydro is maxed out, and may drop with drier weather.
It's unfortunate that the 'wisdom of the crowd' would rather 'throw up their hands'; and retreat back into their caves - rather than learn from their mistakes and move forward. FWIW; the portion that caught fire was the first phase of the battery storage facility; the oldest. As you can see from photos above phase 2 & 3 is laid out quite differently, from lessons learned from building other facilities. That was not the first overheat/high temperature alarm that was triggered there. I know of at least two other incidents in the recent past. This time it got away from them. The team that snuffed out the other two, probably quit out of frustration or their contracts wasn't renewed, because their recommended changes would cost a lot of money. IDK, but management was fore warned that this could happen.
