Fire at one of the world's largest battery plants in California forces evacuations

[riversedge]

Source: AP


Updated 10:34 AM CST, January 17, 2025

MOSS LANDING, Calif. (AP) — A major fire burning Friday at one of the world’s largest battery storage plants in Northern California is sending up flames of toxic smoke, leading to the evacuation of 1,700 people and the closure of a major highway.

The blaze in Moss Landing started Thursday. Fire crews were not engaging with the fire but were waiting for it to burn out on its own, The Mercury News reported.

The blaze was still burning early Friday and it had not gone beyond the facility, according to Monterey County spokesperson Nicholas Pasculli. As of late Thursday, a few dozen people were at a temporary evacuation center and the rest had gone to friends or family or made other arrangements, Pasculli said.

The Moss Landing Power Plant, located about 77 miles (125 kilometers) south of San Francisco, is owned by Texas-based company Vistra Energy and contains tens of thousands of lithium batteries. The batteries are important for storing electricity from such renewable energy sources as solar energy, but if they go up in flames the blazes can be extremely difficult to put out.


“There’s no way to sugar coat it. This is a disaster, is what it is,” Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church told KSBW-TV. But he said he did not expect the fire to spread beyond the concrete building it was enclosed in.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/battery-storage-plant-fire-california-moss-landing-7c561fed096f410ddecfb04722a8b1f8

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https://apnews.com/video/fires-los-angeles-area-wildfires-california-texas-evacuations-7d53af7f9518475b86004114e77463af

[Blue Full Moon]

1. thermobaric grenade

Nothing like a bunch of thermite.
Lesson should be learned hydrogen cars and there are new batteries developed that don't go up in flames and last a lot longer.

[Think. Again.]

2. Thank goodness fossil fuels aren't flammable...

...oh, wait...

[Bengus81]

3. And how were they cooling tens of thousands of lithium batteries?

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Lithium should NEVER be wasted on stationary batteries. Use older, cheaper, safer technology.

The high energy density of lithium (especially its energy/mass ratio) is essential for portable applications, especially airborne. Cars using only lead-acid batteries, for example, would be impractically heavy, and electric airplanes would be impossible.

For a stationary battery, the mass of a large plant is not particularly important, and other systems should be used, and have been. Repeatedly. Even trains have used other batteries to good effect.

(It should of course be noted that when you think "safer" you need to consider the question, "In what way?". Lithium is a much greater fire hazard, and sodium batteries share the same drawback. Lead is a toxicity hazard, and toxic waste disposal and cleanup are serious challenges. But there are many different battery technologies, and when mass is not an issue, the number of practicable possibilities increases.)

So called "flow" batteries -- accurately described as solution-based fuel cells -- are suitable almost exclusively for stationary applications, due to their appallingly low energy density, plus the fact that they must retain their exhausted solution, increasing the weight which must be transported (it's like you had to capture engine exhaust and exchange it for new fuel -- burning energy to transport an energy-depleted substance. This roughly halves the effective energy density.). While this is the kiss of death for any uses in transportation (not that you can't sell stock in companies trying to do exactly that, but P.T. Barnum's advice applies here), it really shouldn't matter much for storage plants. The fact that the solutions are in water should do wonders for the fire hazard risk, although accidental production of small amounts of H2 would be an issue. The big issue with flow batteries, as far as I can see, is finding suitably abundant materials. I'm slightly skeptical that the vanadium-based solution cells (oh, excuse me, "flow batteries" as it says in the IPO) being touted for this use will be the best option in the future, given that commercially viable deposits of vanadium are scarce, with most V being isolated as a by-product of the production of other metals (V is actually about as common as copper or zinc, it's just widely distributed in more dilute forms), and the high demand for its use in specialty steel alloys. But there's room for improvement, making large banks of lithium-based storage cells seem an even poorer prospect for the future.