Fire Erupts At Huge Battery Plant In California (gpb.org) 42
Longtime Slashdot reader sfcat shares a report from the Associated Press: Hundreds of people were ordered to evacuate and part of Highway 1 in Northern California was closed when a major fire erupted Thursday afternoon at one of the world's largest battery storage plants. As the fire sent up towering flames and black smoke and showed no sign of easing by Thursday night, about 1,500 people were instructed to leave Moss Landing and the Elkhorn Slough area, The Mercury News reported.
The Moss Landing Power Plant, located about 77 miles (about 124 kilometers) south of San Francisco, is owned by Texas-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. According to reports, the fire originated in the 300-megawatt Phase I section of the 750-megawatt facility, located on the site of a retired PG&E natural gas plant.
It's unclear what caused the fire, but officials said a full investigation will begin after it's out. Thankfully, everyone at the site was evacuated safely. Videos and images of the fire can be found here.
The Moss Landing Power Plant, located about 77 miles (about 124 kilometers) south of San Francisco, is owned by Texas-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. According to reports, the fire originated in the 300-megawatt Phase I section of the 750-megawatt facility, located on the site of a retired PG&E natural gas plant.
It's unclear what caused the fire, but officials said a full investigation will begin after it's out. Thankfully, everyone at the site was evacuated safely. Videos and images of the fire can be found here.
And they want these in electric buses? (Score:4, Insightful)
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You do realize a trolley bus, like the ones we have in Seattle, use batteries right?
How do you think they operate when switching from one power grid section to another?
How do you think they operate when a power grid section goes offline?
How do you think they handle road detours?
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I would guess they use the batteries mentioned in the second sentence, but do you have more info?
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worse, does he realizes that ICE buses have gasoline or diesel in them and they are actual fire hazards, that several of them go up in flames every week and it is just not news because it is normal?
Zealots do. (Score:1, Troll)
The ideological imperative to "save the world" by defending beloved tech is strong. Only ICE fires are "bad" because there are more of them while battery fires must be regarded as trifling speed bumps on the road to perfection.
Techies are no less prone to ideology than normals, and no more accurately introspective. Pointing that out is considered offensive because zealots want social power.
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ICE fires are two order of magnitudes more common than EV fires. There is a reason why ICE vehicles are banned from sales in most of the world in a couple years, just like lead and asbestos were banned.
Re: And they want these in electric buses? (Score:1)
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Okay who wants to tell him how flammable gasoline is, or what an oil refinery fire looks like. I really don't want to be the one.
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Can you imagine if someone proposed a bus that has a huge tank of flammable liquid and is powered by explosions?
Bus batteries are fine. Catch fire less then liquid fuel buses.
Energy storage plant. (Score:5, Insightful)
A battery plant produces batteries while an energy storage plant uses batteries. If we say, "yeah, you can call them both battery plants" then we'll have another "bi-weekly" problem. Is it a problem twice a week or every two weeks? Both? Neither! Linguistic ambiguity is a problem all the time! #DiedOnThisHill
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"bi-weekly" is no linguistic ambiguity - it has a clear definition of every 2 weeks. The fact that some people are unaware is not an ambiguity in the word the way the word "plant" has multiple definitions.
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https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
biweekly
1: occurring every two weeks : fortnightly
2: occurring twice a week
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Same with "biannual". Is that once every two years, or twice a year?
Though, there's also the term "biennial" which unambiguously means "once every two years".
This is an issue since many deadlines are simply marked as "biannual".
Just up the coast from me. (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently one of the batteries caught fire, and it spread to the other battery systems in the same containment building. (it is an old power plant -lots of SOLID concrete buildings designed to contain explosions/fires). No chance of it spreading beyond the one building, fortunately. Also no chance of putting it out -it will have to burn itself out. Nasty chemicals being released into the atmosphere. Yuck.
Power facilities catch and burn. It happens. It is always ugly. There have been fires at this very facility before.
It will impact electricity availability in CA for a while. And the investigation and repairs will be costly. But life will go on.
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This is apparently the third fire in a few years at the same place. This one is larger than the other though. I haven't dug into it further, but it feels that maybe there's some safety issues that aren't being dealt with.
Re:Just up the coast from me. (Score:5, Informative)
The site is a kludge. There are multiple revisions of equipment from multiple vendors on the site. (vendor A: charge controllers versions 1-5, batteries versions 2,4,7, Installed years x,z Vendor B: charge controllers version 3 , batteries version 1-6, installed year y Vendor C: ... etc.) There are even multiple operators of the site (both PG&E and Vistra run operations on the site).
The previous failures were in different buildings and built by different vendors at different times.
We do not know what happened this time.
The smoke column was visible from miles away. The air has an acrid smell. We were advised to keep doors and windows shut last night and to avoid exercise outdoors today as a precaution. (don't breathe the poison ... nothing to worry about)
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This is apparently the third fire in a few years at the same place. This one is larger than the other though. I haven't dug into it further, but it feels that maybe there's some safety issues that aren't being dealt with.
Maybe the "solid concrete" is just a thin layer of paint on panels of plywood and drywall? :-)
Or, somebody calculated that at some point in time, having an insurance pay for replacements of old, run-down batteries turns a little fire accident into a net profit.
Sabotage? (Score:2, Troll)
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yes
I've said it before and I'll say it again (Score:1)
Win/Solar/Tide generation systems should not have battery banks. Istead, they should be combiend whenever possible AND coupled with another regulable power source (Hydro, Geotthermic or Natural Gas) whenever possible.
That way, you sue as much as Wind/Solar/Tide as the conditions allow, and save as much Water/Fuel as posible for when the sun does not shine. In essence, the water behind the damm or the natural gas you saved during the day becomes your battery.
Much. much safer than LiPo, Li-ion or Sodium batt
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Win/Solar/Tide generation systems should not have battery banks. Istead, they should be combiend whenever possible AND coupled with another regulable power source (Hydro, Geotthermic or Natural Gas) whenever possible.
That way, you sue as much as Wind/Solar/Tide as the conditions allow, and save as much Water/Fuel as posible for when the sun does not shine. In essence, the water behind the damm or the natural gas you saved during the day becomes your battery.
The trouble with this is for any substantive mix of intermittent renewables you will be wasting and paying to sink far more excess capacity than would otherwise be necessary. There is certainly a point of diminishing returns for grid scale ESS systems yet none at all sure as heck ain't the right answer.
Much. much safer than LiPo, Li-ion or Sodium batteries.
ESS is by no means limited to storage of chemical potential energy. Some for example store energy in the form of gravitational potential and operate similar to hydro plants.
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That won't work. Wind and solar need some form of energy storage whether it is batteries, compressed air, or pumped hydro. Solar and wind are just too intermittent.
Hydro and nuclear cannot change their output power rapidly. You need something with fast response.
All energy storage devices are bombs in one form or another. It's just the way the universe works. Anything in a high energy state will be looking to get to a lower energy state by any way it can.
Political implications (Score:2)
I can see some elected officials stating "See I told you batteries are a bad idea". Particularly those who want to keep using fossil fuels.
This is a new industry. There will be incidents. There will be lessons learned. I just hope that the federal government doesn't regulate the crap out of it just to extinguish it. (Sort of like they did with nuclear power).
Sprinklers? (Score:2)
Just put each battery module in a mostly watertight enclosure (can be open up top) and add a sprinkler. Even if you fear a misfire you can just add a human in the loop.
Submerged batteries don't burn.
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Re: Sprinklers? (Score:1)
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Re: Sprinklers? (Score:2)
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Wow, just throw an 18650 in a pool and it's near infinite energy.
Key, very important thing here: (Score:3)
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No this is not three mile island (Score:2)
Again? (Score:2)
Same thing happened a couple years ago.