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General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Richard230 on January 17, 2025, 10:12:04 PM
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Here is today's lithium battery fire news. PG&E has been bragging about their huge lithium battery storage facility in Monterey for the past few years. Yesterday afternoon it caught on fire and it can't be put out. So the fire department is just watching it burn and telling everyone to evacuate the local area. Here is a news article regarding this fire: https://patch.com/california/pacifica/s/j3z6h/fire-closes-highway-1-along-monterey-bay
BTW, while I was watching the news about the fire last night, there was an ad by PG&E bragging about that huge lithium battery grid backup system and how it was helping all of us to get through the night when solar power dies off. ::) I bet after this fire, their liability insurance for that facility goes way up.
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My cousin has a produce production (farm) just East of Moss Landing in Hollister & via a quick text the smoke effected his operation (air quality for his workers).
Glad it wasn’t Tesla’s battery’s.
Musk is already smarting this week from the failed StarShip launch.
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Here is an update, with some interesting commentary, regarding the Moss Landing, CA, lithium battery electricity storage facility fire: https://patch.com/california/watsonville/fire-closes-highway-1-along-monterey-bay
The headline for an article about this lithium battery storage facility fire on the front page of my newspaper today is calling it the "Three Mile Island" event for large battery storage projects. :(
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This is about 45 minutes up the road from me. My firefighter friends tell me that about 10% of the battery storage burned up, but it has been contained. *IF* the numbers I've been able to find are accurate, the place had 3GWh. 10% of that means 300MWh burned up. I did some quick math and determined that would be the equivalent of about 4,000 EV cars assuming an average of 75KWh packs.
The batteries were owned by a Texas company called Vistra who have a... colorful history if you look them up. Apparently the top contender for the company that generates the most CO2 out there. Cool... cool. Will be interesting to see what the long-term effects of all those toxic fumes on our local wildlife, crops, and groundwater. Keep in mind that plant is situated in a sort of nature preserve called Elkhorn Slough, a popular location for kayakers and outdoor enjoyers. It's also where our aquarium has its research institute (MBARI) due to its close proximity to the natural phenomenon that is Submarine Canyon, a vast, deep underwater trench right off the shore. This makes it unique because usually you have to take a boat to the middle of nowhere to access that level of deep sea for research. Here you can take a research sub down, study stuff, and go back to your home at night.
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Something is very wrong about this fire.
For it to spread like that,
1. Sabotage - Terrorism
2. GROSS incompetence
3. Corners cut building it, inspectors paid to look the other way.
4. Malfeasance during upkeep and inspections.
These storage packs are modular. Each one should have it's own kind of built in fire protection system, which is basically..... worthless. Once it touches off, ISOLATE it and let it burn out. Let's call it a connex box full of batteries, wired in series / parallel, feeding an inverter, feeding a transformer, feeding probably a substation, going onto the mains, 230KV, or did it hit the 500K, 768KV bus? Id have to look at the blueprints to see, not that inquisitive, and lazy tonight so don't know.
My point being, lets say a connex has 50 batteries in it, and one or two of them go woof. You pull the bus tie on that bitch, close it off and let the fucker burn. That one battery is probably going to cause the other 49 to sympathetically touch off as the short circuit current thru the bad one, overheats them and they overheat, short and curl / crowbar themselves. Never mind the hydrogen / Lithium Hydroxide blowtorch shooting out at 1800 degrees or whatever it is, and the copper now going up as well. anyways.
the entire connex is involved. let it burn, you isolated it from the others, it should self contain until it burns out. You will NOT put the fire out, it's burning internal to the battery itself, unless you disassemble the actual battery, (Hint: you won't, you can't) , it's going to burn. Let it burn.
NOW......
if the thing is built properly, the fire is contained, the flames should be directed to a safe direction, it should stay in the one area.
sometimes the thing might be blowing at another unit, or they are put in modules.
ok so you may have 3 or 4 of them in a 'pack'.
Ok, FINE you burn out 4 of them.
the rest of them should be firewalled from each other, or airgapped, there should be walking distance between them enough so the fire won't overheat and touch off the other ones.
Well what about the massive short circuit?
That is why they should have circuit breakers on them, that is why EACH ONE. should have expulsion fuses on it, or at least on the transformers, so if you do cause a massive short, you don't overcurrent and overheat / blow up the rest of them from the short circuit from the fire. You boom boom the expulsion fuses and isolate the rest from it so it can't be electrically taken down. Even if I crowbarred the main bus coming out of the place, it should have relayed out long before it got to this mode of criticality. Even if the 'close in' relay set malfunctioned or was set wrong, the TDR system should have taken it out with the next down the line set of relays. Even if your stupid technician left the matchbook cover in the contacts after his last optest, the backups still should catch it. There is so much redundancy to prevent JUST such a thing as this happening.
In my 40 years of working in the power industry, ive seen plenty of electrical malfunctions and fires, and short circuits and explosions, AND. protection devices doing just what they are designed to do... very impressive indeed !!! .. this 'event' had help.,
Protection? Doesn't seem like that happened here?
WHY?
Looking back over the past 3 or 4 years...
There have been wayyyy too many fires...
at gas plants.
at switch yards.
at food processing plants
at energy facilities
at energy storage plants
at food growing places, ie chicken farms etc.
at gas pumping stations.
at power battery plants.... this is another lithium fire.. how convenient.
Yet you hear NOTHING of them once the day or two has passed.
It used to be that fires like this, stayed on the news cycle for weeks and months until we found out exactly what happened and who did it.
Now, nobody cares,
It's sabotage, we are being attacked from within... and it's being suppressed. WHY?
With all the safeguards places like this have, for a fire of this magnitude to happen..... it had help. PLENTY of help.
Looks like the FBI has been busy once again.
This is just too convenient, there is too much stuff that would have to go wrong at just the right (or wrong) time for this to get this bad.
it had help.
The smoke is nasty, it will dissipate, in reality with the shit put in the air by the LA fire, it's negligible.
The wildlife in the area.. as long as firefighting water does not get into the groundwater, which it seems won't happen because they didn't try to drown it, like they generally (mistakenly) tend to do, they just let it burn itself clear. it would be alkaline if it did. Think Lye, Lithium Hydroxide, the Copper and it's salts aren't too nifty, the Cobalt aint too purty either. The maganeese and stuff, not fun. The cyanides from the plastic burning, ehh.. you should be good.
Was the company who owned the batteries in trouble? Someone smell an insurance scam possibly? With most the insurance companies leaving CA to begin with, lets add one more reason for them to do so. Nobody will want to live there, nor be able to afford it even if they did.
will be interesting to see if they actually DO investigate this or if it just falls to the wayside like so many other news worthy stories that get buried and forgotten. ooh the cardassians are on... quick turn the channel !!!!
Aaron
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I have been trying to examine this. Best I can tell phase 1 burned up but there was smoke then fires from somewhere else on the site.
some copy and paste
The first phase was a 300 MW/1,200 MWh installation completed in 2020, which was followed by another 100 MW/400 MWh in Phase II completed the following year. Phase 3 — 350 MW/1,400 MWh — was added in August 2023,
In addition to the Vistra BESS installation, PG&E also has the 182.5 MW/730 MWh Elkhorn Battery project at the Moss Landing site pg+e tesla cells/batteries
The Vistra batteries use cells supplied by LG Energy Solution while the Elkhorm batteries are supplied by Tesla.
It appears the number is 1/4 C. It would take 4 hours at rated output to use up the rated storage.
Whether the stock or the project is more valuable is a curious question. The stock has trippled in a year. With the fires in the LA area and the insurance discussions I would kind of expect all electricity users to pay more indirectly for the insurance companies figuring risks.
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4 hours is a popular block of power.
when companies look for power, if it's not a long pre planned, ie we have an outage coming and need xxx for 6 weeks type of thing, or a oh shit we just tripped we need xx mw NOW.. they typically use a I need XX megawatts for 4 hours. This allows the sellers to plan and gives time to safely ramp up and down the resources as needed. When you see storage units marketed, they are also, generally listed as being able to give xx for 4 hours. 4 hours is kind of a 'you have 4 hours to figure that out / fix that' number before going into another stage or mode of operation. Ok we cooked a tube were gonna be down for 3 days, 4 hours is, figure out what's going on and tell us your plan.
Still though for the entire thing to cook off, and not just a module or two, makes one wonder how it spread that quickly? No fire walls? no power breaks? HOW did it propagate, and why was there no suppression / containment. something very WRONG happened there and they need to figure it out. I am by NO means an expert at this, even with my 40 yrs of experience, and if I can see the glaring faults and flaws, that means that the people who's job it IS to see this shit, and get paid a whole lot more than me to DO so, and mitigate it, should see it too. So, what went wrong? Incompetence / Greed / corruption / negligence / DEI bullshit? what caused this?
Aaron
Edit: You don't have camera's in those units, and once a day / once a shift look at the fucking packs, just do a sanity check / walk thru of your plant?
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The TV news reports say that the fire suppression system didn't work. This is in spite of the facility catching fire a couple of times before.
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If that's the case then this might become VERY expensive for someone as the insurance company says claim DENIED ! Inadequate fire protection as demanded by policy. But hey all those chemicals mixing as they go down the drain, all those colors, it's so.. diverse !!!
Aaron
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Apparently residue from the lithium battery fire getting into the local ground water is a big concern, even more so than air pollution.
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This morning the local CBS radio news station is reporting that local officials are demanding that the battery storage facility that caught fire, as well as the PG&E-owned facility nearby, be shut down until the reason for the fire can be determined and plans developed and implemented to prevent future fires.
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Local officials.... Is there really the excess wind and solar to be put in this battery project? That is not fair to the PG+E guys. I read the batteries in phase 1 were not the same as any of the others. Previous problems seemed to involve sprinkler system water in some manner, maybe not the exact wording in what I read.
Probably there will be an in-depth report at some time. It seems incredible to me that a bunch of 3.6 nominal cells can put high voltage into the power lines way up in the air.
This method is supposed to be better than pumping water up and then turn generator when it comes back. Or whatever else is proposed.
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Given the history of EV fires in parking structures, doesn't it seem that the most obvious thing while designing a battery storage plant would be to ensure that one shorted cell can't destroy huge parts of the plant? Shouldn't we use racks of batteries in many separate waterproof/fireproof (concrete) rooms that can be filled with water quickly from a central storage tank?
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Given the history of EV fires in parking structures, doesn't it seem that the most obvious thing while designing a battery storage plant would be to ensure that one shorted cell can't destroy huge parts of the plant? Shouldn't we use racks of batteries in many separate waterproof/fireproof (concrete) rooms that can be filled with water quickly from a central storage tank?
I heard on the news yesterday that the privately-owned battery storage facility that caught on fire had repurposed an existing building at the site. Likely that didn't help contain the fire once it got started, and their fire-suppression sprinkler system didn't work as they thought it would, either . :(
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Given the history of EV fires in parking structures, doesn't it seem that the most obvious thing while designing a battery storage plant would be to ensure that one shorted cell can't destroy huge parts of the plant? Shouldn't we use racks of batteries in many separate waterproof/fireproof (concrete) rooms that can be filled with water quickly from a central storage tank?
Water won’t help much. You want sand. Lots and lots of sand to suffocate the fire (after the lithium source burns itself out) and prevent spread of heat, smoke, and fumes.
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Water helps after the fact dealing with stranded energy but doesn't do much during the actual thermal event.
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Water will also wash the copper sheets off so you get a bit more at the junk yard from them, but will turn very caustic with the lithium in it. Think Lye.
During the thermal event, water will accelerate it. Lithium will react with water, creating Lithium Hydroxide and Hydrogen and a shit ton of heat, which will mostl likely ignite the hydrogen. Lithium will also oxidize and at higher temps can react with hydrogen and have other intermediate reactions. The fact that it almost instantly wants to release all of it's valence electrons can add some 'fun' to the event as well.
Lithium is mildly toxic to people and also has some uses for mental patients. There are other ingredients in the batteries, not to mention the plastic in their casings and other construction materials that are not too good for you either. Cyanides may also be present after a fire.
It's not the greatest thing for wildlife but isn't just a total planet killer, like say, Hydrazine would be.
Aaron
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I only suggested submerging in water because Europe was/is using the method of dunking burning EVs in containers full of water, and because it would be relatively easy to do by piping a central emergency tank water tank to each building compartment.
Water may not even be needed if the density was reduced so the batteries could be housed in isolable units with ventilation, probably constructed using fire resistant separators made of concrete, ceramic tiles or even cinder blocks.
They spent a billion dollars on it without accounting for the (sole?) incredibly obvious failure mode, where the probability of cell failure is multiplied by a vast number of cells. This is absolutely inexcusable. At higher levels of management, the same level of thought went into it as the thought that went into building, operating and maintaining a hydrogen station at Alice's: virtually none. It's just some committee who thought it was a good idea, mandated it, maybe wrote some checks and went onto something else. Somewhere, I guarantee there is an engineer who said this is going to be a problem and was ignored.
California forced PG&E to build it by 2024, and California will certainly allow PG&E to bill us for its construction and demolition. The people who did this will never be held accountable. Now I'm getting upset just thinking of all the incompetence.
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Oh, you're getting upset. How quaint. This is 45 minutes away from me and I have very specific thoughts about PG&E.
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Curt, they knew damned well the risks and all of that.
The engineer probably told them, you need walls, this and that.
The higher ups said, well they cost XX dollars, is there a law that says we HAVE to have them?
Engineer: well it's not a law but....
Exec: I don't care, if it's not a law then we are NOT spending the money.
The exec then gives himself a nice bonus because hey LOOK how much money he saved the company on this project, because engineers are incompetent, but HE knows better. wonk wonk wonk.
You have NO idea how many times this plays out in the power industry, day in and day out, all over the world.
If the engineer is smart, he initiates or tries to hold these conversations via E mail or some other recorded media, and sends a copy to a bcc that is OFF their servers... so later when the EPA comes sniffing, and the company mail servers decide to have a 'glitch' and lose that e mail conveniently., he's still protected.
What just drives me to banging head on wall crazy is, this knowledge been known for decades, about lithium fires... now all of the sudden there's this huge case of amnesia, and people want to relearn what they should already know, it's basic stuff. The wealth of ignorance is astounding sometimes.
Lith batteries, isolate as much as you can, and let it burn out.
Cars are unique because you CAN actually grab the whole 'event' and just throw it into a tank and close it off. Harder to do with a connex box or a building. That is the recommendation for cars because it's cheap, it's relatively inexpensive, and very effective. Drowning it puts out ALL /ANY fires, and forces the lithium to relax it'self into the .. how shall I say this..... least energy potential state... Water also puts out the Alpha fires too, the plastic and all the other crap that is burning as well as the lithium. keeps the smoke down, and makes disposal easier.
Another approved method is just to cover it with a fire blanket, and let it burn. This keeps the fire contained to just under the blanket, and lets it just burn itself out as well. It can take much longer to reach end state and of course, you still have a chance at cells not compromised, waiting to touch off themselves at a later day... anyways.
For a building, close it off, let it burn. Water may be to try to save the actual structure, it's certainly going to do NOTHING for the battery fire.
Most industrial places, they'll have a fire pump and a water tank just for fires. The water needed for a fire is HUGE, the normal city mains can not provide it, so they fill a tank, and have a dedicated pump to give them the volume of water the system will need if activated. If a fire alarm is activated, or a sensor trips, the system arms itself, the pumps turn on and it charges itself so it's ready if / when needed.
Me, Id put a concrete wall, a fire break, between each module, put the cables underground where practical with some disconnect links as practical. This way you pull the disconnects to electrically isolate it so the short circuit don' take the rest of the system out. Popping each unit's main storage breaker will do the same thing, if it does short, well the battery is disconnected so won't get dragged in.
I can't tell you how many times I have been told over my 'career' to shut up and go away, my input is NOT welcome when I point out defects, and potential catastrophy points. The main mindset is generally, If we can go 2 more years, I retire, get MY pension and it's not MY problem anymore. Im NOT spending that money, I won't get my end of year bonus if I do, or we just need to milk this a few years, I get promoted / retire / etc and this becomes someone elses problem. or Im not saying a word, because the next question will be, How did it get that way, or how was it allowed to be built that way, and THEN the corruption of the entire system is exposed, all the kickbacks, all the money slushing etc etc, and I don't want to be the one who rats everyone else out and have them come after ME now.
When the fire does happen, the corruption DOES get exposed, and the lawyers make out like bandits defending the guilty. you know... the same lawyers who told them they don't HAVE to have the fire system in the first place.
Morgan you have every right to be upset, this kind of corruption goes on everywhere, it's not just your little gang of misfit toys, it's the entire industry. It is all about money.. the insurance companies are getting better about forcing them to do things the right way, but there's still a lot of room for improvement, not to mention when the same Overseer, owns the bank, the loan company, the insurance company, and the repair company, well.. you see it.
Accountants and Protect .vs. Rebuild is another issue. well this cost 100k a year to protect, but only 400k to rebuild or repair it, the risk of a fire is 10 percent per year..so if I skip the protection and can make it 4 years without an incident, I just beat the odds, so im going to risk not protecting it. YOUR health and safety, meh, not MY problem. Accountants only see numbers, they don't have a clue OR a care about the rest of the stuff around those numbers... statistically it is in MY favor to make it past those 4 years w/o fire. NOT building the protection is a less costly path, and saving money is my job so there you have it. If the thing burns down 6 or 7 years later, they'll say, well it cost 500k for a new one (inflation), but we saved 700k (protection costs) building it the way we did, so were still ahead 200K. rebuild it AGAIN, the same way w/o protection, it's still cheaper, and we have the case history to prove it. I wish I was just making this up, but after sitting thru countless budget meetings on major projects, we are talking 300 million dollar plus projects, I can sadly say, yah, it IS this bad.
Unfortunately it tends to take someone getting hurt or killed to get people to do the right thing, you have to shame or embarrass them into doing it I have found, especially when doing it the right way costs more money.
Aaron
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It probably won't be a big surprise to anyone, but the news this morning is reporting that SJSU researchers testing soil samples located two miles away from this battery storage facility fire have found high concentrations of heavy metals of the type used in lithium batteries in the soil.
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I would be highly suspect of that soil sample.
That sounds like moonbeam sniffing a lawsuit. Unless the smoke blew right over and settled a ton of the crap on the soil; for any firefighting to leach that far, takes some time. If the smoke did deposit that much down, it'd be on everything, in the water on your windows etc, not just in a convenient soil sample.
Also, Lithium is a pretty common mineral TBH, so is copper. Just because they found 'high' concentrations, does not mean it came from the battery plant. Correlation does not prove causation. What do they consider 'high' concentrations? Exactly WHERE did they look, the junkyard? the used car lot? How far down did they go? what is considered a 'normal' concentration in those areas? How was the sample taken, how was it tested, what did they use as a control? what are the 'testers' credentials, what is their affiliation? Is the equipment NIST certified? When was it last calibrated? ...YES these things DO matter.
If there are any real concerns, the EPA should be testing, and those tests should be made public. The EPA / Health Dept should be testing anyways. TBH so should the owners of the project to show 'good faith' in mitigation of both damage AND potential lawsuits.
This could get interesting BUT does it stick or does it fall off the radar in the week like so many other catastrophes? What about the hurricane wiping out the carolina's, don't hear anymore, what about Hawaii, silent, hell the LA fires are dying down in media already. Move along, give the sheeple something new to focus on while we hide the last thing.
Aaron
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An article in my newspaper today, written by Clara Halter and published by the LA Times, with the title of: Discovery at estuary is 'disturbing', says that soil samples collected by scientists at San Jose State University have recorded a "dramatic increase in nickel, manganese and cobalt at the Elkhorn Slough Reserve after the recent fire at the nearby Moss Landing Power Plant." The concentrations of these metals on the surface of the soil were "hundreds to thousands of times as much as the levels in the surface soil prior the fire or compared with levels measured deeper in the soil."
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In my newspaper today, near an article regarding the Moss Landing residents and businesses suing Vistra concerning the impact that their battery storage facility fire has had on their lives and incomes, was the attached half-page ad. ::)