Author Topic: Moss Landing Li battery fire.  (Read 2183 times)

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Offline MTTopic starter

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Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« on: January 18, 2025, 09:40:26 pm »
 

Offline brucehoult

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #1 on: January 18, 2025, 10:11:29 pm »
Four fires since 2019 seems like carelessness.
 

Online SiliconWizard

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #2 on: January 18, 2025, 11:19:29 pm »
Again? :o
 

Offline tom66

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #3 on: January 19, 2025, 12:07:44 am »
More LG Chem battery issues,  LG really not having a good time here.

LG also supplied the battery packs to the Jaguar i-Pace, Porsche Taycan, Chevy Bolt, some Audi and VW vehicles, and some Hyundai and Kia vehicles.  All have been recalled for fire risk.  Home batteries built by LG have also been recalled.
 

Online Analog Kid

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #4 on: January 19, 2025, 07:10:55 pm »
This, apparently, is our future.
 

Online coppice

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #5 on: January 19, 2025, 07:21:12 pm »
It amuses me we I see another "we're going into the battery business in a big way" announcement by a company outside that industry, like they are a well understood commodity. The reality is results in terms of safety and longevity are still highly variable among people who have been making them for decades.
 

Offline Siwastaja

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #6 on: January 19, 2025, 07:26:27 pm »
It amuses me we I see another "we're going into the battery business in a big way" announcement by a company outside that industry, like they are a well understood commodity. The reality is results in terms of safety and longevity are still highly variable among people who have been making them for decades.

Like any other tech innovation business, it's risk-taking. What I find amusing is that the potential gains are not that big, so the risk-benefit factor seems pretty crappy. I mean, payback for the investment is going to be long. It can end up making some money, but it's not going to be a like a goldmine with sudden diamonds popping out everywhere. And if anything goes wrong; product lifetime is shorter than anticipated, catastrophic failure, or simply the predictions about reserve markets end up wrong (e.g., by everybody else building batteries too and diluting the market), then it has potential to be a serious loss.

Then again, it's good that we have innovation and risk-taking. Some succeed, some fail, it's evolution.
 

Offline floobydust

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #7 on: January 19, 2025, 07:59:35 pm »
The fire suppression system failed  ::)
"There is a fire suppression system connected to each battery rack..."
"In this particular case, that system was not sufficient, it was overridden, and that led to fire overtaking the system and eventually overtaking the entire building,” {Fire Chief Joe} Mendoza said."

One fire guy said over 80% of the structure and batteries has been destroyed.
Vistra stock to the moon! Or maybe the ocean! Next week we'll see if this is a blip.

Previous Moss Landing Power Plant fire 2022-09-20 was a Megapack at the Tesla Power Storage facility. Elon Musk on twitter clarifying this fire is not involving Tesla products.
 

Offline tom66

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #8 on: January 19, 2025, 09:33:32 pm »
There are huge economic benefits to grid batteries which is why there's such a race to build them.

For instance in the UK our normal wholesale electricity price is about £100/MWh however during times of constraint the price can rise up to £5000/MWh (source).  This is because there are very few gas peaker power plants available that can come online to meet the last few hundred MW of capacity needed to balance the grid.  These plants might be offline for 95% of the year, running in a reserve configuration ready to come online in a moment's notice.

If you're a battery operator and you can buy electricity at £100/MWh and sell it back at £500/MWh (for instance, normal peak time pricing) with none of those painful issues that gas peaker plants have then it can make sense to throw a huge amount of money into this.

Of course... you probably should avoid buying LG batteries.
 
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Offline floobydust

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #9 on: January 19, 2025, 11:31:52 pm »
Maxi-profit means tight spacing, maximal land usage etc. these projects are not engineered decent.
I wouldn't blame the batteries. Why should an exothermic cell take out an entire $1B facility? People are not only greedy but also too stupid for creating this much energy storage with a known volatile technology. Wall Street's agenda towards making a cash cow- followed by investors believing in unicorns and rainbows that the batteries will never light up.

As a fire fighter, you don't have the tools or chemicals or manpower or funding for this. The strategy is to "let it burn". Such a high tech approach  :-DD

I find this whole thing another preventable recurring disaster that ends up costing consumers much more than simply adding additional power generation in the first place.
 
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Offline Siwastaja

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #10 on: January 20, 2025, 08:35:34 am »
Maxi-profit means tight spacing, maximal land usage etc. these projects are not engineered decent.
I wouldn't blame the batteries. Why should an exothermic cell take out an entire $1B facility?

Really good question...

Quote
I find this whole thing another preventable recurring disaster that ends up costing consumers much more than simply adding additional power generation in the first place.

Probably not, though - we would need hard data to back this up. One issue with alarmist political forums like the "General Technical Chat" on Eevblog forum is that it causes selection and confirmation biases. How many successfully running grid batteries do we have, but do not recognize them being in use? They definitely should be making enough money to compensate for the failed; if not, then the situation is unsustainable.

Still of course, that's not an excuse for stupid engineering. It's not like the batteries have to sit on specifically expensive land. Sounds like preventing large cascading failures should be pretty easy, and not that expensive. And then again, maybe it is easy, and we are just seeing normal evolution happening - poor designs burning, good designs surviving.

Holding those who signed off that cost-cutting legally responsible for the public danger (and pollution) they caused would be the first step towards better safety culture.
« Last Edit: January 20, 2025, 09:17:14 am by Siwastaja »
 
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Online coppercone2

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #11 on: January 21, 2025, 08:52:51 pm »
Maxi-profit means tight spacing, maximal land usage etc. these projects are not engineered decent.
I wouldn't blame the batteries. Why should an exothermic cell take out an entire $1B facility? People are not only greedy but also too stupid for creating this much energy storage with a known volatile technology. Wall Street's agenda towards making a cash cow- followed by investors believing in unicorns and rainbows that the batteries will never light up.

As a fire fighter, you don't have the tools or chemicals or manpower or funding for this. The strategy is to "let it burn". Such a high tech approach  :-DD

I find this whole thing another preventable recurring disaster that ends up costing consumers much more than simply adding additional power generation in the first place.

in this case it was over estimating the uptime  / reliability of a active control solution to get rid of a passive solution (distance).

Wanna bet someone said there is no chance that anyone would turn off the safety? And no risk of there being a safety system malfunction at the time of fire?


I think its big numbers that seem scary, but pale in comparison to the real thing. These people likely HATE HATE HATE the idea of having to extend long thick bus bars between batteries and rent more space. stuff like that.

The solution involves cables, I think we seen from T&M that the MBA primary focus is to get rid of cables and compact things. I think we all have seen what happens when you integrate the power supply on the analog board and there is a problem that totally wrecks the pcb, because the alternative would be a cable lol. They always have a really tough time understanding that empty space and distance have very valid uses in engineering!!
« Last Edit: January 21, 2025, 08:59:51 pm by coppercone2 »
 

Online Analog Kid

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #12 on: January 21, 2025, 09:14:41 pm »
Do we know what caused this fire? (My guess©®: no.)
Was the cause due to
  • cutting corners?
  • poor design of the storage facility?
  • unforseeable circumstance (lightning strike, etc.)?
  • "human error" (someone doing something stupid)?
  • the inevitable consequence of lithium batteries' propensity to catch on fire spontaneously?
 

Offline floobydust

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #13 on: January 21, 2025, 11:19:11 pm »
I posted here yesterday but it vanished  >:(

Great Fire of London 1666 humanity learned (and today forgot) what happens with high density (fire) fuel.
This thing called the "firewall" became a fire-code requirement.
Tesla has high temp heat tiles for SpaceX, I can buy fire brick/cinder block at Home Depot - yet I see nothing like that used in these battery farms  :palm:

Previous Vistra fire here was apparently due to the fire suppression system leaking water onto electronics which then lit up.
Water with... lithium batteries? - Vistra is too cheap and typical of green investment dollars focus is on flogging the engineers to get something together ASAP for profits to roll in. Safety cost money and let's not waste time with that. I don't see a basic effort put into fire engineering at all.
It doesn't matter what started the fire. That it spread and was not suppressed, and the fire dept. could only let it burn- are more important failures I think.

This pic seems to be the facility. Reusing some old building?
I've never seen so much air conditioning before, wonder what the global warming and energy costs of cooling these battery packs is.
 

Online nctnico

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #14 on: January 21, 2025, 11:36:37 pm »
Those aren't aircon units. These are ventilation systems to remove fumes from whatever process is inside the building. Also, Lithium batteries don't contain pure Lithium and water is the best way to put out a Lithium battery fire for the cooling effect to stop the batteries burning.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline Psi

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #15 on: January 21, 2025, 11:39:31 pm »
Do we know what caused this fire? (My guess©®: no.)
Was the cause due to
  • cutting corners?
  • poor design of the storage facility?
  • unforseeable circumstance (lightning strike, etc.)?
  • "human error" (someone doing something stupid)?
  • the inevitable consequence of lithium batteries' propensity to catch on fire spontaneously?

You forgot one

Business executives and upper management not letting the engineers finish the design before rushing it into production.
Greek letter 'Psi' (not Pounds per Square Inch)
 

Offline floobydust

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #16 on: January 22, 2025, 02:44:56 am »
Those aren't aircon units. These are ventilation systems to remove fumes from whatever process is inside the building. Also, Lithium batteries don't contain pure Lithium and water is the best way to put out a Lithium battery fire for the cooling effect to stop the batteries burning.

I keep hearing not to use water on lithium battery fires. I suspect also firefighters don't like to use water on electrical fires, for the electrocution hazard they worry about.

“In all honesty, I do not know if those guarantees {residents’ health } are possible,” Church said. “With this being the fourth fire incident in a little over five years in Moss Landing, it is obvious that this technology is ahead of both government’s ability to regulate it and private industry’s ability to control it.”

“Attempts to put out battery fires at other sites have only worsened the situation,” Church said. “Water is used initially only when the batteries start to heat, not when flames have emerged. I find the lack of a proven system to extinguish the fires highly alarming. We simply cannot have a fire incident every year or two and expect that to be normal.” source
 

Online neverendingstudent

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #17 on: January 22, 2025, 03:06:45 am »
Maxi-profit means tight spacing, maximal land usage etc. these projects are not engineered decent.
I wouldn't blame the batteries. Why should an exothermic cell take out an entire $1B facility? People are not only greedy but also too stupid for creating this much energy storage with a known volatile technology. Wall Street's agenda towards making a cash cow- followed by investors believing in unicorns and rainbows that the batteries will never light up.

As a fire fighter, you don't have the tools or chemicals or manpower or funding for this. The strategy is to "let it burn". Such a high tech approach  :-DD

I find this whole thing another preventable recurring disaster that ends up costing consumers much more than simply adding additional power generation in the first place.

When it comes to grid-scale Lithium based energy storage, we really need to take a page from the cold war and munitions bunkerage.  You split up your storage into a number of dug-in buildings with moderately tall earthen berms between them, blocking fire / heat / explosions from spreading from one bunker building to neighboring bunker buildings, thus creating a 'maximum acceptable loss' of a single bunker from a single strike (or in this case, from a single fire incident).

This is simply a matter of profit motive getting in the way of the necessary physical engineering.  Regulation is therefore required to be implemented to force companies to do things differently, no matter that it is more expensive to do it the safer way.
 

Offline brucehoult

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #18 on: January 22, 2025, 03:36:51 am »
When it comes to grid-scale Lithium based energy storage, we really need to take a page from the cold war and munitions bunkerage.  You split up your storage into a number of dug-in buildings with moderately tall earthen berms between them, blocking fire / heat / explosions from spreading from one bunker building to neighboring bunker buildings, thus creating a 'maximum acceptable loss' of a single bunker from a single strike

Surprisingly, there are major countries that haven't learned that.

Look up Toropets, where back in September a drone attack on an ammunition depot caused the equivalent of a magnitude 2.5~2.8 earthquake.

https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/earthquakes/quake-info/9611698/mag2quake-Sep-18-2024-BALTIC-STATES-BELARUS-NW-RUSSIA-REGION.html
 

Online coppercone2

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #19 on: January 22, 2025, 03:52:21 am »
he should add 'free world' to that statement

the other half never cared too much

but I heard alot of munitions dumps over seas, particularly in the pacific, were equally shoddy, but they took care of most of that in the late 70's.
 

Offline Siwastaja

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #20 on: January 22, 2025, 08:00:37 am »
I keep hearing not to use water on lithium battery fires.

That is true, but irrelevant because these sites do not use lithium batteries. For lithium ion batteries, a totally different thing, water is the correct medium, because these batteries have nothing that reacts with water (unlike lithium batteries), and because rapid removal of heat is the only way to stop the exothermic reaction, and only water can do that easily. The options really are "let it burn" or "try to stop it with water".

Maybe the issue is trusting too much on the water system alone. That should be combined with physical separation, or as you suggest, firewall-like structures (that work by thermal insulation, isolating the failing part).
« Last Edit: January 22, 2025, 08:02:47 am by Siwastaja »
 

Online neverendingstudent

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #21 on: January 22, 2025, 03:58:06 pm »
Another option I can think of (though I'm going to start by admitting there are a TON of complicating issues with this) would be at-battery compressed nitrogen storage in high volume.

This would not be 'instead of', but rather 'in addition to' planned structural failure mitigation like cold-war era multi-building ammo dump designs.

Have piping with designed thermal failure points at the batteries (literally in-between cells) that would evacuate large volumes of pressurized nitrogen to flash-cool burning batteries.

Problems I can think of: adding asphyxiation hazard to the system (if you have a leak you could kill people by displacing oxygen), pressure-explosion hazard added to the system.

Not sure if the pros outweigh the cons, but it's an idea that occurs to me.

Edit: now I'm going down a rabbit hole on Wolfram Alpha calculating specific heat capacities and thermal delta potential of volumes of water (room temp to boil evap) vs. volumes of nitrogen (@ room temp under compression then vented to 1 standard atmosphere) at different pressures of stored compression...
« Last Edit: January 22, 2025, 04:03:49 pm by neverendingstudent »
 

Offline Siwastaja

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #22 on: January 22, 2025, 04:31:50 pm »
Another option I can think of (though I'm going to start by admitting there are a TON of complicating issues with this) would be at-battery compressed nitrogen storage in high volume.

Useless for li-ion batteries. They burn without external oxygen; they have their own internal oxidizer.

Really, li-ion fires and their prevention/mitigation is really well understood. All that is needed is investigating why the knowledge is not applied to practice (my guess: money), and discussing what should be done to enforce proper engineering (which is getting to politics).
 
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Offline krish2487

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #23 on: January 22, 2025, 04:34:52 pm »
Another option I can think of (though I'm going to start by admitting there are a TON of complicating issues with this) would be at-battery compressed nitrogen storage in high volume.

Useless for li-ion batteries. They burn without external oxygen; they have their own internal oxidizer.

Really, li-ion fires and their prevention/mitigation is really well understood. All that is needed is investigating why the knowledge is not applied to practice (my guess: money), and discussing what should be done to enforce proper engineering (which is getting to politics).

Putting it another way... Humans are the weak link in the chain.
If god made us in his image,
and we are this stupid
then....
 

Offline floobydust

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Re: Moss Landing Li battery fire.
« Reply #24 on: January 22, 2025, 05:18:53 pm »
I keep hearing not to use water on lithium battery fires.

That is true, but irrelevant because these sites do not use lithium batteries. For lithium ion batteries, a totally different thing, water is the correct medium, because these batteries have nothing that reacts with water (unlike lithium batteries), and because rapid removal of heat is the only way to stop the exothermic reaction, and only water can do that easily. The options really are "let it burn" or "try to stop it with water".

Maybe the issue is trusting too much on the water system alone. That should be combined with physical separation, or as you suggest, firewall-like structures (that work by thermal insulation, isolating the failing part).

They started out lithium-ion and very discretely changed over to LiFePO4.  I think Australia got the last at Bouldercombe. You don't want to be one of the suckers running the old tech.
I called them "lithium batteries" and there is still relevance for firefighters who shouldn't have to guess what kind of fire they are fighting, electricity included.
I fully understand they default to "let 'er burn" - no need to take risk and save anything.

We've had several of these battery storage facility fires and not learned much.
Vistra should have done better homework towards raking in the profits. I keep wondering how they have so much market cap at $63B and not a blip in their stock price lol.
I guess no one noticed the fire. Green investors are hilarious.
 


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