A massive fire has broken out in one of the world’s largest battery storage facilities containing tens of thousands of lithium batteries, prompting a full scale mobilisation of firefighters across several counties in Northern California. The Independent has the story.
Towering flames were visible from afar as a large black column of smoke rose from the Moss Landing power plant, with the fire showing no signs of easing in the early hours of Friday. It was first reported around 3pm local time.
The fire is located in the northern part of the sate some 300 miles (500 km) north of the wildfires in Los Angeles. The plant contains tens of thousands of lithium batteries, which can be extremely difficult to put out if they go up in flames.
“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 the fire is not expected to spread beyond the concrete building it is enclosed in, he added. Highway 1, located nearby, has been shut down by authorities.
The plant is around 100 miles (160 km) south of San Francisco, and the blaze is unrelated to the ongoing wildfires in the southern Californian city of Los Angeles, which started around 10 days ago and have killed at least 27 people.
The cause of the fire is currently unclear, said a statement from the factory’s owners, Texas-based company Vistra Energy. Around 1,500 people were successfully evacuated from the building, according to the Mercury News. …
Vistra plants also suffered fires in 2021 and 2022 which were caused by a fire sprinkler system malfunction, causing some units to overheat, the Mercury News reported.
Worth reading in full.
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Their last sentence is weird. When was an illness caused by the cure not working? Caused by something unknown might have been more accurate. Anyway, are fire sprinkler systems any good for that type of battery?
I think they’re trying to hope people bite their implication that the fire was not caused by faulty batteries. LOL
A fire caused by a sprinkler system is quite ironic though, isn’t it… ‘you had one job to do!’
Not caused by the sprinkler system was it? Lithium batteries are inherently very dangerous, but of course the reason is unknown! Really, it is simple chemistry a ten year old can understand.
Prof. PAUL CHRISTENSEN Electric Vehicle Battery Fires SUBSCRIBE NOW – YouTube
This explains much.
See also LA Fires: EV batteries FRUSTRATE clean-up efforts | MGUY Australia – YouTube
There’s only ONE reason we need these DANGEROUS batteries… | MGUY Australia – YouTube Yet another good explanation.
A pipe full of water with no electrical connections (apart from an earth wire)
and sprinkler heads that use a little glass bulb that bursts during high temperatures so releasing the fire quenching water… caused a fire????
Spraying water on batteries is not a good idea in the first place! ask a submariner
Quite. It doesn’t make sense. Sprinkler system is simple technology in use for decades widely used. It requires high levels of heat to activate. They cannot “malfunction”. It’s physics.
Are sprinkler systems effective for lithium ion fires? No.
The only way a sprinkler system could help a battery fault is if local temperature sensors are used to trigger the water spray so the batteries are cooled before they reach thermal runaway. I don’t know if any battery facilities have this kind of design.
Good luck putting that out. It will have to burn itself out. All they can do is try to contain it by cooling surrounding buildings. One tiny faulty cell could cause all that. What will be the cost, both financial and environmental. I wonder if this will be on the BBC.
It is a nasty kind of fire because trying to put it our makes it worse sometimes and it burns hot. In an extreme survival situation it is recommended that you open up a lithium battery and pour water on it in order to generate a durable fire. You have cases of vape pens exploding in people’s faces. I think people need to be more mindful around lithium batteries. What benefits have they actually brought their greatest function surely is in the powering of smartphones which are the most demonic devices every created. You could write volumes on every single harm that they have done and volumes more on the way in which they impinge on privacy and curtail freedom. This tech demon has a particular genius in that it makes you reluctant to criticise it.
That said, they also power syringe-drivers for terminal pain. I recall the time when the district nurse setting one up found the battery was flat, and I had to nip home and cannibalise one from my guitar tuner. Patient died comfortably. Not all bad, then.
I’m confused.
They write Moss Landing is a power plant.
They also say it’s a battery storage facility.
Are the batteries storing electricity generated by intermittent sources, i.e. wind turbines and photovoltaic panels?
Or are batteries just being stored there, at the power plant?
I am guessing the former.
It’s deliberate mis-naming intended to conceal what has gone wrong. Either that or someone reversed the words. Storage battery has a different meaning.
The article (at least the excerpt) is poorly worded. Electricity generation plants are obliged by California law to provide capacity to store surplus electricity to reduce reliance on traditional backups to unreliable intermittent sources. There had already been a fire at the facility. The combined output of the two batteries of batteries is about the same as the gas fired power plant – for a whole four hours. All of this is gleaned from the Wikipedia article about the plant which also refers to something called a “Covid pandemic” – but I reckon most of it is accurate:)
Apparently my post doesn’t make sense. Apologies if anyone finds it confusing. I was responding to MAK’s post in which he is confused (which I was too) because of references to “battery storage” which might mean a place where batteries (of any kind) are stored perhaps prior to being distributed as opposed to what this plant is which is a place where re-chargeable batteries are deployed en masse to store electricity. I attempt in my post to summarise what the “batteries” are in the power plant, and why they are there, what capacity they have and that the battery part of the plant has already suffered a fire. “Two batteries of batteries” was an attempt at humour which perhaps failed. If anyone is still confused now, I will hang up my writing pen for good as I have perhaps lost the plot.
You look at the inadequate provision for disposal of these diabolic devices -there isn’t any. Just look at what happens to wind turbines once they are decomissioned. Solar panels etc. These people hate the natural world and everything they create is made to destroy truth and beauty and the balance of things.
Exactly. Just like Satan/Shiva, the “god” of Destruction: destroying everything good and bright and beautiful, pure, joyful, wholesome, honest and innocent, that God ever made.
Don’t be naive about this. You can’t say that we haven’t been given ample signs and warnings in the last twelve months. Go back to a human pace and a human scale. Forget money worship. Learn the spirit of sacrifice. If you don’t have it then you will be eaten up in the horror to come and it will be far worse thasn your neurotic imaginings.
In all probability this fire was caused by a nearby tree being set on fire by climate change, which wouldn’t be happening if we had more lithium ion batteries.
Above all else this was a lithium battery storage facility so the claims this fire might have been caused by a lithium battery are laughable at best and anyone claiming otherwise is a racist.
Probably climate change deniers set fire to it.
/sarc!!!
Fire thankfully contained, but just about sums up the State of Calfornia under Governor Grewsom – wild fires, battery storage fires, EV fires, but under no circumstance any new 24/7 hydrocarbon or nuclear-fired power stations that are to this day the beating heart of the modern world.
Grewsom the spewsome.
How many British housing estates are being built near similar, smaller plants here.
The sadness is that Net Zero spin leads local people to believe that a nearby battery plant ensures continuous electricit supply for the village or suburb – obviously, not so, but they believe it. Think how upset they will be when cuts take place (Oh! wash muy mouth out “demand management”:).
Yep, lithium fires are extremely difficult to extinguish.
MSM – Oh dear, never mind, nothing to see here!
Let me guess ….. the fire was caused by climate change?
Honestly these days they’ll p!$$ down your back and won’t even bother to convince you that it’s rain!
California governor says EV batteries complicate wildfire hazmat debris cleanup:Gavin Newsom
I hope that the wind is blowing the toxic fumes out to sea as North, South and East there appear to be sizeable towns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbJ72hBB9tQ