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elmerjfudd

New Cal fire- tiny in scale compared to others but also important

last month
last modified: last month

A fire broke out yesterday down in the Monterey Bay area at a facility adjacent to a now decommissioned and mostly demolished but iconic power plant at Moss Landing.

The adjacent facility contains large arrays of lithium ion batteries. The new facility was built to house batteries that get charged with otherwise unused electricity at peak production times and are discharged to provide additional power into the grid during lower production times. An example would be excess solar production in the daytime or wind production in excess of what's needed at the moment. The unused electricity is essentially free and if there were a means to store it to be released when needed, that would lower the cost of supplying electricity to users.

The fire started yesterday and is still burning today. Authorities have not disclosed whether the plumes of smoke are or are not dangerous to breathe. It's a lightly populated area adjacent to artichoke, strawberry (and other) fields so the needed evacuations were apparently done on a small scale.

This fire sheds a light on what I think are two important things:

1) Most renewable energy sources can't be turned off and on to meet demand as gas power plants can. I've read many times and from many sources that one of the still unsolved problems for making greater use of non-combustion electrical power is the need to have robust storage systems to allow for shifting electricity supplies from peak production times to non-peak times. The wind doesn't always blow when more electricity is needed, same for the sun shining on solar production facilities. And sometimes the reverse happens, more is produced than is needed and the excess goes to waste. The storage requirement needs to be resolved.

2) Lithium batteries, at least as of now, are a feasible way to store electricity. This is what's used in electric and hybrid electric cars. Unfortunately, they do burn and when they burn, the fires are hard to control and are usually left to burn themselves out.

The facility at Moss Landing is one of the larger battery storage facilities built to date. It has only been in operation a few years. The news reports have said that the fire is contained in the concrete building where the batteries were located and will eventually stop of its own accord.

There are several other technologies being tested for power storage but lithium batteries were seen as being something to exploit now because they're available and they work. This fire shows there's an uncomfortable degree of uncertainty about just how safe and robust such technology is and as of now, there are not many different energy storage approaches ready to be put into service.

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