I know a materials scientist who works for the DOE on battery development. We definitely could use some bteakthroughs in that technology.

The fire was less than 30 miles from our house. Thank goodness there were no winds like they had in the LA area. Until they solve the battery problem, we will keep putting off buying an electric car. And we would not put it in the garage in case of fire.

While thinking more about the storage dilemma, I did some looking around concerning this topic and found interesting info. A Wikipedia article or two in particular.

A proven, reliable, and increasingly used method to store electricity (if indirectly) is called pumped hydroelectric. I was familiar with this as I periodically drive by one such facility located at Castaic, along the Grapevine route. Simple from a technology standpoint - take two adjacent reservoirs, one uphill from the other. At times of excess power availability in the grid, pump water uphill from the lower reservoir to the higher one. At a later time, when more power is needed, release water to turn turbines at the higher reservoir and release the water to the lower one. Rinse and repeat, as needed. Interestingly, the country with the largest number of such facilities is China and it also has a large number, more than any other country, under construction (info from Wiki). As usual, the US lags what other countries do to solve problems.

Another of several technologies being researched involves using excess, otherwise unused electrical power to extract hydrogen gas from water. Water is H2O, separating the H from the O is simple and inexpensive (equipment wise). The hydrogen gas can be used at a later time to operate fuel cells (an oldish and reliable technology) to produce electricity. Note that at one time, American space vehicles like Apollo, the Space Shuttle, etc., were powered exclusively by fuel cells.

The hydrogen-use cycle is completely environmentally friendly because when the water molecule is split, the resulting products are hydrogen gas and oxygen gas. When a fuel cell operates, the result of the chemical reaction that creates electricity is just water.

Hydrogen is flammable but again, so are most petrochemicals used for fuel. As the storage facilities would be at protected and isolated locations, as with the battery facility, I wouldn't think using this approach would present any great risk. And in the case of a fire, the by-products released in the fire would not be as potentially dangerous as with the burning of lithium batteries.

Lithium batteries sounded like a great thing but as more cars on the road are powered by them the bad points of lithium batteries are coming up more often. I wouldn’t want a vehicle I couldn’t safely park in my garage. Locally there was a recent fire started by the lithium battery on a kid’s scooter sitting in garage.

A news report I saw said that the facility at Moss Landing was the largest (meaning, highest capacity) lithium battery power storage facility in the US. Was. No longer is, after the fire.

Also mentioned was that there have been several on-site fires since it opened just a few years ago. I hadn't heard of these those I don't follow local news closely.

The incident reports have been annoyingly lacking in concrete information about what compounds are contained in the smoke from the fire and how dangerous or not they are to breathe or be in contact with.

“A news report I saw said that the facility at Moss Landing was the largest (meaning, highest capacity) lithium battery power storage facility in the US.”

Edwards Sandborn in the Mohave Desert has nearly four times the capacity, I believe.

Moss Landing was largest at the time it was built.

food, I stated what the source of my comment was (as I usually do when applicable) - a local news report. What was the source of your information?

Since you seem to like strict accuracy, please note the mistake in what you said - no 4x difference from what info I found, the capacity of the two facilities was about the same, ~3,000 MWh (as found from a search).

Here's another news report, found by a search:

Fire at world's largest battery.....

I looked it up because I knew ES to be the largest. Yes I quoted wrong numbers. I’ll assume though, that you found that ES was in fact bigger, even if by not a lot, or you would have said so.

What I "found" was done just a moment ago. The statement I made yesterday was for this thread, a casual conversation with a cited source, a media report. Not for a term paper for an engineering class. In the context of casual conversation.

What I found today was that they were about the same size.

I hadn't heard of the Edwards facility before seeing your link but as this information isn't something most people would follow from week to week, I had no reason to. Even though living not too far away, I similarly had heard only a few words in passing about the Moss Landing facility but knew nothing about its size or that it was the world's largest when put into service.

All of the next info from searches. To put their sizes in context, California's record peak demand was set one summer day a few years ago at around 52,000 megawatts for at least one hour. Though intended for off-peak discharge, each of these facilities had a top storage rating of around 3,000 megawatt hours. What that means is that if each were to discharge their stored energy ratably over 8 hours, with rounding, that's about 400 megawatts from each into the grid per hour. Essentially just drops in a bucket. Less than 1% measured against peak demand.

For comparison, the Castaic plant can product 1500 megawatts per hour with constantly flowing water (which passes by on its trip to Los Angeles). Its storage capacity equivalence in electricity terms (how much power the uphill water will produce if released) is 12,000 megawatt hours.

I doubt that in the long term lithium batteries will be in widespread use for grid level storage . They're too expensive and have too may problems.

Energy production and storage has always been one of my passions for many decades and something I take seriously. I'm not a big fan using lithium ion batteries for large storage facilities into the future and believe sodium ion batteries should be the battery material going forward for large scale energy storage. Presently sodium ion has a lower energy density per KG than Lithium by about 25% and has lower life cycles of about 30% to 50% over Lithium but price per Kilowatt is 50% less then lithium.

Mass production would drive sodium ion battery prices even lower. It's not something prime for automobiles because of the extra weight/energy output and cycle numbers but for storage facilities it's a better and safer option and less likely to catch fire or blow up. Sodium ion won't react like Lithium does when punctured, overcharged or wet. Here are some quick comparisons between the two so you be the judge. https://www.dnkpower.com/will-sodium-batteries-replace-lithium-batteries/

Gravity storage isn't something new only the innovations of how people are using gravity energy storage (GES) is fairly new There are many examples around the world to consider included a few very futuristic prototypes to study I have seen. Google GES and you'll find plenty of examples to consider. I can't see the Idea of using water storage in an area where water is scarce and may be a problem since CA can't even store enough water to fight fires.

A more practical solution to harness gravity and might upset the environmentalists is not to use water but to use 100+ ton weights on wheels (or newsom's ego) sitting on tracks going up all those mountains. The electrical motors used to pull the weight up the track will be no more or less efficient than those used to pump water. Allowing the weights to drop would turn a flywheel like a weight-driven pendulum on a grandfather and generate as much energy as using water between two different elevations would work. Remember energy can't be created or destroyed and only transferred from one form to another. How it's transferred doesn't matter if the methods to do it has the same efficiencies.

Any simple and effective GES system will work great to store excess energy production and isn't toxic and won't blow up, but my idea of using the mountains for elevation for GES may effect the kangaroo mouse habitat in California. So the biggest challenge would not be building the up hill rail system but changing the mindset of the emotionally triggered voters of your state who don't seem to think rationally. I thing California residents will have a up hill battle getting either a water or weight system if you ask me.