What a major battery fire at power plant in California means for the future of energy storage

We know that electric vehicles occasionally suffer from spontaneous combustion!

The Los Angeles wildfires were not the only significant fires burning in California!

Supposedly, this fire affected only old batteries? If you can believe it.

"A few weeks ago, a fire broke out at the Moss Landing Power Plant in California, the world’s largest collection of batteries on the grid. Although the flames were extinguished in a few days, the metaphorical smoke is still clearing. ...

The Moss Landing fire was spotted in the afternoon on January 16, according to local news reports. It started small but quickly spread to a huge chunk of batteries at the plant. Over 1,000 residents were evacuated, nearby roads were closed, and a wider emergency alert warned those nearby to stay indoors. ...

The fire hit the oldest group of batteries installed at Moss Landing, a 300-megawatt array that came online in 2020. Additional installations bring the total capacity at the site to about 750 megawatts, meaning it can deliver as much energy to the grid as a standard coal-fired power plant for a few hours at a time.

According to a statement that site owner Vistra Energy gave to the New York Times, most of the batteries inside the affected building (the one that houses the 300MW array) burned. However, the company doesn’t have an exact tally, because crews are still prohibited from going inside to do a visual inspection. ...

This isn’t the first time that batteries at Moss Landing have caught fire—there have been several incidents at the plant since it opened. However, this event was “much more significant” than previous fires ...

There’s still a lot we don’t know about this fire, particularly when it comes to how it started.  Learning from the results of the ongoing investigations will be important, because we can only expect to see more batteries coming online in the years ahead. 

In 2023, there were roughly 54 gigawatts’ worth of utility-scale batteries on the grid globally. If countries follow through on stated plans for renewables, that number could increase tenfold by the end of the decade. ..."

What a major battery fire means for the future of energy storage | MIT Technology Review "The latest fire at Moss Landing Power plant is raising concerns about battery safety."

Moss Landing fire: One of the world's largest battery factories ablaze | The Independent