Grid-scale battery fire in upstate New York

[goingplacesanddoingstuff]

I appreciate the technical points, but at the end of the day, we are still experiencing a staggering number of fires despite this, three in the last three months in New York alone. We can't just hand-wave that away because we have systems in place that *should* prevent them. Again, as I noted, these are all from big names that many would recognize, that is rightfully concerning.

Yes, I appreciate that the lithium iron phosphate chemistries are less likely to catch fire (this is what my dear friend has for his off-grid setup), but there IS still a risk. I was under the impression that Tesla was switching to this with their Megapacks, but it's unclear as to when that transition actually took(?) place, and both Victoria and Moss Landing have had fires, the latter being an extremely recent project, commissioned the middle of last year.

I'm not writing it off, far from it, I think batteries are quite practical in cars, if we can get some of this stuff sorted. And, the rate of seemingly spontaneous self-ignition seems much lower in the the transportation segment than it does the grid storage one. But, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about, or discussing these sorts of events.

I do think there are better options for grid storage however.

Yes, so I think it would be beneficial if we had more details on what the types of cells were in these systems that have caught fire. That's often omitted, and while Tesla advertised the Megapack as being Lithium Ion, it seems to have potentially already transitioned to LFP as early as 2021, so sometimes the media is outdated or inaccurate.

There’s always risk in all reservoirs of potential energy. Dams break, reactors leak, petrol stations burn, coal plants release toxins, natural gas lines explode. Many of these have happened more often than any of us realize because we generally accept it as necessary. Heck we have dams and nuclear reactors on profoundly geologically inappropriate areas all over the country.

All reservoirs of potential energy need the correct implementation. Bad engineering will always risk the runaway escape of that energy. I really don’t think lithium battery technology is inherently unsafe for grid backup. At worst, untested technology was pressed into service prematurely with poor implementation. Sadly, this tends to be the process by which regulatory oversight and technological problem solving catches up.

 

[brianl703]

Heck we have dams and nuclear reactors on profoundly geologically inappropriate areas all over the country.

Lake Anna in Virginia was built on a fault line and VEPCO knew it.

Another fine example from the people who could screw up a 2-car funeral. Hold muh beer...

 

[OVERKILL]

There’s always risk in all reservoirs of potential energy. Dams break, reactors leak

This is why it's standard to use the incident rate per MWh or GWh generated. Dams rarely break, we've had two significant nuclear incidents, globally, tritiated water getting out of a storage tank or pipe isn't a reactor leaking.

petrol stations burn,

Again, RATE of failure here though. How many petrol stations have burned in New York; heck, have burned in the US in the last three months? We've had refinery fires this year, but those are generally not located close to population centres like these batteries and petrol stations are.

coal plants release toxins,

Yes, and that's why scrubbers became mandatory and why jurisdictions like Ontario eliminated coal from their generating mix. It's a health hazard.

natural gas lines explode.

We are also trying to phase-out gas And some jurisdictions are putting restrictions or outright banning the installation of gas in new dwellings.

Many of these have happened more often than any of us realize because we generally accept it as necessary. Heck we have dams and nuclear reactors on profoundly geologically inappropriate areas all over the country.

Those two things somewhat contradict themselves. The former suggests we are OK with there being incidences as a result of the inherent risk of the latter, but I don't recall a seismic event causing a dam failure or nuclear incident in the US or Canada. Chernobyl basically single handedly killed the nuclear power industry for decades, despite it having nothing in common with Western designs and that had nothing to do with geology.

Also, as an aside, the grid has operated just fine for nary a century without lithium batteries. I struggle with the justification that we accept this new and apparent risk under the guise of necessity.

All reservoirs of potential energy need the correct implementation. Bad engineering will always risk the runaway escape of that energy. I really don’t think lithium battery technology is inherently unsafe for grid backup.

OK, so all of these fires have just been incorrect implementation and bad engineering by GE, Tesla, NextEra...etc? There's than hand waving I was talking about.

As I noted, I think batteries (of this type) make more sense for transportation than grid-storage. Grid storage doesn't need to be extremely energy dense, it needs to be reliable, long-lasting, safe and inexpensive. All things that are currently a struggle with lithium-based chemistry.

At worst, untested technology was pressed into service prematurely with poor implementation. Sadly, this tends to be the process by which regulatory oversight and technological problem solving catches up.

Tesla's Megapack offerings are the evolution of the Powerpack systems, which were introduced by 'ol Uncle Elon in 2015. That's 8 years. This is a 2nd generation product, and if we assume for the moment that Moss Landing and Victoria were the newer LFP design, that's potentially the 2nd generation of a 2nd generation design. I would hope that this doesn't classify as "untested", particularly when we consider the rest of Tesla's experience in this space.

If we need the equivalent of the NRC or CNSC for lithium batteries, they are already dead. The technology doesn't have the capability to carry that cost. That degree of regulation and oversight has made it extremely difficult to build anything in the nuclear industry, smothering it, and that's a source that's 20,000x more energy dense than fossil fuels with lifespans that are now being extended to 80 years.

 

[goingplacesanddoingstuff]

This is why it's standard to use the incident rate per MWh or GWh generated. Dams rarely break, we've had two significant nuclear incidents, globally, tritiated water getting out of a storage tank or pipe isn't a reactor leaking.

Again, RATE of failure here though. How many petrol stations have burned in New York; heck, have burned in the US in the last three months? We've had refinery fires this year, but those are generally not located close to population centres like these batteries and petrol stations are.

Yes, and that's why scrubbers became mandatory and why jurisdictions like Ontario eliminated coal from their generating mix. It's a health hazard.

We are also trying to phase-out gas And some jurisdictions are putting restrictions or outright banning the installation of gas in new dwellings.

Those two things somewhat contradict themselves. The former suggests we are OK with there being incidences as a result of the inherent risk of the latter, but I don't recall a seismic event causing a dam failure or nuclear incident in the US or Canada. Chernobyl basically single handedly killed the nuclear power industry for decades, despite it having nothing in common with Western designs and that had nothing to do with geology.

Also, as an aside, the grid has operated just fine for nary a century without lithium batteries. I struggle with the justification that we accept this new and apparent risk under the guise of necessity.

OK, so all of these fires have just been incorrect implementation and bad engineering by GE, Tesla, NextEra...etc? There's than hand waving I was talking about.

As I noted, I think batteries (of this type) make more sense for transportation than grid-storage. Grid storage doesn't need to be extremely energy dense, it needs to be reliable, long-lasting, safe and inexpensive. All things that are currently a struggle with lithium-based chemistry.

Tesla's Megapack offerings are the evolution of the Powerpack systems, which were introduced by 'ol Uncle Elon in 2015. That's 8 years. This is a 2nd generation product, and if we assume for the moment that Moss Landing and Victoria were the newer LFP design, that's potentially the 2nd generation of a 2nd generation design. I would hope that this doesn't classify as "untested", particularly when we consider the rest of Tesla's experience in this space.

If we need the equivalent of the NRC or CNSC for lithium batteries, they are already dead. The technology doesn't have the capability to carry that cost. That degree of regulation and oversight has made it extremely difficult to build anything in the nuclear industry, smothering it, and that's a source that's 20,000x more energy dense than fossil fuels with lifespans that are now being extended to 80 years.

Unfortunately I do not have more time to circle the drain. I no longer get the impression of good faith here, but rather one akin to point grabbing from an imaginary judges panel.

My position has been made clearly and concisely already. You’re certainly welcome to believe lithium battery technology will never be safe or fall within a risk envelope roughly comparable to other energy storage mechanisms which society generally accepts. I simply think there’s reason to believe these are teething issues likely brought about by putting political goals before engineering imperatives. We’ll see.

 

[andrew_j]

Happens , likely be rebuilt with better tech….

 

[OVERKILL]

Happens , likely be rebuilt with better tech….

The Vic battery, Tesla just replaced the damage container (with the same) and installed a firmware update. I haven't seen anything similar in any of the articles about the Moss Landing facility, but I'll keep looking to see if I can find some commentary from Tesla.

The Moss Landing situation is an interesting one, because the Tesla setup is the 3rd one at that site. Phase 1 of the other project had a fire, Phase 2 then also had a fire, so this is the third fire, but a different project, on the same site.

 

[Shannow]

Fire on car carrier ablaze off Dutch coast now less intense

AMSTERDAM -- The fire which has been burning on a car carrier off the Dutch coast has lessened in intensity and salvagers have been able to board the ship to secure stronger tow lines, authorities

newsinfo.inquirer.net

 

[PandaBear]

Every single energy storage mechanism has some risk. It’s storing energy, after all.

Some are safer than others. I wonder if these batteries used safer Li polymer or LiFePO4 technology. I doubt it.

Flow batteries have been mentioned. To my knowledge there have been no successful commercial flow battery companies. For whatever reason, it’s just too hard to make a profit on them as of yet.

Pumped hydro only works where you can pump water into a giant reservoir with greater head than the start. That doesn’t work in many places and carries all the same risks as dams. New York blessed with the geography to already be one of the most hydro-heavy states, but it’s not an infinitely scalable solution. There’s only so much land you can flood.

Another option is inertial flywheel batteries, where a magnetically levitated heavy disk spins at insane rpm. You can imagine the risks there. Yet another could be chemical storage, using ammonia. Again, you can imagine the risks there too.

No free lunch in physics.

Honestly, my opinion only:

The biggest "energy storage" we can use that's safe is ice. If you can afford the space keep a heat pump coil in there and freeze water when electricity price is low, then melt ice when the electricity price is high. Use this for AC, for refrigerator, etc.

It would take space, and some metal cost, but it is affordable to build and it is absolutely safe.

Scale that to every home in Arizona and we solved our duck curve problem.

 

[Shannow]

Every single energy storage mechanism has some risk. It’s storing energy, after all.

Some are safer than others. I wonder if these batteries used safer Li polymer or LiFePO4 technology. I doubt it.

Flow batteries have been mentioned. To my knowledge there have been no successful commercial flow battery companies. For whatever reason, it’s just too hard to make a profit on them as of yet.

Pumped hydro only works where you can pump water into a giant reservoir with greater head than the start. That doesn’t work in many places and carries all the same risks as dams. New York blessed with the geography to already be one of the most hydro-heavy states, but it’s not an infinitely scalable solution. There’s only so much land you can flood.

Another option is inertial flywheel batteries, where a magnetically levitated heavy disk spins at insane rpm. You can imagine the risks there. Yet another could be chemical storage, using ammonia. Again, you can imagine the risks there too.

No free lunch in physics.

Agreed, but batteries are a complete package...they have the "fuel" and "oxidizer" in one neat package, that won't go out until it burns itself out...can't use the fire triangle to mitigate it.

So all they can do is cool it...an EV is 30,000l of water, versus 1,000 for a gasser...and that water goes...well wherever it goes.

We've already had fire fighters in Oz forced into workers compensation retirement, due to cobalt poisoning.

Pumped hydro, with Australian dam safety laws is essneitally no risk...

 

[spackard]

I was looking at Ni-H2 battery technology today, mainly because a variant is shipped with the 2023 Toyota Crown Platinum. Fast discharge, slow charge, not very sensitive to temperature, 1/2 as energy dense as Li-ion, relatively safe, 35,000 cycles to 85% capacity. Used on satellites with a 15 year min lifetime.
Disadvantages: cost and it self-discharges 10% a day.

Toyota’s is a different design, they say.

Separately, there’s a startup company claiming to have brought the cost to parity with Li-ion; they’re aiming for the grid-scale market.

Correcting my earlier post - Toyotas Crown is using NiMH, not Ni-H2. Apparently a translation error in a Japanese press release and I didn’t read the source long enough.

 

[Skippy722]

I have to say it. There is only one way forward, and it does not include big fans or 93 million square miles of black panels.

 

[oil pan 4]

Correcting my earlier post - Toyotas Crown is using NiMH, not Ni-H2. Apparently a translation error in a Japanese press release and I didn’t read the source long enough.

Sounds acceptable for a hybrid daily driver.

 

[alarmguy]

View attachment 170478

Uh oh... severe thunderstorm warning with hail up to 2 inches in diameter

 

[oil pan 4]

This is why it's standard to use the incident rate per MWh or GWh generated. Dams rarely break, we've had two significant nuclear incidents, globally, tritiated water getting out of a storage tank or pipe isn't a reactor leaking.

Again, RATE of failure here though. How many petrol stations have burned in New York; heck, have burned in the US in the last three months? We've had refinery fires this year, but those are generally not located close to population centres like these batteries and petrol stations are.

Yes, and that's why scrubbers became mandatory and why jurisdictions like Ontario eliminated coal from their generating mix. It's a health hazard.

We are also trying to phase-out gas And some jurisdictions are putting restrictions or outright banning the installation of gas in new dwellings.

Those two things somewhat contradict themselves. The former suggests we are OK with there being incidences as a result of the inherent risk of the latter, but I don't recall a seismic event causing a dam failure or nuclear incident in the US or Canada. Chernobyl basically single handedly killed the nuclear power industry for decades, despite it having nothing in common with Western designs and that had nothing to do with geology.

Also, as an aside, the grid has operated just fine for nary a century without lithium batteries. I struggle with the justification that we accept this new and apparent risk under the guise of necessity.

OK, so all of these fires have just been incorrect implementation and bad engineering by GE, Tesla, NextEra...etc? There's than hand waving I was talking about.

As I noted, I think batteries (of this type) make more sense for transportation than grid-storage. Grid storage doesn't need to be extremely energy dense, it needs to be reliable, long-lasting, safe and inexpensive. All things that are currently a struggle with lithium-based chemistry.

Tesla's Megapack offerings are the evolution of the Powerpack systems, which were introduced by 'ol Uncle Elon in 2015. That's 8 years. This is a 2nd generation product, and if we assume for the moment that Moss Landing and Victoria were the newer LFP design, that's potentially the 2nd generation of a 2nd generation design. I would hope that this doesn't classify as "untested", particularly when we consider the rest of Tesla's experience in this space.

If we need the equivalent of the NRC or CNSC for lithium batteries, they are already dead. The technology doesn't have the capability to carry that cost. That degree of regulation and oversight has made it extremely difficult to build anything in the nuclear industry, smothering it, and that's a source that's 20,000x more energy dense than fossil fuels with lifespans that are now being extended to 80 years.

Chernobyl was a shtty design displaying the height of commie huberis.
The design flaws are but not limited to:
No containment dome.
Reactors contain graphite, which slowly becomes carbon 14 with use which is highly radioactive and it burns.
Chernobyl didn't have a positive void coefficient, it had a suicidal void coefficient.
The control rods moved too slowly.
Those reactors are boiling water and had a very positive void coefficient...
So the reaction ran away and started boiling water in the core, in the absence of liquid water thermal neutrons became high energy neutrons which means all the natural uranium in the reactor is now fissile, which made the reaction even more out of control and the rest is history.

 

[OVERKILL]

Chernobyl was a shtty design displaying the height of commie huberis.
The design flaws are but not limited to:
No containment dome.
Reactors contain graphite, which slowly becomes carbon 14 with use which is highly radioactive and it burns.
Chernobyl didn't have a positive void coefficient, it had a suicidal void coefficient.
The control rods moved too slowly.
Those reactors are boiling water and had a very positive void coefficient...
So the reaction ran away and started boiling water in the core, in the absence of liquid water thermal neutrons became high energy neutrons which means all the natural uranium in the reactor is now fissile, which made the reaction even more out of control and the rest is history.

Yes, I've written about Chornobyl in the past on here.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission did a fantastic breakdown of the series of events, it's a bit of a dry read, but worth it if somebody is interested in how the whole situation transpired.

But yeah, the cliff notes are, basically, as you described:
- RBMK units were graphite moderated BWR's with no containment, just basically the slab over the top of the core with the perforations for the control rods
- Far more control rods than permitted were removed from the core
- RBMK core is MASSIVE, which means it operates like a whole pile of small reactors, with each of these "zones" having to be monitored/controlled

- Fission started to increase at the bottom of the zones, was not detectable in reactor power level from control room
- Operator, impatient, went against protocol, pulled almost all of the control rods out
- Boiling water in the bottom of the unit finally overcame the xenon poisoning, the whole core flash-boiled, driving reactor power far beyond the design basis
- This ruptured the tubes
- Hydrogen built-up and exploded, removing the lid and putting a hole in the top of the unit
- The graphite caught fire, radioactive particulate was then carried in the smoke from the burning exposed core
- Fuel melt (corium) melted through the bottom of the unit and settled in the water below it

The RBMK was a bizarre, but uniquely Soviet design. Its main purpose and claim to fame was high power output at very low cost. The need for a true containment structure was shrugged off as being unnecessarily expensive. Many in government preferred the design because it was Soviet, while the VVER design, which was a PWR, was chided as being a "Western" design, and so there was opposition to it.

Early on they thought the units could be run on NU, however, they proved to be wildly unstable, so very low enriched fuel was used. This also proved to be unstable as the fuel aged, controls were being worn out constantly chasing the unit. Enrichment was increased further. After the events at Chornobyl, all units were retrofit with some form of secondary containment and a slightly higher enrichment level still for the fuel was implemented to reduce risk further.

 

[oil pan 4]

Yeah they added containment, enriched the uranium more and modified reactors to greatly reduce void coefficient as they were not long going to attempt to run natural uranium.

I like to remind the nuke haters that every reactor that has ever blown up was a BWR. The easy solution to their fear of reactors blowing up is don't build BWRs. But I don't think they are capable of understanding the difference. They see them as "nuke bad, no build em any".

 

[OVERKILL]

Yeah they added containment, enriched the uranium more and modified reactors to greatly reduce void coefficient as they were not long going to attempt to run natural uranium.

Yeah, of course NU has a lower fuel cost, but nuclear fuel is so cheap anyway, didn't really make much sense when you were compromising safety. Most people also don't know that Chornobyl continued to operate after the meltdown until into the early 2000's.

I like to remind the nuke haters that every reactor that has ever blown up was a BWR. The easy solution to their fear of reactors blowing up is don't build BWRs. Bu I don't think they are capable of understanding

That's an interesting (and amusing) point. There have been other reactor incidents, such as:
- Windscale was a graphite pile fire, but that was a weapons program reactor.
- TMI was a PWR, but of course it only bricked itself, it didn't explode

But yeah, both Chornobyl and Fukushima were boiling water reactors, though their designs obviously differed significantly. James Krellenstein has a Decouple Podcast episode on some nuclear history and I know he's not super excited about the BWRX-300 for some quite valid reasons. I've not listened to it yet, but if you'd like me to link it, I'd be more than happy to.

 

[loneryder]

Need to define tangible good benefits.

Hybrid cars, even with a more complex powertrain, yield far better MPGs in many cases.

Much of this is kind of like the pallet expander that my 10yo needed to have. Turn it once in the am, once in the pm. It hurts when turned. It’s slow. It sucks. It’s cumbersome. But imagine the outcome when done.

Many things will flop on the way. Fortunes made and lost, etc.

Some of it will be for the better when controlled, managed, and implemented consistently. When industry brings the cost down. Other stuff is a pipe dream and will always be.

What is a pallet expander?

 

[ARCOgraphite]

Great. Our town just approved a large solar farm 3 miles from my house. It was promoted by UNITIL. I am guessing the State (and Federal) Govt will get involved in the approval process also.

We live in a pristine, Colonial era town pretty much free of urban creep. Other than the bad curbside appeal, and suspect reliability with our nasty, long winter weather, I hadn't thought of the battery hazard.

Searching "gas masks" ...

 

[JHZR2]

What is a pallet expander?

It widens the palate in one’s mouth.