Fire Chief Joel Mendoza of the North County Fire District said at this point, most of the fire had gone out. A water-based mitigation system did not work as designed, Vistra's senior director of community affairs Brad Watson said at the conference. Earlier in the day, a Monterey Sheriff official had said there were no active fire suppression efforts going on, "as the best approach, according to fire staff, is to allow the building and batteries to burn."

Yeah, I think massive chemical batteries for storing excess electricity to facilitate a contrived green energy market is a bad idea.

  • swarmingnarwhal@lemmy.worldEnglish
    68·
    2 days ago

    Build a tower, use excess power to lift heavy weights. Drop them when you need electricity to spin generators

      • Yggstyle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        15 hours ago

        Adam Something is awesome. I genuinely wish I could see his face as he reads through the next tech bro’s idea for pods.

        Practical Engineering is a great one for anyone curious about how things work.

    • WraithGear@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      2 days ago

      Weight lifting is slightly less efficient due to friction and heat generated by pully system, and the vast amount of weight and space needed may limit available storage possibility and scalability. But its simple, and safer.

      • Badabinski@kbin.earth
        5·
        2 days ago

        We lack the materials and engineering necessary to make lifted weight storage systems enter the order of magnitude of energy storage needed to compete with batteries, let alone pumped hydro. It’s just really, really hard to compete with literal megatons of water pumped up a 500 meter slope.

        I believe that the plant in question was using something besides Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries. This press release mentions LG JH4 which are deffo not LiFePO4. LiFePO4 batteries are far, far safer than other Lithium chemistries, and are now the norm for BESS (not cars tho, since they have lower energy density but better a better lifetime than NMC/NCA). This fire would not have happened with a BESS using LiFePO4 batteries.

        Now that batteries with aqueous sodium-ion chemistries are becoming available, we should begin transitioning pre-LiFePO4 sites to those wholesale. Aqueous sodium-ion batteries should be even safer than LiFePO4, and while they have kinda shit energy density, they’re still fine for grid storage.

        EDIT: correction, LiFePO4 batteries can run away, but they are incapable of autoignition.

        • Yggstyle@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          15 hours ago

          It’s important to remember that engineers and scientists are having to fight with 3-4 competing forces: efficiency, density, safety, cost. Even if we have a promising idea it just may not yet be technologically feasible to make the switch over yet. LiFePO4 definitely hits the Goldilocks zone where it gives up some density / weight / charge speed (if I recall) for longevity and overall safety. I think they’ve found a solid niche in home storage for sure. I personally prefer those cells over lithium ion for that reason… and honestly was using lead acid prior to that simply because lithium ion came with too many risks.

        • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          4·
          2 days ago

          LiFePO4 batteries are safer and harder to ignite, but they can still go into thermal runaway and can burn. If a fire started in a battery that big, it would still spread and it wouldn’t be practical to extinguish it.

          • Badabinski@kbin.earth
            3·
            2 days ago

            You’re correct that they can enter thermal runaway, they just can’t autoignite. I really suspect that if this site has been using LiFePO4 cells instead of NMC, it wouldn’t have gone up like it did. 3000 MWh of NMC cells sounds absolutely bugnuts crazy to me.