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.

  • oyo@lemm.eeEnglish
    371·
    19 hours ago

    This is a shitty Texas-based company cutting corners, who also had fires in 2021 and 2022. There are plenty of battery storage facilities operating safely.

    • Yggstyle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      14 hours ago

      As someone living in Texas presently: you could have saved yourself a full sentence:

      This is a shitty Texas-based company cutting corners…

      to

      Texas company

      or honestly:

      Texas

      Would be sufficient. Any Texan that doesn’t own x texas-based-company is tired of that company’s bullshit. It’s one of the few things natives and transplants agree on.

      This PSA brought to you by the makers of: y’all, you all, and all y’all.

    • Boomkop3@reddthat.comEnglish
      5·
      18 hours ago

      You’re right, but I think less dense but safer and more sustainable options are the better choice for this

      • scratchee@feddit.ukEnglish
        11·
        17 hours ago

        We can all agree on that, Clearly li-ion is a bad choice for static use cases.

        But right now it’s the cheapest option, and it looks likely that will stay true for quite a while unfortunately.

          • humanspiralEnglish
            1·
            10 hours ago

            LIthium Iron Phosphate is cheapest relatively dense battery type. Sodium ion will be if lithium get expensive.

            • Boomkop3@reddthat.comEnglish
              1·
              35 minutes ago

              You can draw an arbitrary line of density you find good enough. But with how much space us wasted in some countries, that line should vary a bit place to place

          • scratchee@feddit.ukEnglish
            11·
            16 hours ago

            Weirdly it’s not, except maybe gravity batteries where nice reservoirs happen to exist already. It should be but it’s not right now.

            Li-ion has economy of scale right now. I do think molten metal etc will overtake eventually, but they’re currently playing catchup and li-ion has dropped in price so much over time that it’s surprisingly cheap even where it should make no sense.

            • corsicanguppyEnglish
              1·
              5 hours ago

              gravity batteries where nice reservoirs happen to exist already

              soooo, dams?

              • scratchee@feddit.ukEnglish
                1·
                5 hours ago

                Dams are a normally a power supply rather than a battery. I was more thinking pumped storage hydro. Which is usually done where theres 2 lakes next to each other at very different heights, so you can “store” power by pumping water up and release by pumping back down.