Moss Landing Battery Fire 1

[TugboatEng]

https://www.ksbw.com/article/highway-1-reopened-near-moss-landing-shelter-in-place-lifted/41302918

The extent of the damage isn't known yet, if it's isolated to a few cells maybe this doesn't qualify as a "disaster". Maybe it's just a hiccup.

But, this facility is located smack dab in the middle of agriculture land as well as a very special slough. My understanding is that these battery fires put out a lot of acid gasses including hydrogen fluoride which can contaminate surfaces. I'll be curious to see if there is any testing of crops for hazardous substances. I doubt there will be.

This isn't the first battery fire at this facility.

 

[itsmoked]

I was in Watsonville today and a guy asked me if I'd heard about the battery fire at Moss Landing just a couple of miles down the road, the highway closed. I wasn't really surprised though. They drive those batteries pretty hard so it's not difficult to have a connection somewhere start heating up in a vicious feedback loop.

Sadly they will take the whole system down and ponder it for months and months. Ridiculous! Patch it together modding what engineers think needs modding. Put cameras on it and proceed. Run the dang system like Space X instead of some political BS tool. They do crap like have the fire department approve the engineering changes. Absurd!

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

And that will more than likely include more isolators which we have to see if they started the fire in the first place.

 

[dik]

Couldn't they use an infrared camera to monitor the connections?

So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[itsmoked]

Yes! Infrared would work and there are also inexpensive non-contact thermocouples. These new systems/batteries should have had a considerable amount of instrumentation on them, more than they would in a couple of years. I doubt any of these fires would occur if they were temp instrumented adequately. These fires all take some finite time to bake up to an obviously high temperature before lighting off.

The Moss Landing BESS (Battery Energy Storage System) is singularly credited with California having avoided any black-outs during the the recent heat wave. Now it will probably be off-line till next year.

I'd autopsy the dead unit. Figure out the likely seat of the fire and instrument it in all the batteries using something off-the-self and continue running the rest.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[TugboatEng]

I believe there are two units on the facility, one is operated by vistra and the other PGE and Tesla. This most fire was in the Tesla unit.

Funny to bring up instrumentation. The Vista unit recently had its emergency cooling circuit deployed because a smoke sensor was programmed to be too sensitive. It was triggered by an overheating bearing in a fan. To add insult to injury, when the cooling system deployed many pipe fittings and couplings failed and dumped water into places it wasn't supposed to be.

 

[TugboatEng]

This has a photo that makes it appear only a single battery pack caught fire. That's good.

https://electrek.co/2022/09/20/tesla-megapack-caught-fire-giant-battery-project/amp/

We probably won't here much investigation wise. Being a power plant they'll claim critical infrastructure and get the report classified.

 

[FacEngrPE]

Perhaps this event will not be published, but the event at the McMicken site in Surprise, Ariz. has been published
thread815-476108
NERC Report
APS investigation and report
This event discussed previously was precipitated by thermal runaway. This time the responders left the fire to burn itself out, which resulted no injuries. The McMicken event battery house suffered an explosive flashover when the door was opened resulting in both injuries, and structural damage, with parts ejected.

 

[TugboatEng]

At the Moss Landing facility, Vistra's batteries are enclosed in buildings while Tesla's packs are outdoors.

 

[FacEngrPE]

Opinion The Vistra battery buildings, and the Tesla battery containers look like they have a similar level of robustness, or lack thereof. Segregating of battery racks into "units" that are sufficiently separated to confine a fire to a unit is a reasonable approach to limiting damage. Then it becomes an economic question
(frequency of loss)*(value of loss)*(risk tolerance)

 

[itsmoked]

In-a-building = Bad idea.

Spaced open air units = great idea!

They could take a page from propane tank filling facilities where fireproof dividers are strategically placed. That way flames and IR can't impinge on the neighboring units.

They could also stop with the much more volatile LiIon nonsense! Go with LFP. You have a couple of million LiIon batteries in a utility BESS. It's impossible to not have one turn into a heater occasionally.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[hokie66]

And LFP uses no cobalt, I think. That's got to be big.

 

[itsmoked]

It is indeed! Besides the environmental negative it's expensive.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

With the energy involved they would be better treating it as a explosive magazine.

Li-ion is completely the wrong chemistry for the role.

And has been for over 5 years.

It's not expensive when you factor 6000 cycles instead of 3000 li-ion. But 6k cycles is way over the MBA's bonus cycle so not an option

 

[TugboatEng]

Knowing California they probably banned the plastic needed to make the membrane for LFP. They're going after GoreTex right now.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

I wouldn;t have thought Gortex would have been much use there anyway. It was invented in Scotland for our weather to drive the moisture through.

Its particularly crap and useless away from that environmental zone so much so the UK military prevent it being taken to the middle east because it causes more issues than it solves.

Even in the Baltics I wear in in Autumn and spring but never in Winter and Summer because it really is not fit for intended use. CAL I can't see it being of use in any season.

 

[TugboatEng]

Gore makes semipermeable industrial membranes, not just clothing.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

That's all the clothing is.

They just adjust the size of the holes depending on the use.

What most none Scottish don't realise is the way to rejuvenate a gortex jacket is to stick it in the tumble dryer which cause all the holes to return back to New state.

It's of a joke internally in Scotland.

 

[EdStainless]

A similar Tesla battery fire in Australia took out four banks before it burned out.
Better separation and some barriers would go a long way in helping minimize damage.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed

 

[enginesrus]

Just more eco friendly Li battery's. No nasty pollutants there, just clean air burning off them? So what are they going to need to do surround the whole battery case with a catalytic converter system?