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Any time you have hundreds of megawatts of energy stored in a small area there is risk. This includes steam boilers, nuclear reactors, batteries, dams, etc. No getting away from that. Not saying that some battery chemistry might not be easier to manage than others.
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This is an inherent problem with storing power. There's a massive battery in Missouri known as the Taum Sauk hydroelectric dam. During the night, they pump water up the hill into the upper reservoir, and in the day, they let the water run downhill through turbines to generate electricity. In 2005, the wall of the upper reservoir failed.
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Well we're probably going to see flow batteries take over in fixed position arrays which will mitigate the risk of fire pretty substantially, being low density and liquid. It's challenging though not impossible to light salt water on fire.
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> Well we're probably going to see flow batteries take over

Its unlikley, they are a massive pain to manage compared to lithium, expensive and have poor round trip efficiency. Oh and terrible energy density.

I'm not saying its impossible, but I'd be surprised.

I think the biggest two factors that play against them is that they round trip efficiency is something like 70-80% compared to 90%+. but the real pain in the arse is the charge managment. From what I understand, you need to charge them to full, and then discharge them fully. I don't believe that you can charge from halfway.

Most power markets work in 30miunute chunks, so managing charging/discharging would be really hard.

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I thought the prospects for flow batteries were becoming fairly dire due to the decline in cost of Li-ion cells.

LFP promises better fire behavior than older Li-ion technologies, I think.

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>> LFP promises better fire behavior than older Li-ion technologies, I think.

LFP's thermal runaway threshold is higher than other lithium ion battery types, but once TR starts, LFP generates more hydrogen gas that can explode if not air-vented out fast enough.

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I suspect for extremely large batteries or seasonal shifting (summer->winter) flow batteries will still have a place, but I could be wrong.
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Thermal batteries make more sense for that, but they need to be super-cheap. One possibility:

https://austinvernon.site/blog/standardthermal.html

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Flow batteries aren't any good for seasonal shifting; the capex per kWh-capacity is much too high. Granted, ordinary batteries aren't good for that either.
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"Ferb, I know what we're gonna do today"
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The reports I read said this was an older installation - was that one setup in the same way as a modern plant would be done? That is to say - was there anything unique about this failure scenario?

The pictures I saw was that the Moss batteries were located inside a building. My mental image of battery storage is freight-sized containers offset from each other - presumably to minimize fire risk. Or was this plant a common dense configuration that is done in areas where they are heavily space constrained?

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The moss landing project has been expanded through several iterations. It started construction back in 2019 which is near ancient in terms of how fast the BESS industry has evolved.

Utilizing NMC cells which were popular at the time instead of the more stable LFP variety making up the vast majority of storage projects today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moss_Landing_Power_Plant#Batte...

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LG Energy Solution supplied the lithium-ion battery racks/modules (TR1300 using LG JH4 NMC cells) for Vistra’s initial 300 MW/1,200 MWh Moss Landing system; Fluence was the system integrator/GC.
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People don’t talk enough about the risk of fire. The crazy thing is when a battery installation catches fire they don’t actually fight the fire. They just have to let it burn out. The resulting environmental damage is terrible.

This happened recently in the Central Valley. I can’t remember the name of the battery site but it was a huge one, and literally right next door to one of the largest Driscolls strawberry farms, on which black lithium smoke settled all over , over the course of several days/weeks in the middle of the summer.

Edit: maybe we are talking about the same fire? https://x.com/TheKevinDalton/status/1880277672393412848

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Correct, it wasn't the Central Valley, it was Moss Landing.

Though there were lots of fears about the fire, the biggest risk was that the battery was destroyed. There has been ongoing soil testing and not much found, in this worst case situation of a battery fire.

It is definitely fueling fears, however! A few highly motivated individuals put up big hand painted signs in their neighborhoods decrying the evils of batteries, and the terrible fires they cause. It's enough fear mongering that visitors to popular beaches 20 miles upwind, were imagining metallic tastes in the air months afterwards.

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Did they test the air or just the soil? You mentioned they imagined the taste of the air but didn’t mention if they actually tested the air. And who tests it?
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The county put up testing results and methods here:

https://www.readymontereycounty.org/emergency/2025-moss-land...

As with all testing of this sort that I've ever seen, third parties do the testing and analysis.

I mention the air as an example of fear getting out waaaaaay in front of any risks. Testing the air would be pointless, 20 miles upwind. The metallic taste was either from other sources or psychosomatic.

The health risks of battery fires have been mostly evaluated in the context of fire fighting, where, air metals are a concern, but only in confined spaces. Nickel is the primary concern there. After reading about these, my only fears were for the workers for nickel production.

I am very very concerned about air quality, but the real risk there is from car traffic, specifically the tire microplastics and brake dust. There are big and measurable health effects from that, where even reducing traffic near schools by 10% could actually impact lives. However because people drive cars and are used to the bad health effects, nobody is scared of the negative health from cars. Instead the human mind focuses on new things because they are new, not because of the relative risk. For decades there were natural gas smokestacks pouring exhaust over the strawberry fields, the batteries that replaced them (to make use of the big power lines) are a huge improvement to human health, even with the fire.

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