Vistra Corp's 3000-megawatt Moss Landing energy storage facility went up in flames on Thursday, in a blaze that is expected to remain contained to the building. "There are no active fire suppression efforts going on, as the best approach, according to fire staff, is to allow the building and batteries to burn," according to a Monterey Sheriff official. Both Vistra and the county official said that all site personnel had been evacuated and no injuries were reported.

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

  • A_A@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    17 hours ago

    … 3000-megawatt Moss Landing energy storage …

    “megawatt” is not a quantity of energy.
    Also, are those battery fires more frequent // important than petrol ones ?

    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
      1·
      2 hours ago

      Also, are those battery fires more frequent // important than petrol ones ?

      Petrol fires use oxygen from the air. They can be extinguished by removing the oxygen: covering it in firefighting foam, or displacing it with CO2, for example.

      Batteries contain both their fuel and their oxidizer together in one case. You can’t remove the oxygen. So long as they are hot enough, they keep burning, even if they are underwater. The only way to extinguish them is to remove the heat. Which is practically impossible.

    • Atelopus-zeteki@fedia.io
      7·
      16 hours ago

      No. And the petrol fires are many and ongoing in everyone’s cars. Also large petrol fires are not always reported in the US. I can think of one specific instance that tho’ a major fire, producing a wall of smoke, yet I could only find one news report of it’s existence.

      • A_A@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        11 hours ago

        Agreed, yet, you know that, since this is a new technology in development, it is more subject to accidents. What’s more is that media are more inclined to report any even small accidents about it. So, finally, information and news here are not necessarily representative of the whole reality.

        Thanks anyway for this striking breaking news i didn’t know about 😌

          • FaceDeer@fedia.io
            10·
            16 hours ago

            Yes, and? Measuring an energy storage facility in terms of power is not a good idea.

            If you asked someone how big a water tank was and they said “five liters per second”, would that be useful?

            • Bad_Engineering@fedia.io
              4·
              15 hours ago

              It would be very useful if you were asking the right question. The storage facility from the article has a 750 MW storage capacity (energy) which it can deliver at a max output (power) of 3000 MW/hr Power plant and storage facility capacities are measured in MW since what they are intended to do is supply power at a steady rate. Who cares if you can store a billion TW of power if you can only output it at 5mW/h. It does no good if you can’t get it out. Supply is what we really care about here.

              • xionzui@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                4·
                11 hours ago

                True to your name, you’re using those backwards. You’re thinking of MW hours per hour, or just MW. Put differently, MW is a rate, MWh is a quantity.