Days before President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office and took actions to stall the transition to clean energy, a disaster unfolded on the other side of the country that may have an outsize effect on the pace of the transition.
A fire broke out last Thursday at the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California, one of the largest battery energy storage systems in the world. The fire raged through the weekend, forcing local officials to evacuate nearby homes and close roads.
Battery storage is an essential part of the transition away from fossil fuels. It works in tandem with solar and wind power to provide electricity during periods when the renewable resources aren’t available. But lithium-ion batteries, the most common technology used in storage systems, are flammable. And if they catch fire, it can be difficult to extinguish.
Last week’s fire is the latest and largest of several at the Moss Landing site in recent years, and I expect that it will become the main example opponents of carbon-free electricity use to try to stop battery development in other places.
Moss Landing uses NMC batteries instead of LiFePO4. NMC lithium batteries are more energy dense (they’re often used in long range EVs), but they can also produce hydrogen and can autoignite if they go into thermal runaway. LiFePO4 batteries cannot autoignite and can’t produce hydrogen. They last longer, and the reduced density is worth it for the safety benefits, which is why more recent grid storage setups use them and not NMC. A BESS using the right chemistry could not have gone up in flames like this.