11 ms·

300 Megawatt Tesla battery catches fire

82 points by Thorentis 5y ago

chroem- 5y ago
> Residents and motorists will notice smoke in the area ... There is currently no threat to the community That's certainly a bold statement. Conventional Li-Ion chemistries are quite toxic.
- Retric 5y ago
  That’s the all clear after an alert for the local area asking people to stay indoors to avoid toxic smoke, so presumably things where worse and have now improved. Concentration makes the poison and the threshold for noticing smoke is very low. Assuming significant distance from a one off event this could be noticeable but effectively harmless right now.
  - chroem- 5y ago
    The 450 MWh plant is composed out of 210 battery units [1], so a little over 2 MWh just went up in smoke. Sources say that commercial chemistries emit between 20 and 200mg of hydrogen fluoride gas per watt hour. [2] At 100mg/Wh, the pack would have released a fifth of a metric ton of hydrogen fluoride gas onto the neighboring roadway over the course of the fire. You be the judge whether or not that warrants precautions. Edit: a second pack is on fire, so we're approaching half a metric ton of HF gas now [1] https://victorianbigbattery.com.au/ https://victorianbigbattery.com.au/ [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-09784-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-09784-z
    - Retric 5y ago
      Not would have, could have released up to 200mg/Wh depending on chemistry, but nothing says 100% of the battery burned. Anyway, hydrogen fluoride is nasty but well studied. The 5 minute LC 50 for rats was 5120mg/m3 and at 6 hours of exposure 156mg/m3 is lethal for rats. It demonstrates a rapid fall off in toxicity rather than direct bioaccumulation because the damage is from acidification of water in the lungs. https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/16/077/16077051.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... Humans exposed to 23mg/m3 notice lung irritation, but short term exposure is considered low risk. By comparison even a short distance from a 2 day fire in 5km/h winds your quickly talking sub 0.1mg/m3. It’s still toxic just not acutely dangerous from lung acidification.
    - canadianfella 5y ago
      > You be the judge whether or not that warrants precautions. You seem to want to say something. What is your judgement?
    - bjowen 5y ago
      .. assuming that the laptop batteries tested in the paper are a suitable comparison. Tesla’s cells are at least similar LFP chemistry these days, and the documentation [0] lists the same gases in the case of a fire. But this is not an enclosed space - it’s a fenced-off high voltage switchyard in a paddock more than a kilometre from the nearest dwelling, and this battery hasn’t instantaneously emitted all its contents all at once. It’s also quite a windy and rainy week, which affects how serious a practical hazard this is. The emergency services have notified [1] people within 10km to keep the windows closed nevertheless. Many more of good people of Geelong have a gigantic oil refinery on their doorstep[2], which is a far greater concern if you want to get exercised about HF-related accidents[3]. [0] https://www.gnr8nrg.com.au/images/resources/batteries/tesla/lithium-ion-battery-emergency-response-guide.pdf https://www.gnr8nrg.com.au/images/resources/batteries/tesla/... [1] https://www.emergency.vic.gov.au/respond/#!/warning/17269/moreinfo https://www.emergency.vic.gov.au/respond/#!/warning/17269/mo... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Shell+Refinery+Corio,+Corio+VIC+3214/@-38.0766628,144.3825149 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Shell+Refinery+Corio,+Cori... [3] https://www.csb.gov/philadelphia-energy-solutions-pes-refinery-fire-and-explosions-/ https://www.csb.gov/philadelphia-energy-solutions-pes-refine...
  - bjowen 5y ago
    There’s almost no population within a kilometre of the site - it’s on the absolute rural edge of a city the size of Reno or Aachen, in a switchyard on the main power transmission lines. There’s maybe a handful of people and a kangaroo that’d be in harm’s way, and it’s been a cold and windy week - they’d probably not mind having the windows closed.
Forge36 5y ago
How long did it last? Some digging in the history suggests just two days?
- stirlo 5y ago
  It's only been ~27 hours since it started. Still burning. https://www.emergency.vic.gov.au/respond/#!/incident/ESTA:210716521 https://www.emergency.vic.gov.au/respond/#!/incident/ESTA:21...
- mlindner 5y ago
  Battery fires last a long time as they smolder for a long time so you need someone to watch them so they don't re-ignite. They need to be kept cool.
unicornporn 5y ago
A friend of mine living in an apartment complex with parking facilities at basement level recently told me that firefighters having inspected the area had come to the conclusion that they will make no attempts to go down and put out a fire if there are EVs parked. There will be fire until there is nothing more to burn, house still standing or not. Seeing a car battery burn kind of makes me understand why.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  That's just a bad fire department. There are procedures to put out lithium-ion fires that aren't just "let it burn". It's not chlorine trifluoride.
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    Get the Roads Dept to back up their largest dump truck and drop a load of sand on it.
    - elihu 5y ago
      I'm not sure if that would do anything much to help; it might just trap the heat in. I think the standard recommendation for Teslas is to just dump water on it so that the extra heat energy can be conducted away and redirected in a relatively harmless way into conversion of water into steam.
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    I have been told the same by a firefighter in my town. They won't touch EV fires.
    - mlindner 5y ago
      Who's educating these firefighters? It sounds like they're not reading the info actually about EVs and instead believing conspiracy theories.
Mengkudulangsat 5y ago
Well, that's a damning rebuke to grid-scale battery storage. Is it wise to have this time bomb (e.g. Tesla powerwall) inside every house?
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  https://www.greenamerica.org/natural-gas-pipeline-and-infrastructure-explosions-nationwide https://www.greenamerica.org/natural-gas-pipeline-and-infras... (Natural Gas Pipeline and Infrastructure Explosions Nationwide)
  - gamblor956 5y ago
    What's your point? That out of the tens of millions of homes, residential, and commercial buildings that receive natural gas just in the U.S. alone, there were only 11 explosions over the course of 2 years? There are significantly fewer home-scale or business-scale battery installations. The fact that there have already been so many issues with them is concerning, since they're much harder to put out than other fires. Yes, there will be new safety procedures developed to account for these new risks. But they aren't in place yet and they won't be if Tesla fans ignore reality and pretend like nothing's wrong.
    - manicdee 5y ago
      “So many issues” compared to what? You are comparing an industrial site fire to residential fires. They are not comparable. Best wait for the incident investigation before declaring batteries dangerous and demanding they be banned.
      - gamblor956 5y ago
        Best wait for the incident investigation before declaring batteries dangerous and demanding they be banned. I did not suggest that lithium batteries be banned (that was all you), I suggested that additional safety mechanisms would be needed to control the risk of spontaneous, uncontrollable combustion, which especially seems to be a risk with Tesla battery installations, seeing as how it has happened at every one of Tesla's Australian battery installations to date.
BluSyn 5y ago
The root cause will be great of great interest; I hope we get to find out publicly. These battery systems are still new, but even so they have many layers of safety systems designed to prevent thermal runaway.
- ajross 5y ago
  Well, maybe. But this application isn't safety-critical. Power infrastructure is fenced off, remote, and generally operated without personnel. Certainly you don't want to deploy stuff that's going to spontaneously combust for reliability and economic reasons. But it's not a car.
  - jdavis703 5y ago
    I hear people talking about replacing peaker plants with batteries. Peaker plants are usually not at all remote, and could pose a threat to nearby buildings.
    - simondotau 5y ago
      You don't have to replace the plant in the same location. Battery "peaker" plants can be remote, especially as there's limited need for on-site staff.
      - jdavis703 5y ago
        I’m not a grid expert so I could be wrong, but don’t they place the peaker plants in urban areas to avoid “congestion” on long distance transmission lines during peak demand?
    - mlindner 5y ago
      Peaker plants are burning possibly explosive chemicals. If you can build a peaker plant safely in a certain location, you can put a battery there as well. It'll be safer than a gas or diesel fired peaker plant.
stirlo 5y ago
Live incident status from the Victorian Government Emergency portal: https://www.emergency.vic.gov.au/respond/#!/incident/ESTA:210716521 https://www.emergency.vic.gov.au/respond/#!/incident/ESTA:21... 24 Hours after the fire started it is still listed as "Not Yet Under Control" with 10 vehicles responding. Media release from Local Fire Department: https://news.cfa.vic.gov.au/firefighters-battle-large-battery-fire-near-geelong https://news.cfa.vic.gov.au/firefighters-battle-large-batter...
- mlindner 5y ago
  Yes it's a single battery pack burning and you need to keep it cool with larges amount of water for a long period to let it cool off so it doesn't restart.
  - stirlo 5y ago
    The media release I linked above actually mentions it spread to a second pack. But yes it’s not spreading to the others.
    - mlindner 5y ago
      A second pack or a separate cell inside the same pack? These things are highly modular and even within a large pack there's multiple smaller packs that are also fire insulated against each other.
      - stirlo 5y ago
        Seems pretty clear from this photo[0] it spread to a second pack that was in close proximity. A quote from the media release is "They found a 13-tonne lithium battery inside a shipping container was fully involved" which would exclude the possibility that it was a single pack within the container. This is also shown in the photos. [0]https://news.cfa.vic.gov.au/Images/UserUploadedImages/301/105_16990_30Jul2021185221_3.jpg https://news.cfa.vic.gov.au/Images/UserUploadedImages/301/10...
Animats 5y ago
Maybe those battery packs need to be spread out more. Oil tank farms are usually spread out some, with dirt berms around each tank. That helps to contain leaks and fires. If they only lose one container-sized pack, that's not too bad. If they lose two, that's not so good. If they lose the whole installation, this needs a rethink.
- mlindner 5y ago
  Tesla builds its industrial battery packs so they don't spread fire to nearby packs and are insulated such that nearby fires can't cause them to go off. It's not exactly clear in the article, but the fire didn't spread, it's contained to a single module inside the battery "field".
  - Animats 5y ago
    It spread to an adjacent battery of a pair, but no further.
rootusrootus 5y ago
Are these actually lithium ion batteries? I kind of assume so given the fire. Why not use something like LFP instead, for a grid-scale installation where weight doesn't matter so much? Along the same lines, is the Tesla Powerwall a lithium ion battery? Most DIY equivalents are LFP, that I'm familiar with. This seems like a sensible choice.
- Syonyk 5y ago
  Because Tesla doesn't have LiFePO4 (which, technically, is a category of lithium-ion, just a less exciting variant) production, and isn't using them in their cars, so they don't have a bunch around. They're using a low-cobalt variant of NMC, last I checked, though that may have changed to NCA at some point. They're not nearly as exciting as LCO (lithium cobalt oxide, high energy density and really, really happy to come apart at the seams), but still can runaway pretty happily if they get hot enough. You can get LFP to runaway as well, it's just a lot harder, requires far higher temperatures, and doesn't release nearly as much energy. LFP is good for grid storage, though depending on what you're doing, if you don't mind a bit of watering (or catalytic recombiners), flooded lead acid is pretty darn boring. Not the most efficient (though if you run it from 30% to 80% SoC like lithium, it's quite efficient, and the newer lead-carbon combinations resist hard sulfation pretty well), but it lacks the exciting failure modes of lithium. Especially if you have flooded lead acid, the battery just doesn't have the energy to boil all the water out. The only real risk is hydrogen buildup, and that's easy enough to mitigate by giving it "Up and to the outside" path - it goes up really, really well and a bit of fresh air plus a path up mitigates just about all hydrogen buildup issues. There's no particularly good reason to use a high energy density lithium cell for grid storage unless that's just what you have laying around, which was obviously the case for Tesla. And, apparently, their cooling system can't handle a runaway as well as they thought.
  - elihu 5y ago
    Actually, I think Tesla is using LFP now in some of their cars. They get them from CATL, if I remember correctly. But I agree, if they have a factory making a certain kind of cell, then it makes sense for them to prefer to sell products that contain those cells.
adrianN 5y ago
See also the discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28005115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28005115
jbverschoor 5y ago
No comment from musky?
- simondotau 5y ago
  Tesla aren't the ones installing or operating the battery.
  - jbverschoor 5y ago
    But they produced them.. If Apple has yet another flaw in one of their devices. People are not saying "apple did not operate your phone"
    - simondotau 5y ago
      This isn’t a consumer product. It’s not as simple as blaming whichever company manufactured the individual parts. It could be Tesla’s fault. Or it could be caused by some dingus damaging it during transport or offloading. We don’t know. You need to resist the urge to make assumptions in order to satisfy your preferred narrative.
NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
Although, some would like to use this case as something to ban battery storage all together, new much safer battery technologies[1], Current magapack has been deployed using old battery technology and built 4 years ago. Batteries will just get better check this one: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOxIoFNfEsk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOxIoFNfEsk or even this one from May 2021 Harvard university -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXo9TlEb41A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXo9TlEb41A
- cbmuser 5y ago
  It’s still one of the most inefficient and expensive ways to store energy. Just look at the price per kWh storage and the energy density compared to other technologies. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
  - mlindner 5y ago
    That page is way out of date and in general not accurate (thus all the warnings on the table). If you have the space, it's cheapest to do gravity storage with water reservoirs, however you need specific geography for that to happen. If you need to build such a reservoir without assisting geography it would be prohibitively expensive. The only other real option is batteries.
- manicdee 5y ago
  If anyone tries using this as a reason to ban batteries just ask what happened at Calide (turbine exploded, lodging 200kg debris in the roof of its building)
- vmladenov 5y ago
  Do you know why gravity isn’t used more as a storage mechanism? It seems like you could use batteries as big capacitors for pumps and have the “real” energy stored in water towers.
mlindner 5y ago
FYI, Tesla battery packs are designed for fire, and they're designed to vent fire upwards and contain it from spreading horizontally. https://electrek.co/2016/12/19/tesla-fire-powerpack-test-safety/ https://electrek.co/2016/12/19/tesla-fire-powerpack-test-saf...
IshKebab 5y ago
> 300-megawatt (450MWh) Why are journalists so bad at energy / power units?
- philipkglass 5y ago
  This is actually correct. The facility has a maximum discharge power of 300 MW (and it stores 450 MWh of energy.)
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    Writing "X (Y)" means that Y is the same as X. They were clearly under the impression that 300 MW is the same as 450 MWh. Like 30C (86F) or £1 ($1.39). It should have been "300 MW, 450 MWh" or "300 MW / 450 MWh" or something like that.

82 points by Thorentis 5y ago

> Residents and motorists will notice smoke in the area ... There is currently no threat to the community That's certainly a bold statement. Conventional Li-Ion chemistries are quite toxic.

Retric 5y ago
That’s the all clear after an alert for the local area asking people to stay indoors to avoid toxic smoke, so presumably things where worse and have now improved. Concentration makes the poison and the threshold for noticing smoke is very low. Assuming significant distance from a one off event this could be noticeable but effectively harmless right now.
- chroem- 5y ago
  The 450 MWh plant is composed out of 210 battery units [1], so a little over 2 MWh just went up in smoke. Sources say that commercial chemistries emit between 20 and 200mg of hydrogen fluoride gas per watt hour. [2] At 100mg/Wh, the pack would have released a fifth of a metric ton of hydrogen fluoride gas onto the neighboring roadway over the course of the fire. You be the judge whether or not that warrants precautions. Edit: a second pack is on fire, so we're approaching half a metric ton of HF gas now [1] https://victorianbigbattery.com.au/ https://victorianbigbattery.com.au/ [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-09784-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-09784-z
  - Retric 5y ago
    Not would have, could have released up to 200mg/Wh depending on chemistry, but nothing says 100% of the battery burned. Anyway, hydrogen fluoride is nasty but well studied. The 5 minute LC 50 for rats was 5120mg/m3 and at 6 hours of exposure 156mg/m3 is lethal for rats. It demonstrates a rapid fall off in toxicity rather than direct bioaccumulation because the damage is from acidification of water in the lungs. https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/16/077/16077051.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... Humans exposed to 23mg/m3 notice lung irritation, but short term exposure is considered low risk. By comparison even a short distance from a 2 day fire in 5km/h winds your quickly talking sub 0.1mg/m3. It’s still toxic just not acutely dangerous from lung acidification.
  - canadianfella 5y ago
    > You be the judge whether or not that warrants precautions. You seem to want to say something. What is your judgement?
  - bjowen 5y ago
    .. assuming that the laptop batteries tested in the paper are a suitable comparison. Tesla’s cells are at least similar LFP chemistry these days, and the documentation [0] lists the same gases in the case of a fire. But this is not an enclosed space - it’s a fenced-off high voltage switchyard in a paddock more than a kilometre from the nearest dwelling, and this battery hasn’t instantaneously emitted all its contents all at once. It’s also quite a windy and rainy week, which affects how serious a practical hazard this is. The emergency services have notified [1] people within 10km to keep the windows closed nevertheless. Many more of good people of Geelong have a gigantic oil refinery on their doorstep[2], which is a far greater concern if you want to get exercised about HF-related accidents[3]. [0] https://www.gnr8nrg.com.au/images/resources/batteries/tesla/lithium-ion-battery-emergency-response-guide.pdf https://www.gnr8nrg.com.au/images/resources/batteries/tesla/... [1] https://www.emergency.vic.gov.au/respond/#!/warning/17269/moreinfo https://www.emergency.vic.gov.au/respond/#!/warning/17269/mo... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Shell+Refinery+Corio,+Corio+VIC+3214/@-38.0766628,144.3825149 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Shell+Refinery+Corio,+Cori... [3] https://www.csb.gov/philadelphia-energy-solutions-pes-refinery-fire-and-explosions-/ https://www.csb.gov/philadelphia-energy-solutions-pes-refine...
- bjowen 5y ago
  There’s almost no population within a kilometre of the site - it’s on the absolute rural edge of a city the size of Reno or Aachen, in a switchyard on the main power transmission lines. There’s maybe a handful of people and a kangaroo that’d be in harm’s way, and it’s been a cold and windy week - they’d probably not mind having the windows closed.

Forge36 5y ago

How long did it last? Some digging in the history suggests just two days?

stirlo 5y ago
It's only been ~27 hours since it started. Still burning. https://www.emergency.vic.gov.au/respond/#!/incident/ESTA:210716521 https://www.emergency.vic.gov.au/respond/#!/incident/ESTA:21...
mlindner 5y ago
Battery fires last a long time as they smolder for a long time so you need someone to watch them so they don't re-ignite. They need to be kept cool.

unicornporn 5y ago

A friend of mine living in an apartment complex with parking facilities at basement level recently told me that firefighters having inspected the area had come to the conclusion that they will make no attempts to go down and put out a fire if there are EVs parked. There will be fire until there is nothing more to burn, house still standing or not. Seeing a car battery burn kind of makes me understand why.

josephcsible 5y ago
That's just a bad fire department. There are procedures to put out lithium-ion fires that aren't just "let it burn". It's not chlorine trifluoride.
- wrycoder 5y ago
  Get the Roads Dept to back up their largest dump truck and drop a load of sand on it.
  - elihu 5y ago
    I'm not sure if that would do anything much to help; it might just trap the heat in. I think the standard recommendation for Teslas is to just dump water on it so that the extra heat energy can be conducted away and redirected in a relatively harmless way into conversion of water into steam.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  I have been told the same by a firefighter in my town. They won't touch EV fires.
  - mlindner 5y ago
    Who's educating these firefighters? It sounds like they're not reading the info actually about EVs and instead believing conspiracy theories.

Mengkudulangsat 5y ago

Well, that's a damning rebuke to grid-scale battery storage. Is it wise to have this time bomb (e.g. Tesla powerwall) inside every house?

toomuchtodo 5y ago
https://www.greenamerica.org/natural-gas-pipeline-and-infrastructure-explosions-nationwide https://www.greenamerica.org/natural-gas-pipeline-and-infras... (Natural Gas Pipeline and Infrastructure Explosions Nationwide)
- gamblor956 5y ago
  What's your point? That out of the tens of millions of homes, residential, and commercial buildings that receive natural gas just in the U.S. alone, there were only 11 explosions over the course of 2 years? There are significantly fewer home-scale or business-scale battery installations. The fact that there have already been so many issues with them is concerning, since they're much harder to put out than other fires. Yes, there will be new safety procedures developed to account for these new risks. But they aren't in place yet and they won't be if Tesla fans ignore reality and pretend like nothing's wrong.
  - manicdee 5y ago
    “So many issues” compared to what? You are comparing an industrial site fire to residential fires. They are not comparable. Best wait for the incident investigation before declaring batteries dangerous and demanding they be banned.
    - gamblor956 5y ago
      Best wait for the incident investigation before declaring batteries dangerous and demanding they be banned. I did not suggest that lithium batteries be banned (that was all you), I suggested that additional safety mechanisms would be needed to control the risk of spontaneous, uncontrollable combustion, which especially seems to be a risk with Tesla battery installations, seeing as how it has happened at every one of Tesla's Australian battery installations to date.

BluSyn 5y ago

The root cause will be great of great interest; I hope we get to find out publicly. These battery systems are still new, but even so they have many layers of safety systems designed to prevent thermal runaway.

ajross 5y ago
Well, maybe. But this application isn't safety-critical. Power infrastructure is fenced off, remote, and generally operated without personnel. Certainly you don't want to deploy stuff that's going to spontaneously combust for reliability and economic reasons. But it's not a car.
- jdavis703 5y ago
  I hear people talking about replacing peaker plants with batteries. Peaker plants are usually not at all remote, and could pose a threat to nearby buildings.
  - simondotau 5y ago
    You don't have to replace the plant in the same location. Battery "peaker" plants can be remote, especially as there's limited need for on-site staff.
    - jdavis703 5y ago
      I’m not a grid expert so I could be wrong, but don’t they place the peaker plants in urban areas to avoid “congestion” on long distance transmission lines during peak demand?
  - mlindner 5y ago
    Peaker plants are burning possibly explosive chemicals. If you can build a peaker plant safely in a certain location, you can put a battery there as well. It'll be safer than a gas or diesel fired peaker plant.

stirlo 5y ago

Live incident status from the Victorian Government Emergency portal: https://www.emergency.vic.gov.au/respond/#!/incident/ESTA:210716521 https://www.emergency.vic.gov.au/respond/#!/incident/ESTA:21... 24 Hours after the fire started it is still listed as "Not Yet Under Control" with 10 vehicles responding. Media release from Local Fire Department: https://news.cfa.vic.gov.au/firefighters-battle-large-battery-fire-near-geelong https://news.cfa.vic.gov.au/firefighters-battle-large-batter...

mlindner 5y ago
Yes it's a single battery pack burning and you need to keep it cool with larges amount of water for a long period to let it cool off so it doesn't restart.
- stirlo 5y ago
  The media release I linked above actually mentions it spread to a second pack. But yes it’s not spreading to the others.
  - mlindner 5y ago
    A second pack or a separate cell inside the same pack? These things are highly modular and even within a large pack there's multiple smaller packs that are also fire insulated against each other.
    - stirlo 5y ago
      Seems pretty clear from this photo[0] it spread to a second pack that was in close proximity. A quote from the media release is "They found a 13-tonne lithium battery inside a shipping container was fully involved" which would exclude the possibility that it was a single pack within the container. This is also shown in the photos. [0]https://news.cfa.vic.gov.au/Images/UserUploadedImages/301/105_16990_30Jul2021185221_3.jpg https://news.cfa.vic.gov.au/Images/UserUploadedImages/301/10...

Animats 5y ago

Maybe those battery packs need to be spread out more. Oil tank farms are usually spread out some, with dirt berms around each tank. That helps to contain leaks and fires. If they only lose one container-sized pack, that's not too bad. If they lose two, that's not so good. If they lose the whole installation, this needs a rethink.

mlindner 5y ago
Tesla builds its industrial battery packs so they don't spread fire to nearby packs and are insulated such that nearby fires can't cause them to go off. It's not exactly clear in the article, but the fire didn't spread, it's contained to a single module inside the battery "field".
- Animats 5y ago
  It spread to an adjacent battery of a pair, but no further.

rootusrootus 5y ago

Are these actually lithium ion batteries? I kind of assume so given the fire. Why not use something like LFP instead, for a grid-scale installation where weight doesn't matter so much? Along the same lines, is the Tesla Powerwall a lithium ion battery? Most DIY equivalents are LFP, that I'm familiar with. This seems like a sensible choice.

Syonyk 5y ago
Because Tesla doesn't have LiFePO4 (which, technically, is a category of lithium-ion, just a less exciting variant) production, and isn't using them in their cars, so they don't have a bunch around. They're using a low-cobalt variant of NMC, last I checked, though that may have changed to NCA at some point. They're not nearly as exciting as LCO (lithium cobalt oxide, high energy density and really, really happy to come apart at the seams), but still can runaway pretty happily if they get hot enough. You can get LFP to runaway as well, it's just a lot harder, requires far higher temperatures, and doesn't release nearly as much energy. LFP is good for grid storage, though depending on what you're doing, if you don't mind a bit of watering (or catalytic recombiners), flooded lead acid is pretty darn boring. Not the most efficient (though if you run it from 30% to 80% SoC like lithium, it's quite efficient, and the newer lead-carbon combinations resist hard sulfation pretty well), but it lacks the exciting failure modes of lithium. Especially if you have flooded lead acid, the battery just doesn't have the energy to boil all the water out. The only real risk is hydrogen buildup, and that's easy enough to mitigate by giving it "Up and to the outside" path - it goes up really, really well and a bit of fresh air plus a path up mitigates just about all hydrogen buildup issues. There's no particularly good reason to use a high energy density lithium cell for grid storage unless that's just what you have laying around, which was obviously the case for Tesla. And, apparently, their cooling system can't handle a runaway as well as they thought.
- elihu 5y ago
  Actually, I think Tesla is using LFP now in some of their cars. They get them from CATL, if I remember correctly. But I agree, if they have a factory making a certain kind of cell, then it makes sense for them to prefer to sell products that contain those cells.

adrianN 5y ago

See also the discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28005115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28005115

jbverschoor 5y ago

No comment from musky?

simondotau 5y ago
Tesla aren't the ones installing or operating the battery.
- jbverschoor 5y ago
  But they produced them.. If Apple has yet another flaw in one of their devices. People are not saying "apple did not operate your phone"
  - simondotau 5y ago
    This isn’t a consumer product. It’s not as simple as blaming whichever company manufactured the individual parts. It could be Tesla’s fault. Or it could be caused by some dingus damaging it during transport or offloading. We don’t know. You need to resist the urge to make assumptions in order to satisfy your preferred narrative.

NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago

Although, some would like to use this case as something to ban battery storage all together, new much safer battery technologies[1], Current magapack has been deployed using old battery technology and built 4 years ago. Batteries will just get better check this one: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOxIoFNfEsk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOxIoFNfEsk or even this one from May 2021 Harvard university -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXo9TlEb41A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXo9TlEb41A

cbmuser 5y ago
It’s still one of the most inefficient and expensive ways to store energy. Just look at the price per kWh storage and the energy density compared to other technologies. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
- mlindner 5y ago
  That page is way out of date and in general not accurate (thus all the warnings on the table). If you have the space, it's cheapest to do gravity storage with water reservoirs, however you need specific geography for that to happen. If you need to build such a reservoir without assisting geography it would be prohibitively expensive. The only other real option is batteries.
manicdee 5y ago
If anyone tries using this as a reason to ban batteries just ask what happened at Calide (turbine exploded, lodging 200kg debris in the roof of its building)
vmladenov 5y ago
Do you know why gravity isn’t used more as a storage mechanism? It seems like you could use batteries as big capacitors for pumps and have the “real” energy stored in water towers.

mlindner 5y ago

FYI, Tesla battery packs are designed for fire, and they're designed to vent fire upwards and contain it from spreading horizontally. https://electrek.co/2016/12/19/tesla-fire-powerpack-test-safety/ https://electrek.co/2016/12/19/tesla-fire-powerpack-test-saf...

IshKebab 5y ago

> 300-megawatt (450MWh) Why are journalists so bad at energy / power units?

philipkglass 5y ago
This is actually correct. The facility has a maximum discharge power of 300 MW (and it stores 450 MWh of energy.)
- IshKebab 5y ago
  Writing "X (Y)" means that Y is the same as X. They were clearly under the impression that 300 MW is the same as 450 MWh. Like 30C (86F) or £1 ($1.39). It should have been "300 MW, 450 MWh" or "300 MW / 450 MWh" or something like that.