It's been almost a full week since a battery fire ignited on a solar farm in Jefferson County, and many things remain unknown. Now, state elected officials say they not only want answers, they want changes.
“When you roll up here and you have odd circumstances, it's incredibly difficult to make split-second decisions,” Deputy Director of Jefferson County Fire and Emergency Management Neil Rivenburgh said.
Xtechi no sama, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
When they’re not bursting into toxic fireballs, the contribution made by giant lithium-ion batteries remains utterly trivial. They are, after all, electricity storage devices and don’t add a lick to electricity generation capacity, anywhere.
The cost of battery storage is out of all proportion to the benefits returned.
No one talked about electricity storage when we allowed nuclear, coal-fired and gas-fired plants to deliver power, 24/7.
Chandler (AZ) firefighters have been working a fire at a lithium-ion battery storage site since Monday.
The fire has been burning in the building since then. Firefighters have kept a fire suppression system flowing water on the fire and vented the building to control the burning.
A fire that was in a similar location where firefighters were injured inspired the Fire Department to study how to handle these types of situations.
How PV systems can influence firefighting operations may be an essential input during the ongoing development of standards. Standards provide information on safety consideration, however, at present there is a lack of coverage of fire safety issues, including firefighting response.
The public project description:
A large blaze at Victoria’s “big battery” project has been brought under control by firefighters after burning for more than three days, allowing investigators to begin examining the site.
A Tesla battery bank caught fire while it was being set up in Moorabool on Friday morning, and then spread to a second battery.
A toxic blaze at the site of Australia's largest Tesla battery project is set to burn throughout the night.
The fire broke out during testing of a Tesla megapack at the Victorian Big Battery site near Geelong.
A 13-tonne lithium battery was engulfed in flames, which then spread to an adjacent battery bank.
Giant Lithium Batteries Literally Ready to Explode On Energy Scene
With the intermittent nature of solar and wind power, the Green Energy Advocates, or Greenies, have been touting the tale that “giant batteries” are what is needed to retain the energy from the daytime peak energy production hours for use during the evening, peak usage hours. Sounds good, right?
A fire chief can see one or two solar fires per year, without the news reporting on it. Yet, they admit to having two fires in one month.
Most informed individuals within the U.S.A. have discovered just how much vital information is hidden by Newspapers and even the Internet Search Engines, especially if they are trying to protect a certain industry, movement, political candidate or party.
In April 2019, an unexpected explosion of batteries on fire in an Arizona energy storage facility injured eight firefighters. More than a year before that fire, FEMA awarded a Fire Prevention and Safety (FP&S), Research and Development (R&D) grant to the University of Texas at Austin to address firefighter concerns about safety when responding to fires in battery energy storage systems of all sizes. Engineers, firefighters, and other industry partners are working to develop a better understanding of the magnitude of the fire hazards.
