Big battery installations always received lots of international attention, with few objections to this kind of positive exposure. HN alone had dozens of submissions on the topic [0]. Your objection now seems to be more towards the negative exposure. What's your proposal?
This makes the news mainly because of the novelty. Not many "big batteries" out there, and even fewer such fires. So when one happens it's news. The second "lesser" reason is because it could be a sign of things to come. We're far more familiar with the pitfalls of tech we've been developing for a century. With batteries I'm sure we're still discovering operational aspects that were not considered or not given enough attention.
Its not just the coal generator accidents but the weirdly long underground fires that rarely get a mention.
Here's one article I found of a fire underneath some suburban houses: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-26/underground-fire-in-c...
It casually mentions a decades-long struggle a primary school has had with an underground fire. Obviously not a very big deal for some folks.
That is not so unusual for underground coal fires. They can be all but impossible to put out. It has been a phenomenon basically forever [0]. I assume a lot of the modern ones are linked to mining activity, but they do turn up naturally from time to time.
I would advise people not to build on top of a known coal seam fire.
Well this is bigger news, a giant battery from a well known company failed catastrophically within 24 hours; versus a plant running since 2001*(edit, wrong generator)
I personally have no idea the numbers, but i'd argue that lithium batteries have alot more explosive potential than your average powerstation fire...curious if anyone can compare energy density here
The bad part isn't just energy density, but that lithium fires are self oxidizing, so you can't smother them. Your only method of attack is to get temperature down.
Also, this type of smoke is awful. Anyone living in San Diego East of the 5 last year can probably remember how bad the Navy ship fire was compared to normal forest fire smoke.
> Let’s cut right to the chase. Despite their name, lithium-ion batteries used in consumer products do not contain any actual lithium metal. Therefore, a Class D fire extinguisher is not to be used to fight a lithium-ion battery fire. Class D fire extinguishers, which contain dry powder, are intended for combustible metal fires only. Since lithium-ion batteries aren’t made with metallic lithium, a Class D dry powder extinguisher would not be effective.
> So, what kind of fire extinguisher should you use in this scenario? Lithium-ion batteries are considered a Class B fire, so a standard ABC or BC dry chemical fire extinguisher should be used. Class B is the classification given to flammable liquids. Lithium-ion batteries contain liquid electrolytes that provide a conductive pathway, so the batteries receive a B fire classification.
>>This makes LiCoO2 batteries susceptible to thermal runaway in cases of abuse such as high temperature operation (>130 °C) or overcharging. At elevated temperatures, LiCoO
2 decomposition generates oxygen, which then reacts with the organic electrolyte of the cell. This is a safety concern due to the magnitude of this highly exothermic reaction, which can spread to adjacent cells or ignite nearby combustible material. In general, this is seen for many lithium ion battery cathodes.
This happened during initial testing, within the first 24 hours. Not good, but this is what testing is for.
Still I'm not sure if it's a good idea to have the individual units stand so close to each other, in the pictures it looks rather tight when you consider possible fires.
I assume at a certain pack scale you just have to assume fires will happen on a regular basis. You need to make sure the fire doesn't spread, doesn't pollute too much, and goes out by itself without needing emergency services etc.
At that point you can just have a dashboard with "percentage of fleet offline due to fire damage", and in your annual maintanance you replace those.
I recall an old article about these batteries (https://electrek.co/2016/12/19/tesla-fire-powerpack-test-saf...) in which testing showed that a failure within the battery itself would be contained by the cooling system, but a failure outside it wouldn't. Since the fire in the pictures on this article doesn't look contained, I wonder whether the cooling system was turned off at that moment (because it was not yet in operation, or because it was turned off after the failure started), or whether the fire started outside the battery modules (for instance, in the wiring).
I suspect a wiring fault. All it takes is one connector to fall into muddy ground during installation, and now you have a nice high resistance path ready to get red hot as soon as the system comes under full load.
Sounds like Megapack wasn't that great an idea after all. Megapack is Tesla's term for a utility scale module containing about 3MWh of batteries, and this station (300MWh) is made of ~ 100 megapacks, one of which caught on fire.
Megapack is a relatively new thing. Earlier Tesla utility-scale batteries including the one in South Australia were made of smaller modules called Powerpack (I don't remember their size). A Powerpack catching on fire will presumably release fewer toxins and stuff than a Megapack, simply through being smaller.
It looks like some effort went into stopping the fire in the burning Megapack from spreading into other modules. So the modularity doesn't automatically contain the fire all by itself, but it apparently helps.
I can imagine a futuristic Tree like structure with Megapacks affixed in the air. In case of fire faulty module is ejected, falls to the ground and slids away to a designated disposal bay. Or just build on a slight incline with all modules on tracks.
I would argue the problem is to give this job to a for profit consumer electronics company like Tesla at all. Tesla does not have the culture to engineer a nation-scale production site, they only know how to prototype.
The correct solution, I’d argue, would be to set up the different public governmental departments how the different departments are set up at Amazon: they have a public interface at everything they do and they do it to a level that you could sell it to the outside. And then to give this job to the public.
It’s crazy how actually terrible lithium-ion battery are for the environment while portrayed as green. From production to charging with usually fossil energy. Not even speaking of hazards like shown in this article.
The reason why lithium batteries are portrayed as green is because they are a necessary enabling technology for most forms of non-fossil energy. Without them, a transition to renewably-sourced energy is impractical—arguably impossible.
The dirtiest part of lithium batteries is cobalt, which is being substantially reduced (or removed entirely) from lithium battery chemistries. Lithium itself is an abundant resource and is not especially dirty, at least when compared to many other raw materials. And there are prospects for future mines being much cleaner than in the past.
With sufficient investment, lithium batteries can be highly recyclable and it's feasible that within a couple of decades, nearly all the materials in new battery production could be recycled. And would be recycled because it would be cheaper (and thus more lucrative) than mining from earth.
Optimism comes from scientific first principles, economic fundamentals, and an awareness that THE #1 most fully recycled mass-produced product on the planet are vehicular lead acid batteries. Approximately 90% of batteries sold end up in the hands of recyclers, who are able to recycle 99% of their contents.
Once there's a strong pipeline of electric cars headed for wreckers, the scale is there for recycling to be significantly more profitable than mining raw materials. The scale isn't there right now because most battery packs pulled from vehicles (wrecks, end-of-life, etc) are still highly valuable intact.
Companies like Redwood Materials are scaling up in preparation for this future.
(Non-vehicle lithium batteries are likely too small, too fiddily, too difficult to build a supply chain for that recycling to be economical on their own. But once the pipeline is there, adding all the small batteries to it would be a no-brainer.)
Strong words, but you didn’t cite any sources. What are the “scientific first principles” that support your claim? Lead acid batteries are entirely different materials and chemistry, e.g. lead retains its quality through secondary smelting.[1]
Why do I need cite sources? I'm not here to teach you basic chemistry. It is neither remarkable nor controversial that that nearly all of the materials within a lithium ion battery are very highly recyclable—infinitely recyclable with respect to metals such as nickel, cobalt, lithium, and copper. Redwood Materials are already recycling 20,000 tonnes per year, including production scrap from the Panasonic-Tesla factory in Nevada, with recovery rates currently between 95 and 98 percent.
The only missing piece to achieving scale is a pipeline of recyclable material; this will obviously exist once electric cars begin to age out in sufficient quantity.
I'm the case of this specific battery, it's been being built specifically because there's generally a surplus of cheap renewables in Victoria when the sun is shining. This energy can be sold back into the market during the evening at a much higher price, pushing out coal, gas and hydro generation.
It's also expecting to make a lot of revenue from frequency control which is a critical service in a grid relying more on renewables.
So yes this battery is going to be very effective at reducing carbon emissions in Victoria. As a similar battery did in South Australia.
> From production to charging with usually fossil energy.
That's not the fault of lithium-ion battery. Also, I think it is interesting that all of a sudden people care about the production of lithium and paint it as particularly detrimental to the environment when in fact they accept the same realities in every other resource they are using. Almost like they follow a stupid agenda propagated by a dying industry.
Edit: I'm not saying we shouldn't care about lithium production and it's effect on the environment. But things are improving drastically and the arguments I hear against lithium are always the same talking points the ICE-industry used to take on Tesla.
On the one hand I tend to agree that many environmental consequences are really not appreciated and that lithium tends to get an unusually high amount of attention in comparison, but I also think maybe that's actually reasonable and a good thing.
The reason I think that might be the case is because lithium-ion batteries seem to be on track to become pretty ubiquitous. It probably won't ever be equivalent to oil products, but it'll probably get far closer than most things. Yet it's still relatively early days. We're not at the point where fundamental change is impossible.
We're increasingly aware of all the problems with oil-products, but... not so much is happening about it. They are so fundamental to everything that major changes are exceedingly difficult and expensive.
With lithium-ion batteries we aren't there yet, but we're getting closer every day. If we put an outsized amount of attention on the problems now, we have a better shot at actually fixing them, as bigger changes are more feasible now than they ever will be in the future.
This is an important issue. It's baffling to me how greenwashed everything electric is, despite almost universally having major problems in either manufacturing materials or waste products. But environmentalism is just a business these days, I don't know why I ever expected anything different.
The solution to the harm inflicted upon the environment by humanity isn't some new feat of technology or invention, it's downshifting. In every field, not just in individual's private lives.
"Downshifting" would mean going back at least two hundred years in most technology if you want to avoid catastrophic climate change without "new" feats of technology like renewable electricity and batteries. Most likely that would ensue also going back about 200 years in the population Earth can sustain. Recall that we're now about 6 billion people more than in the early decades of the 19th century.
if you talk about preserving energy, reducing consumption and using social and cultural means to reduce the impact on the planet these days you're pretty much immediately labeled as some kind of anti-growth luddite, in particular by the 'green tech' crowd, looking at Ramez Naam among others.
VC's, 'entrepreneurs' and green energy journalism seems to have a vested interest to in a sense consume 'green innovation' rather than just treating it as technology.
I don't have problems with people advocating reducing consumption to reduce the impact on the planet. Personally I think it's about as effective as telling people to not watch porn but you do you and advocate away. It's harmless.
I do have problems with people who argue against transitioning to 100% renewable energy with this argument. That's actively harmful. You won't actually convince anyone but it plays into the hands of anti-EV, pro fossil fuel interests. The likes of BP that spill a fuck ton of oil into the ocean and we just shrug it off. And then they go "but mining lithium is harmful" (which it isn't, at least not more harmful than mining gigatons of coal or fracking gas).
The problem with your position is a total lack of perspective of what's harmful to the planet and what can realistically be done about it.
>The problem with your position is a total lack of perspective of what's harmful to the planet and what can realistically be done about it.
The heaviest polluters and carbon emitters on earth could very easily reduce their pollution and emissions by at least 50% say, if not way more by changing the way we consume, travel, what we eat and so on. We are talking low hanging fruits here.
Do you now how many battery stations we need to plaster on earth, how many not yet invented technologies we need to get to significant renewable use which we could get for free if we could turn half of our coal plants off?
Just for 'perspective', over the last 30 years we have gone from, 93-95% carbon based fuel sources to... 88% today. People want to go to Mars in 10 years but it's 'unrealistic' to advocate that people replace beef with chicken and air travel with a train? This is the actual most bizarre thing about this argument, the complete inversion of who has lost perspective and realism.
> Do you now how many battery stations we need to plaster on earth?
Global power consumption is at ~23TWh. To make it through the night on nothing but solar, you'd need about 1/3th of that dedicated to batteries (Likely a lot less though due to wind, hydro, and nuclear production) So ~8 TWh of storage on the extreme end. Roughly 8000x our current battery deployments.
A lot, but not really crazy.
> how many not yet invented technologies we need to get to significant renewable
0. There are no technologies needed for significant renewable deployment. About the only thing needed is manufacturing capacity. Solar efficiency is crazy high as is wind which has driven cost/watt way down. Battery prices have similarly fallen off a cliff (and are still falling), which makes that extremely feasible at this point.
New tech will make the whole transition cheaper, but certainly isn't needed to get things switched over.
> which we could get for free if we could turn half of our coal plants off?
Ok.. but that solves only the power generation problem and runs smack dab into the politics problem. Wanting to turn off coal doesn't make it happen.
> 'unrealistic' to advocate that people replace beef with chicken and air travel with a train?
Yes, because you are talking about winning over a huge diverse group of people. Going to mars requires one rich asshole to invest in mars travel. He doesn't have to convince millions to change their habits or minds.
Realism is realizing that you can't control others thoughts or behaviors. An excellent example of this is what's happening with COVID.
You want to tell me it's realistic to convince people to give up their favorite foods when getting people to just wear masks is seen as a breach of liberty or whatever garbage?
Come on. The amount of rational people is FAR too low to realistically expect that sort of pleading to work.
>The heaviest polluters and carbon emitters on earth could very easily reduce their pollution and emissions by at least 50% say, if not way more by changing the way we consume, travel, what we eat and so on
Then how are batteries going to screw that up? If and when we do that, using batteries would still make things more energy efficient and greener.
>The heaviest polluters and carbon emitters on earth could very easily reduce their pollution and emissions by at least 50% say, if not way more by changing the way we consume, travel, what we eat and so on. We are talking low hanging fruits here.
Very easily? People start protests over much less than 50%.
It is a sort of Nimbyism. Tail pipe emmisions are low for EVs since they have no tail pipe.
ICEs running on renewable fuel has localy observable emissions and are not sexy. The decommision of ICEs are way easier then EVs and the refeuling infrastructure simpler for liquids. It is a shame there is a look-in on EVs.
Even if the power source is pure coal, EVs are still significantly better than ICE cars when it comes to air pollution per distance travelled, as well as carbon footprint per distance travelled.
Except most power grids are not pure coal, they include some mix of zero carbon energy already. And there are opportunities for EVs to contribute to a high-renewables grid with smarter charging.
And separate to your concern (or lack thereof) about climate and renewables, moving emissions away from the tailpipe has significant advantages for local air quality where most people live.
I was referring to renewable fuel, where the tailpipe carbon goes back into nature.
> moving emissions away from the tailpipe has significant advantages for local air quality where most people live.
Yes, but where most people don't live is also where ICEs are advantageous in that an BEV would need Tesla size batteries for range, which are oversized for normal city-ish driving.
ICEs running on renewables need a lot more renewables. An EV turns something like 80-90% of the power a wind turbine produces into movement. If you want to use synfuels in an ICE you lose >>50% just by turning the electricity into fuel and then the ICE only turns 30% of that into movement.
Playing devil's advocate, the parent comment didn't mention "synfuels" at all, it mentioned "renewable fuel", which includes things like sugarcane alcohol, which is very common here in Brazil as a car fuel; many cars come out of the factory with flex fuel engines which can run on either gasoline or alcohol, and every fueling station I've ever seen always has at least one pump for alcohol.
That is of course a good point. You can make small amounts of those from agricultural waste. If demand outstrips supply from waste though, the area you need to farm to drive a couple of miles is really large. I didn't do the math, but I wouldn't be surprised if you got more energy out of agricultural waste if you turn it into electricity+heat in a biogas setup.
How much of the power of the wind does the turbine turn into electrical power? It is not really a fair comparison.
I think BEVs are a better solution for most cases, but my feeling is that renewable ICEs and EVs with smaller batteries and "trolley bus" solutions just are way downplayed and underrated.
I don't understand what you want to say. The comparison between BEVs and ICEs running on synfuels starts at the point where you want to turn electricity into motion. BEVs are more efficient by a factor of around 6. The efficiency of the wind turbine doesn't matter. You'll need six times as many of them if you want to burn synfuels instead of driving a BEV.
Is that true for e.g. ethanol too? I mean sure, it is true for H2-gas made with electricity but when making ethanol you are starting with lower grade energy.
Ethanol is made from wood or grain and any losses during the harvesting etc for the end product is comparable to the wind losses around the turbine (note that it is a bad comparison, since wasting wind is kind of no cost ...) or comparable with burning wood to power a steam machine generator to power EVs.
I.e. the degenerate case is using gasoline do power a powerplant to power a EV. You would be better off just using it in an ICE car. My point is turning wood into ethanol might be a good supplement to solar and wind EVs. E.g. for wood ethanol 1J product requires 0.6J input (except the wood of course) [1].
Biofuels don't scale very well. You can indeed produce some "for free" from waste, but once you start planting areas solely for producing biomass to turn into biofuels, you're environmentally much better off to leave the land to nature and put up some PV or wind turbines there.
But yes, a tiny sliver of fuel demand can be satisfied from plants. You're right about that. I'm less convinced that you're better off burning the fuel in an ICE than turning it into electricity in a large power plant and running an EV. Large generators are more efficient than small ones. If you manage to do something useful with the waste heat of your power plant (e.g. use it for district heating), there is no way a small ICE can compete, even if you take into account transmission and charging losses.
Well, most of that land is already used to produce food. I'm not so sure whether it would be a good idea to start up serious competition to food production.
