The reignition is yet one more reminder of how troublesome fires in lithium-ion batteries may be to cope with. They burn hotter than different fires—and even when it appears to be like as if the hazard has handed, they will reignite.
As these batteries develop into extra prevalent, first responders are studying a complete new playbook for what to do after they catch hearth, as a brand new story from our newest print journal factors out. Let’s speak about what makes battery fires a brand new problem, and what it means for the units, automobiles, and grid storage services that depend on them.
“Fires in batteries are fairly nasty,” says Nadim Maluf, CEO and cofounder of Qnovo, an organization that develops battery administration techniques and analytics.
Whereas first responders would possibly have the ability to rapidly douse a fireplace in a gas-powered car with a hose, preventing an EV hearth can require rather more water. Typically, it’s higher to simply let battery fires burn out on their very own, as Maya Kapoor outlines in her story for MIT Expertise Assessment. And as one skilled identified in that story, till a battery is dismantled and recycled, “it’s at all times going to be a hazard.”
One very clear instance of that’s final week’s reignition at Moss Touchdown, the world’s greatest battery storage undertaking. In mid-January, a battery hearth destroyed a big a part of a 300-megawatt grid storage array.
The location has been quiet for weeks, however residents within the space obtained an alert final Tuesday evening urging them to remain indoors and shut home windows. Vistra, the proprietor of Moss Touchdown Energy Plant, didn’t reply to written questions for this story however mentioned in a public assertion that flames had been noticed on the facility on Tuesday and the hearth had burned itself out by Wednesday morning.
Even after a battery burns, a few of the cells can nonetheless maintain cost, Maluf says, and in a big storage set up on the grid, there generally is a entire lot of saved power that may spark new blazes or pose a hazard to cleanup crews lengthy after the preliminary hearth.
Vistra is presently within the strategy of de-linking batteries at Moss Touchdown, in response to an internet site the corporate set as much as share details about the hearth and aftermath. The method entails unhooking {the electrical} connections between batteries, which reduces the chance of future issues. De-linking work started on February 22 and will take a few weeks to finish.