BESS Related News and White Papers
BESS Fire in Moss Landing California. Letter details local resident health issues and soil contamination after fire burns for several days, smoulders, then re-ignites after one month
Extract:
Fire burned for two days, smoldered for several days, then re-ignited a month later.
The Vistra fire created an ecological disaster and human health crisis on Monterey Bay. The fire that burned for several days in Moss Landing and continued to smolder thereafter, left high levels of heavy metals in the soil. Field surveys, conducted by San Jose State University within a radius of about two miles from the power plant, measured a dramatic increase in marsh soil surface concentration (hundreds to thousand-fold) of the three heavy metals Nickel, Manganese and Cobalt.1
The soils are now contaminated, so what does this mean for the local residents’ homes, their lungs and health and for the thousands of species of wildlife that live in the estuary, streams, harbor, dunes and trees? 2 Residents of Moss Landing, Prunedale, Watsonville, Santa Cruz, Seaside and surrounding areas have been getting sick. Symptoms include a metallic taste, skin rashes and burns, respiratory distress, bloody noses, severe headaches and more. A grassroots movement of citizens is working together to document their symptoms and seek help. 3 Long term impacts to health are unknown but can be serious. The following image is a map created from 647 individuals who reported unusual and often severe symptoms from the Vistra fire in response to a social media inquiry.
A second group reported symptoms after the fire reignited one month later. It is not clear whether the first fire ever stopped burning. Many people had symptoms for that entire month, and continue to be sick.
A lithium battery fire sent toxic gas over Montreal. Are we ready for such emergencies?
Sept 28, 2024
Exposure to high levels of hydrogen fluoride can cause chemical burns and other health risks
Residents, chemists and firefighters are raising concerns about prevention and emergency preparedness after 15,000 kilograms of lithium batteries inside a shipping container caught fire at the Port of Montreal on Monday.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-lithium-battery-fire-concerns-1.7336652
FDNY warns that lithium-ion batteries are now a leading cause of fires and fire deaths in New York City
Feb 2, 2024
https://www.nyc.gov/site/fdny/news/Y40203/fdny-warns-lithium-ion-batteries-now-leading-cause-fires-fire-deaths-new-york
After three fires this summer at commercial battery storage facilities in N.Y., Hochul creates working group for safety investigation
Solar farm fire in Upstate New York sends possible toxic smoke billowing into surrounding community
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul issued an advisory Thursday night due to potentially toxic smoke billowing from a battery fire at a solar farm burning near the Canadian border.
CBS affiliate WWNY-TV reports that the fire broke out at about 1 p.m. Eastern time at a solar farm in the Jefferson County town of Lyme, located on Lake Ontario.
In a statement, Hochul said that the “large battery fire” had “caused significant damage and is emitting large amounts of smoke that may pose health risks.”
Safety of Grid-Scale Lithium-Ion Battery Energy Storage Systems, University of Oxford, 2021
Safety of Grid-Scale Lithium-Ion Battery Energy Storage Systems, University of Oxford, 2021
Ontario Federation of Agriculture Fact Sheet: Battery Energy Storage Recommendations, 2024
Melbourne Australia warehouse fire fuelled by lithium-ion batteries
The fire started in a warehouse which contained 3,000 lithium-ion batteries. He said there was a risk the batteries could go into “thermal runaway”, where they would continue to generate heat and burn.
BESS Noise has 'exploded as a concern' recently
April 8, 2024
The noise of battery energy storage system (BESS) technology has “exploded” as a concern in the last six months, an executive from system integrator Wartsila ES&O said.
BESS units primarily emit noise from their cooling systems, but balance of system (BOS) components like inverters and transformers also produce noise emissions. Growing deployments mean projects are being built nearer to populations and in more population-dense regions, creating potential problems for local acceptance.
“I’d say that in the last six months noise has exploded as a concern. One of our team just toured a dozen customers in Europe and every single one brought up concerns about noise, and what we are doing to mitigate it. A year ago, nobody asked,” said Darrell Furlong, director of product management and hardware for Wartsila ES&O (energy storage & optimisation).
Sound is bound to be more of a concern for population-dense Europe compared with places like the US, but Furlong said that he first noticed it for projects in Australia, where land is also far more plentiful than Europe.
“The first customers I recall bringing it up were in Australia, but now it’s a global thing – everyone is focusing on it,” Furlong added, talking to Energy-Storage.news at the recent Energy Storage Summit USA in Austin, Texas.
Victorian Big Battery (VBB) Fire, Geelong Australia
The Victorian Big Battery (VBB) is a 300-Megawatt (MW)/450-Megawatt hour (MWh) grid-scale battery storage project in Geelong, Australia. VBB is one of the largest battery installations in the world and can power over one million Victorian homes for 30 minutes during critical peak load situations.1 It is designed to support the renewable energy industry by charging during times of excess renewable generation. The VBB is fitted with 212 Tesla Megapacks to provide the 300-MW/450-MWh of energy storage. The Megapack is a lithium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS) consisting of battery modules, power electronics, a thermal management system, and control systems all pre-manufactured within a single cabinet that is approximately 7.2 meters (m) in length, 1.6 m deep and 2.5 m in height (23.5 feet [ft] x 5.4 ft x 8.3 ft). On Friday, July 30th, 2021, a single Megapack at VBB caught fire and spread to a neighboring Megapack during the initial installation and commissioning of the Megapacks. The fire did not spread beyond these two Megapacks and they burned themselves out over the course of approximately six hours. There were no injuries to the general public, to site personnel or to emergency first responders as the Megapacks failed safely (i.e., slowly burned themselves out with no explosions or deflagrations), as they are designed to do in the event of a fire. Per the guidance in Tesla’s Lithium-Ion Battery Emergency Response Guide2 (ERG), emergency responders permitted the Megapack to burn and consume itself while nearby exposures were being monitored at a safe distance. The total impact to the site was two out of the 212 Megapacks were fire damaged, or less than 1% of the BESS. Following the emergency response, a detailed, multi-entity fire investigation commenced on August 3, 2021. The investigation process included local regulatory entities, Tesla, outside third-party engineers and subject matter experts. The investigation process involved analyzing both the fire origin and cause as well as the root cause of the fire propagation to the neighbor Megapack. In addition, given this is the first fire event in a Megapack installation to date, a review of the emergency response has been performed to identify any lessons learned from this fire event. This report summarizes those investigations and analyses and has been prepared by Fisher Engineering, Inc. (FEI) and Energy Safety Response Group (ESRG), two independent engineering and energy storage fire safety consulting firms. In addition, this report provides a list of lessons learned from the fire and also highlights the procedural, software and hardware changes that have been implemented based on those lessons learned.
White Papers: Baker Engineering and Risk Consultants, Inc. : Dangers and risks associated with BESS installations
Battery Failure Analysis and Characterization of Failure Types By Sean Berg October 8, 2021
This article is an introduction to lithium-ion battery types, types of failures, and the forensic methods and techniques used to investigate origin and cause to identify failure mechanisms. This is the first article in a six-part series. To read other articles in this series, click here.
https://stopwestcarletonbess.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/BESS-White-Papers-1-7-Combined.pdf
Youtube Video: BESS Fire Neermoor, Germany
Join me as I delve into the recent BESS fire incident in Neermoor, Germany, unraveling the events leading to the thermal runaway and explosions. This comprehensive analysis sheds light on the critical importance of safety protocols in the battery energy storage system industry.
https://www.nonstopnews.de/meldung/44217
https://storagewiki.epri.com/index.ph… https://udn.com/news/story/7328/767208
Escondito Battery Fire - Let it burn
“The unit with the batteries on fire, it is best to let those burn,” Batson said. “We don’t want to introduce water to the battery fire. It creates a much bigger problem, and it doesn’t ultimately put it out anyway.”
Toxic fluoride gas emissions from lithium-ion battery fires
Lithium-ion battery fires generate intense heat and considerable amounts of gas and smoke. Although the emission of toxic gases can be a larger threat than the heat, the knowledge of such emissions is limited. This paper presents quantitative measurements of heat release and fluoride gas emissions during battery fires for seven different types of commercial lithium-ion batteries. The results have been validated using two independent measurement techniques and show that large amounts of hydrogen fluoride (HF) may be generated, ranging between 20 and 200 mg/Wh of nominal battery energy capacity. In addition, 15–22 mg/Wh of another potentially toxic gas, phosphoryl fluoride (POF3), was measured in some of the fire tests. Gas emissions when using water mist as extinguishing agent were also investigated. Fluoride gas emission can pose a serious toxic threat and the results are crucial f indings for risk assessment and management, especially for large Li-ion battery packs.