Tesla’s Big Battery Goes Up In Smoke
July 30, 2021
By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
Now who would have guessed?
31 Comments
Comments are closed.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. – J Robert Oppenheimer.
Recent Comments
Newminster on Lord Callanan Misleads Pa… John Hultquist on Net Zero Watch calls on energy… oldbrew on Net Zero Watch calls on energy… Russ Wood on Compulsory smart meters crucia… gezza1298 on Lord Callanan Misleads Pa… saighdear on BBC Complaint–Ozone Hole saighdear on Net Zero Watch calls on energy… birdie3945 on BBC Complaint–Ozone Hole bsides2015 on BBC Wake Up To EV Reality George Warren on BBC Wake Up To EV Reality
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The Register informs
https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/30/tesla_battery_on_fire/
“ The “Victorian Big Battery” – an installation due to come online later this year – was commisisioned by authorities “to boost the state’s energy reliability, drive down electricity prices…”
LOL, LOL. LOL. LOL. LOL LOUDER
Apparently it was just being started up, so looks like a manufacturing defect rather than an age related failure. The big question is why didnt the protection systems trip out and if all else fails, why the last resort fuse did not operate. Just the first of what is going to be a fairly common occurrence. It seems rather stupid to pack them so close together, its a 300MWh array and the blazing unit is 3MWh. Can you imagine in 2060 when we are in the middle of winter, no wind, no sun relying on our batteries and they catch fire.
A battery fire is a conventional physical fire, an electrical fire, a chemical fire and a metal fire. Once a battery fire starts, continued electrical input or drain is often irrelevant. The fire likely started on the other side of the protective circuits so they would have no impact beyond cutting electricity.
And it will take several million MWh to make wind and solar work nationwide.
I am going to resist the temptation to come up with more than a few excruciatingly bad puns.
Oh go on, please generate a few, they’ll transform our afternoon.
I haven’t the capacitance to resist, they should be charged with assault on battery.
Shocking news.
Now who could have predicted this? Apart from eminent physicists that is.
See “Safety of Grid Scale Lithium-ion Battery Energy Storage Systems” by Profs Fordham, Allison and Melville.
As they say,”Li-ion batteries can fail by “thermal runaway” where overheating in a single faulty cell can propagate to neighbours with energy releases popularly known as “battery fires”. These are not strictly “fires” at all, requiring no oxygen to propagate.”
What massively irritates me is that the BBC choses to instantly highlight and dramatize a routine issue with a nuclear reactor in China as if the world is about to end but chose not to report on this serious battery fire. Biased? Not much.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-58026038
As a secondary issue just look at most of the comments from greenies on that twitter feed. They are blaming the press for overdramatizing a major fire! Seemingly if its “green” it could never be dangerous, one guy even claims EV car battery fires can be put out in 2 minutes…wonder how much he was paid for posting that nonsense.
It is very difficult to put out a battery fire in normal circumstances. If nothing else, they carry their own fuel which is capable of generating massive heat levels out of all proportion to the size of the battery. Many times they can’t be put out and just have to burn themselves out. And that is just a tiny laptop battery.
A *snag* 🤣 — and if you live locally:
‘A toxic smoke warning was reportedly issued in nearby areas’
https://www.engadget.com/tesla-megapack-fire-victorian-big-battery-105535797.html
Batteries work by having a fuel and oxidizer separated only by a thin membrane. It is worse than storing propane and oxygen tanks next to each other and inherentlt dangerous. The more powerful the battery the greater the danger. Lithium batteries are even worse because lithium burns in air and water. With water it ptoduces hydrogen which can then explode when air gets in.
The fire apparently started Friday morning local time.
The fire brigade say they cannot extinguish it and hope it “burns itself out” (about 24 hours).
The latest news is that a second battery is also on fire.
Moorabool is just north of Geelong.
The whole lot could go?
And this was just during the first 24 hrs of operation, once the peak loading comes in summer will be more pyrotechnics
Nope … not newsworthy
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/australia
Never happened
Watch the Climate Club turn this into an ‘anecdote’
While it will be delivering MW when they want it , reliably is a different matter and Im really curious how it manages grid frequency stability or even if it will stay online if theres some sharp HZ drop
Going to be fun putting that out
It was only a few days ago that Australia’s high commissioner to the UK wrote in the Daily telegraph how well their renewables were doing
Of course they would when its coal and gas thats providing the base load. South Australia has a high wind generation, but they rely on 2 other states interconnectors where the coal generation is 70%+
https://aemo.com.au/energy-systems/electricity/national-electricity-market-nem/data-nem/data-dashboard-nem
South Australia also has lots of gas-fired and diesel generation, for when the wind doesn’t blow at the right speed. These emit lots of “CARBON” but it must be invisible because no Green can see it.
I never understand why South Australia’s energy policy gets so much publicity. The state has a smaller population than a typical UK county – Kent for example has a bigger population in one 250th of the area of SA. With all that high solar insolation and open space to site wind turbines and solar panels and not much demand to satisfy, it really should be easy for them to run on renewables. The simple fact that they can’t rather proves just how impractical renewables really are!
Then again Australia has made nuclear power illegal (despite being one of the world’s largest producers of medical isotopes) so it’s anyone’s guess what they are thinking.
There is obviously NO battery fire in Australia. I know this because the Guardian’s online Australian edition has NO mention of it. Now there’s a surprise!
Forgot to add that there cannot be a fire because the BBC haven’t mentioned it either.
Certain GM EV cars also have a problem
https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/chevy-bolt-ev-fire-risk-recall/
14 July “General Motors and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a statement Wednesday urging some Chevrolet Bolt EV owners to park their cars outside and away from their homes or other buildings, due to the risk of fire.
GM also cautioned owners not to leave their Bolt EVs plugged in to a charger overnight”
Don’t leave them inside anywhere, don’t charge them overnight……because they might burst into a massive fire that can’t be put out by any readily available means, such as a fire truck??!!???
How can there not be a massive recall of all such vehicles?
Well the story is reported all over the internet, but not much in the media. The Sydney Morning Herald has some good photos:
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/fire-breaks-out-during-testing-of-victorian-big-battery-near-geelong-20210730-p58eh4.html
So overall, let me get the picture here.
These batteries are
1) Very expensive
2) Are not capable of supplying adequate backup to the grid in the event of a dearth of renewable energy.
3) Are only necessary because renewables destabilise the grid.
4) Have a high probability of being very dangerous.
5) Do not actually generate any useful power.
6) Are net consumers of energy.
I just wonder what there is to like about them.
Apart from those few drawbacks handicapping reliable electricity delivery, they have a lot going for them! …
Crony companies and corrupt government officials can make a large sums of money from them, while gold-plating their virtue signaling hubris.