Energy storage fails miserably – how soon will it be abandoned? – Watt?

From Manhattan Contrarian

Francis Menton

Energy from wind and sun – they are clean, green and free. Well, there is a small intermittent issue. But apparently the intermittency problem can be easily solved with a few batteries to store some power for the occasional calm night.

Or is the solution really that simple? Regular readers here will know that I wrote an energy storage report called “The Energy Storage Conundrum,” published by GWPF in December 2022. Yes, the amount of storage required is so large, and the cost is so high, that energy storage is simply unfeasible as a way to make wind and solar the dominant energy source on the grid. Calculations presented in the report concluded that for a predominantly wind/solar grid to survive a year without blackouts, the amount of energy storage required would be between 500 and 1,000 hours of average electricity usage. Keep this range in mind for the remainder of this article.

New York State and California simply ignored my warnings and didn't bother to do any simple math themselves, choosing instead to move forward with plans for a wind/solar grid powered primarily by batteries. The project was years in the making, and neither state had built the 1% of energy storage needed to make their fantasy systems work. But even in these very early stages, they ran into another unexpected problem: catastrophic fires.

Lithium-ion batteries have the unfortunate drawback that they can occasionally spontaneously ignite. This can be a noticeable problem for your phone or computer, and a bigger problem for your e-bike or car. But the batteries in these things, even electric cars, are tiny compared to the huge batteries needed to support the grid. Grid-scale batteries must store thousands of megawatt hours of electricity, while an electric vehicle might store 100 kilowatt hours. It appears that the frequency of these spontaneous combustions increases with battery size. Can this problem be solved? I have no idea. But it's certainly not settled yet.

In March 2024, I published a post titled “Energy Storage Completely Lost in New York and California,” reporting on the two states’ efforts to build giant battery farms to support their planned wind/solar ventures. At a stage when only one percent of the cells needed to support the project had been built, both companies' new battery farms encountered repeated instances of huge and catastrophic spontaneous combustion.

The average electricity demand in New York State is about 17,000 MW, which means that the storage capacity required for a future predominantly wind/solar system will be 500 to 1000 hours, or 8,500 to 17,000 GWh. Governor Hochul has set a (ridiculous) goal of building 24 GWh of energy storage for the state by 2030, and I reported in a March 2024 post that 1.2 GWh of that would be by August 2023 The energy storage facilities have all been built. However, between May and July 2023, three fires broke out at then-built grid battery storage facilities in New York:

• May 31, a battery next generation energy company An electrical substation installed in East Hampton caught fire.
• On June 26, fire alarms went off at two battery banks owned and operated by the company. Fusion energy power Warwick, Orange County; one later caught fire.
• On July 27, another Convergent battery at the Chaumont solar farm caught fire and burned for four days.

Source: This article from Canary Media, August 2023.

In California, their average power demand is about 30,000 MW, which means they need 500 to 1000 hours of battery storage to support their wind/solar system dreams, which would require 15,000 GWh to 30,000 GWh of batteries. The following is a survey of energy storage systems in California in October 2024. Of course, they used the wrong units. These people are simply countless. However, we know they are talking about 4-hour lithium-ion batteries, so multiply by 4 and divide by 1000 to get the 53.564 GWh of storage capacity that has been built to date. This would account for approximately 0.18% to 0.36% of the energy storage they need to support their primary wind/solar systems.

However, despite the minimal amount of storage built so far, California has experienced frequent spontaneous fires. My March 2024 post reported on two of these fires (from an October 2023 Los Angeles Times article):

• September 2022, Tesla Megapack on fire A battery storage facility operated by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. in the Northern California town of Moss Landing.
• fire broke out Valley Center Energy Storage Facility September 18 in San Diego County [2023].

Now we have our worst fire, this time at the Moss Landing facility. According to an August 2023 energy storage news report, the Moss Landing facility will become the world's largest energy storage facility after capacity is expanded to 3GWh in 2023. The fire broke out yesterday (January 16) and appears to still be burning to some extent at the time of writing. I can't estimate how much of the facility was destroyed, but it wasn't a small part. Here are pictures of the fire from NPR:

NBC News reported today that the 7,600-acre area surrounding the facility has been mandated to evacuate. 7600 acres approximately 12 square miles. According to NBC, approximately 1,200 to 1,500 residents living in the area were evacuated.

NBC quoted Monterey County District 2 Supervisor Glenn Church as saying 'Worst-case scenario for disaster' No one expected it. The church continued:

“This is really more than just a fire, it's really a wake-up call to the industry that if we're going to continue to develop sustainable energy, we need to have safe battery systems,” Church said.

Church was further quoted as saying that this was the fourth fire at the facility since 2019. There have been fires in 2021.

Back in New York, my friend and co-author Richard Ellenbogen sent me an email pointing out that we were building a massive grid-scale battery storage facility on the east bank of the East River across from midtown Manhattan. facility. I don't know if construction has actually started yet, but this project has been in the works for several years and has received multiple regulatory approvals. Here's an article from the New York City Economic Development Corporation indicating that financing for the project ends in May 2024. The area around the facility would include a swath of midtown Manhattan and another swath of densely populated West Queens — hundreds of thousands of people, not the paltry 1,200-1,500 people California just evacuated. What are our New York cops thinking? In fact, EDC's press release quotes many of them. Here are a few quotes:

“Deploying battery storage at scale helps New York City advance its PlaNYC goals for a clean, reliable and equitable future.” Elijah Hutchinson, director of the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice. “NYCIDA's support of this 100-megawatt project will help reduce our reliance on polluting fossil fuels and will be one of the largest battery storage installations in the state when completed.”

“For decades, residents of historically disadvantaged neighborhoods in Queens have suffered the negative impacts of peak plant pollution. Queens Borough President Donovan Richards. “A battery storage facility in Astoria will help address this long-standing injustice and create a healthier environment for all people in Queens. I commend NYCEDC and NYCIDA for taking decisive steps to ensure this by promoting this projects that produce clean and renewable energy to support our city’s green economy.

Okay then. This is the level of incompetence we are dealing with.

You might think that the recent Moss Landing disaster would be big news, but it's not that serious. I found articles on NPR, CBS, and NBC, but not on sites like the New York Times. I guess this news is not “printable”.

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