Days before President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office and took actions to stall the transition to clean energy, a disaster unfolded on the other side of the country that may have an outsize effect on the pace of the transition.
A fire broke out last Thursday at the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California, one of the largest battery energy storage systems in the world. The fire raged through the weekend, forcing local officials to evacuate nearby homes and close roads.
Battery storage is an essential part of the transition away from fossil fuels. It works in tandem with solar and wind power to provide electricity during periods when the renewable resources aren’t available. But lithium-ion batteries, the most common technology used in storage systems, are flammable. And if they catch fire, it can be difficult to extinguish.
Last week’s fire is the latest and largest of several at the Moss Landing site in recent years, and I expect that it will become the main example opponents of carbon-free electricity use to try to stop battery development in other places.
Of what I’ve read about French recent problematic projects, the high cost there was due to French bureaucracy, organizational mess and probably corruption, not due to anything about technology itself.
One should factor that in always. Building roads in Russia is so expensive definitely not because of anything unclear with the technology or the climate.
But the technology requires this amount of bureaucracy, else you get big problems. I trust physics, but i don’t trust humans. Especially if they can get money by skimping on security. The risks with renawables (except dams) are way smaller.