Meanwhile two fossil-fuel power stations in Australia have had much more serious fires recently, which are very unlikely to attract the international medias attention ...
- <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-17/victorian-government-declares-state-of-energy-emergency/13394958" rel="nofollow">https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-17/victorian-government-...</a>
- <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-02/qld-cs-energy-releases-photo-of-damaged-callide-power-station/100186330" rel="nofollow">https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-02/qld-cs-energy-release...</a>
This happened during initial testing, within the first 24 hours. Not good, but this is what testing is for.<p>Still I'm not sure if it's a good idea to have the individual units stand so close to each other, in the pictures it looks rather tight when you consider possible fires.
I recall an old article about these batteries (<a href="https://electrek.co/2016/12/19/tesla-fire-powerpack-test-safety/" rel="nofollow">https://electrek.co/2016/12/19/tesla-fire-powerpack-test-saf...</a>) in which testing showed that a failure within the battery itself would be contained by the cooling system, but a failure outside it wouldn't. Since the fire in the pictures on this article doesn't look contained, I wonder whether the cooling system was turned off at that moment (because it was not yet in operation, or because it was turned off after the failure started), or whether the fire started outside the battery modules (for instance, in the wiring).
Update: fire has been contained and their plan is to let it burn down.<p>I'd imagine regulations requiring better fire control may follow. Toxic plumes of smoke impacting residents for 100s of miles won't be acceptable.<p><a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-30/tesla-battery-fire-moorabool-geelong/100337488" rel="nofollow">https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-30/tesla-battery-fire-mo...</a>
Looks horribly contained<p><a href="https://static-ffx-io.cdn.ampproject.org/ii/AW/s/static.ffx.io/images/$zoom_0.48%2C$multiply_0.9735%2C$ratio_1.5%2C$width_756%2C$x_60%2C$y_0/t_crop_custom/q_86%2Cf_auto/c89fa2931aeb4c334b48648dc8c58f97c2c0422c" rel="nofollow">https://static-ffx-io.cdn.ampproject.org/ii/AW/s/static.ffx....</a><p>A fire I get but the lack of containment / control seems crazy
Sounds like Megapack wasn't that great an idea after all. Megapack is Tesla's term for a utility scale module containing about 3MWh of batteries, and this station (300MWh) is made of ~ 100 megapacks, one of which caught on fire.<p>Megapack is a relatively new thing. Earlier Tesla utility-scale batteries including the one in South Australia were made of smaller modules called Powerpack (I don't remember their size). A Powerpack catching on fire will presumably release fewer toxins and stuff than a Megapack, simply through being smaller.<p>It looks like some effort went into stopping the fire in the burning Megapack from spreading into other modules. So the modularity doesn't automatically contain the fire all by itself, but it apparently helps.<p>More coverage from a Tesla battery stan:<p><a href="https://reneweconomy.com.au/tesla-megapack-container-on-fire-at-site-of-australias-biggest-battery/" rel="nofollow">https://reneweconomy.com.au/tesla-megapack-container-on-fire...</a>
I would argue the problem is to give this job to a for profit consumer electronics company like Tesla at all. Tesla does not have the culture to engineer a nation-scale production site, they only know how to prototype.<p>The correct solution, I’d argue, would be to set up the different public governmental departments how the different departments are set up at Amazon: they have a public interface at everything they do and they do it to a level that you could sell it to the outside. And then to give this job to the public.
It’s crazy how actually terrible lithium-ion battery are for the environment while portrayed as green. From production to charging with usually fossil energy. Not even speaking of hazards like shown in this article.