In January, the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California caught fire. The battery storage plant was the largest in the world and held 300 megawatts of energy to supply the state’s grid, or about as much energy as a small nuclear reactor produces. The intense heat and smoke from the burning lithium-ion batteries forced an evacuation from the immediate area.
A few weeks later, another fire broke out at an oil refinery in Martinez, Calif. It, too, forced an evacuation due to health risks.
What’s the difference between the two events other than what fueled the fires? The battery storage fire has since contributed to opposition against similar proposed facilities, including those in three Massachusetts towns: Tewksbury, Westfield and Oakham. Yet no national outcry against refineries has occurred since the Martinez fire.
The safety risks of battery storage plants are real, but arguably much less significant than those of oil refineries and other facilities that store or process fossil fuel. The difference is that we have normalized the risks of the oil industry. Because we understand those risks better and our way of life is so dependent on petroleum-based products, we accept the risk, or don’t even think about it.
Large-scale battery storage, on the other hand, is new. The public does not yet understand the technology, its risks and most importantly, its benefits. When a negative event occurs, it gives people pause because they don’t have the context needed to assess it. That creates opportunities for misleading information about the safety of battery storage to spread. Other clean-energy technologies suffer from the same problem. Risks associated with petroleum-fueled technologies fade into the background while risks of battery-powered or otherwise-electrified technologies are placed in a spotlight.
Battery storage vs. peaking power plants
The Moss Landing facility is a battery energy storage system. BESS facilities are fast becoming a critical component of the nation’s electrical grid, having added more than 20 gigawatts of energy by the end of 2024.
A BESS stores excess energy produced by traditional power plants in low-demand periods for later use in higher demand times or during power disruptions. Battery storage keeps the grid resilient and it’s probably the cheapest way to do that. This is why grid operators have invested in BESS facilities in many states. In New Hampshire, Granite Shore Power is expected to replace the state’s last two coal-fired power plants with solar arrays plus battery storage by 2028. Texas has built out its battery storage capabilities since its disastrous grid failure in 2021, and this has greatly improved its grid resilience.
Without battery storage, a grid operator would need to turn on peaking power plants, which are often older, dirtier and more expensive traditional power plants that are on standby for high demand. They take hours to become operational, while a BESS can deliver energy to the grid almost immediately.
BESS facilities help keep your energy costs down and make delivery of electricity more reliable. Those are important benefits to consider against BESS safety risks.
EVs vs. gas-powered cars
Cars burst into flames every day on the nation’s highways and few of them are EVs. According to AutoinsuranceEZ research on car fire statistics, there were 1,530 car fires per 100,000 gas-powered vehicles sold in a recent 12-month period. Compare that to 25 fires per 100,000 EVs sold. However, hybrid vehicles had the highest rate at 3,475 fires per 100,000 sold. The research did not give a reason why hybrids seem to have the highest fire risk.
Why the impression that EVs are more dangerous? When EVs burn, they do so at a much higher temperature and are more difficult to extinguish. Those facts grab media attention and might result in an interview with fire personnel talking about the challenges battery fires present.
That bad rep is reinforced in other ways. How many times have you seen local news reports of house fires starting from an e-scooter lithium-ion battery? Although most EVs use lithium-ion batteries, they have sophisticated technology to monitor and prevent failures that cheap consumer devices lack. EV batteries also undergo extensive integrity tests to find defects and reduce fire risks even after a crash. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety claims that no fires have ever resulted from an EV crash test.
That risk will diminish even more soon. New battery technologies that are much less prone to burning are already in use in some countries, and they offer similar or better performance than lithium-ion. They also rely on materials such as iron and sodium, which are more readily available than lithium, a so-called “rare earth metal.”
Internal combustion engines, on the other hand, rely on creating small explosions by igniting highly flammable fuels. That stored fuel will always present a fire risk due to leaks, damage or malfunction. The exhaust creates secondary risks from carbon monoxide emissions. Again, we all know those risks exist, but we tend not to think about them.
Heat pumps vs. oil and gas furnaces
In many discussions with homeowners, I’ve never heard anyone say safety was a reason for considering a heat pump investment. Safety should be a much bigger selling point for heat pumps; it isn’t because the risks of oil- or gas-fired furnaces are no longer top of mind for most people.
With heat pumps, you don’t need to worry about carbon monoxide poisoning, explosions due to gas leaks or hazardous material removal after an oil leak. Heat pumps do not degrade the air quality in your home and they require less maintenance because they aren’t burning anything. I’m in the process of installing heat pumps in my home, and that peace of mind goes a long way when justifying the investment.
Michael Nadeau is a member of the Peterborough Renewable Energy Project.