RE: Somebody23 Apr 2021 23:24
I sent this to my MP and await a reply. I can't take credit for this as it was a cut and paste I put together from several posters on here last year.
In addition to contacting my M.P I have also contacted my local emergency services to warn them of the risks.
Please use and feel free to cut and paste as you see fit.
As the world transitions to using intermittent renewable energy, there will be a growing need for grid-scale battery storage. There are several technologies available, but the two current stand-out batteries are lithium ion and vanadium redox flow batteries (vrfb) because of their ‘round trip’ efficiencies. Lithium ion batteries are unsafe.
Lithium ion batteries don’t catch fire very often but when they do, the combustion products are (obviously) heat, often explosion, large volumes of poisonous hydrogen fluoride and other noxious fumes. For this reason alone, they should not be sited anywhere near or upwind of where we live or work, rather like nuclear power stations.
The nature of ‘big’ lithium-ion batteries is that they consist of many small cells wired together to give the power to drive, say, a car. The ‘entry level’ Tesla 3 is powered by 2,976 ‘2170’ (21mm diameter by 70mm) long cells arranged in groups of 31 (75kWh total). Lithium ion cells are prone to physical damage either during manufacture, installation or use and that damage can cause ‘thermal runaway’ in a single cell. That cell causes its neighbour to overheat which cascades until you have a catastrophic fire. The electric car that Richard Hammond famously crashed in Switzerland whilst filming The Grand Tour burned for two days as its batteries were slowly consumed by their own fire. More recently , a 2MWh lithium ion battery caught fire in Arizona, causing life-changing injuries to two firemen (https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/batteries-storage/dispute-erupts-over-what-sparked-an-explosive-liion-energy-storage-accident). I can cite dozens more fires.
As grid-scale batteries storing hundreds of megawatt-hours of electricity charged by wind or solar farms are going to become ubiquitous, there is enormous business opportunity for grid-scale battery manufacturers. Lithium ion battery manufacturers, clearly, would like to down-play the risk of fire with their technology in order to secure some of that market. The purpose of my email is to highlight the risk associated with large lithium-ion batteries so that if you hear of any proposals for them, you might steer companies away from that technology. I would prefer us to have learned the lesson from the Arizona fire rather than wait for a disaster in the UK, but fear Oxford Energy Hub’s 50 MW lithium ion battery currently under development may lead to us repeating American mistakes.
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