U.S. utility-scale battery storage capacity as of November 2023.svg.
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Consider me part of the group overwhelmed by our society's daily changes. I'm also overwhelmed by news that does not make it to the headlines. I just talked to a cousin who lives in the Bay Area, and he did not know about the fire that erupted at the lithium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS) in Moss Landing, California on January 16, 70 miles from his house. He hadn't heard about the BESS fire's toxic fallout or forced evacuations.
In Santa Fe County, New Mexico, most of the people I know have not heard about AES Corporation's proposal to build a 700-acre solar and lithium-ion BESS facility here.
Indeed, new technologies thrive-- new technologies including BESS, DeepSeek AI, crypto currencies, data centers to power the AIs, power plants including "renewable" and nuclear systems to power the data centers and crypto currency "mines". Information about their cradle-to-grave ecological hazards keeps hidden.
MAKING CRADLE-TO-GRAVE REALITIES VISIBLE
To reduce fossil-fuel use, corporations now commonly propose installing large-scale solar PV or wind facilities with backup battery-energy storage (BESS). Corporations call these facilities "green", "clean", "sustainable", "renewable" and/or "zero-emitting". These are marketing terms. In reality, manufacturing anything-- including solar PVs, industrial wind, battery-energy storage systems, e-vehicles, data centers and power plants of every kind-- requires fossil fuels, mining ores, smelting, refining, enormous amounts of water, chemicals, intercontinental shipping of raw materials, and generates worker hazards and toxic waste. These processes usually remain invisible to the public, even when they destroy wildlife habitats and/or harm human health. At their end-of-life, solar panels are hazardous waste. Like industrial wind turbines, they do not biodegrade. The public rarely sees waste sites.
The public rarely gets information about these technologies' fire hazards.
PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING
In a society driven by profit, how/can we prevent technology's hazards to wildlife habitats, indigenous communities and public health?
Professional engineering protocols offer the best safety mechanisms I know. To clarify, professional engineers (PEs) evaluate bridges, electrical power stations, water treatment facilities and other new projects. These subject-matter experts provide certified reports that all hazards have been mitigated and that projects are safe to go live-- or not. PEs carry liability for their reports.
Today's substack focuses on battery-energy storage. It's time to make BESS hazards visible. Given these systems' numerous failures, including Vistra Corporation's January 16, 2025 BESS fire at Moss Landing, every commissioner voting to permit a new BESS project should require that the project developer provide satisfactory answers to the following questions:
#1 Please show us your plan to fight possible battery fires.
#2 Has a professional engineer (PE) "sealed" this report?
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