John, I am an Electrical Engineer with a good 45 years experience accross a very wide range of, projects world wide and over the last 8 years design of solar systems and battery storage systems. Every point you have made in this video is totally valid and I have had an up hill battle getting clients to accept my designs of which incorporate the safefy measures you mention, so I continuously walk away. It seems morals, ethics and proffessional responsibility are rare, these days, its all about the $, Kind regards John Gurney
John, have you assessed the "Cerenergy" storage battery tech? Aussie company Altech has the rights to this which uses no lithium, cobalt, copper, graphite or manganese, and cannot catch fire.... ua-cam.com/video/-pnBiiHRb9M/v-deo.html
Services engineer here: I was asked to be involved in the equivalent very close sites to this (SW of Rockhampton but I'm bound by NDAs). All they wanted was hydrant coverage but no-one was going to be able to use these for pretty obvious reasons as DTS doesn't address such hazards. QFES advised they'd sit on a hill upwind and watch the site burn due to concerns about their employees safety. A bit better with some concrete barriers but something we didn't proceed with as the client was all about lowest cost as you say. Government has been asleep at the wheel with regards to legislation so it's really difficult to get a client to adopt recommendations, even when it's backed by available research and case studies (like this event is going to be)
@@ken-mb5cp Issue is that it's all about the dollars. Some risk mitigation measures don't cost a lot yet if it impacts profits and it's not a code requirement then good luck getting them implemented. Legislation exists for a reason but Australia hasn't kept up with the pace of technology with regards to batteries.
@@ken-mb5cp After 45 years of a career, retirement is a serious option - on a personal level, at some point the rewards aren't worth the effort. I'm almost to 40 years as an engineer myself - chemical and mechanical - and the current trends on these "Green" and "Renewable" energy projects has me running the numbers on what I need to have squirreled away in order to be able to retire. A fundamental issue with these technologies is that they make zero economic sense without government subsidies - massive expenditures of our taxes - in order to be propped up and not fail miserably to pay for themselves. Even in the upside-down world of state/centrally planned economics, these projects still need to be capitalized, and there are some limits to just how much of our taxed monies can be spent before a project still won't make a pretense of viability. So, corners are cut in order to reduce CAPEX, and thus Total Installed Cost. There is the usual tension between the finance types and the technical types, aggravated because we are now reaping the results of 30+ years of diminished manufacturing activity in the Western oriented countries - our "senior" engineers have much less practical experience than the previous generations, and the talent pool is shallow to begin with. Smart kids with university degrees and access to the Internet just doesn't fully make up for not having been involved in more projects. And, that is where we lose our institutional memory of incidents like Chernobyl and Bhopal and Texas City (2 different times!)
@@boriskrotchgruber3730 Does John think the technology is viable in the first place? That wasn’t made clear. If it is let’s get at the cause of the problem and fix it or at least lower the odds of thermal runaway. If it’s not let’s scrap it. I think it benefits society to move away from using fossil fuels for energy when there appears to be cleaner and cheaper solutions available. That being said I agree these fires are serious and need to addressed. I hope no one is hurt.
The fire at the Telsa battery farm in Victoria kicked off during initial testing for the commissioning of the facility. I was a member of the volunteer fire brigade and the battery farm fell into our primary response area, and we were still in the process of trying to work out what we would do if there was a fire there, as we were just a tin shed brigade with one tanker and farmers from the surrounding area. End story, one megapack went into thermal runaway due to an malfunction of the internal coolant system, caught fire, set a second pack on fire, and away it went. The plan we came up with was to keep cooling the surrounding megapack with water from multiple trucks and crews, and let the fire burn. It tied up resources and multiple crews for a week, and we learned on the fly. The one factor in our favour is that there are no nearby homes, as it was a fair way out of Geelong.
Just looking at some news sites, they state it was a minor fire that didn't require water. I believe the correct statement would be that it's a pretty freaking serious fire for which water would be freaking pointless.
So the glorified shipping containers could have pressurised water supply forced in at the bottom... and when the water gets to the top...the battery is flooded and runaway controlled
you can't put enough water on those to put them out that's why they don't flood the urning ships with water it would sink the ship but I wouldn't put the fire out
@@JohnSmith-pl2bk for supporting evidence, ua-cam.com/video/4xjDdmv8urk/v-deo.html. That was for EV fires with water applied directly into the storage space. Old technology risks are mitigated, new technology risks are still in the 'for profit' stage ;-)
@@sprint48219It isn’t about putting the fire. The idea is to flood it before the fire breaks out, thereby removing the heat that’s causing the thermal runaway.
Last year I was in the process of planning a conversion to lithium phosphate battery banks and electric rather than diesel motors on my catamaran yacht. My constant nagging worry was a battery fire or thermal runaway. I had previously been burnt and suffered burns to my throat and palate from a drones battery exploding while under charge. The thought of this happening at sea with nowhere to hide but the life raft finally made me cancel the project.
@@grahamstrouse1165 Auckland transport are in the process of building 2. EV ferries at McMillan and wing bodybuilders in Auckland now as has been reported in a newspaper, with pictures
LiFeP04 batteries, used properly, are generally very safe, but I`ve heard of mysterious "smoking battery" problems even with the exact model I use for emergency air conditioning in my camper. They are FAR safer than regular lithium ion cells though which can violently explode in flames, and I have 9 portable power packs of those and about 15 small power banks containing them. It`s scary.
Lithium Iron Phosphate's thermal runaway point is much higher than Lithium NMC. The issue with any of these batteries is if they get wet or submerged. This would be the major concern on a boat. It really depends on the setup and not something I would jerry-rig.
Did a job in an "explosives factory" once. As you said, the factory and its process were set inside a huge earth mound with a staggered entrance to reduce the blast; the mound was designed to bury building to contain the blast and chemical fall out. There were a set number of people to run the process; one in, one out, to limit the dead.
@philwoodfordjjj8928 I did a few deliveries to the cracker factory at Bajool (actually, not too far from Bouldie). The safety protocols were intense. I had a 'buddy' with me the entire time I was on site, and at each point I entered or traversed, he'd stop and explain the safety procedures for that area, with the common thing being, "If an emergency happens, you stick by my side."
Li-ion batteries are oxidizer(Cobalt Oxide) and reducer (Li) near each other, separated by a thin membrane. This is an explosive by design! Plus you have hexafluoride in the electrolyte to make the explosion very toxic. Very environmental!
Bouldercombe resident here happy to add some Erin B. to your show. The town does not have reticulated and processed water. Every house has both a bore water system and septic sewer. Many rely on rain water as an alternate to a water bore. So building a water dousing system at the site would have been a very expensive upgrade, but hey, it's only cow paddocks to the North and downhill from the batteries. As for me I'm some 4.5km further South and 40m higher than the batteries and the typical SE breeze is from the East at the moment so anxiety levels are low. No doubt many of the STEM persuasion would agree with you John that the safety side has been left wanting, particularly when giving thought to if the batteries installed were conventional Lead Acid variants as opposed to the omnipresent Lithium types... Oh, and the battery was still smoldering at 3:30pm, some 20hrs after the event initiated, with a handful of yellow shirted employees standing around. The Police and Fire service had all gone home.
We're currently fighting against a proposed 200MW stand alone BESS here in Central West NSW which will be around 4 kilometres from our home and and 6 kilometres from the town. The submissions for this project close next Wednesday. Our water treatment plant is less than 4 kilometres from the proposed site and many residents rely on tank water, and there are also creeks nearby. In addition there is a massive aquifer that runs underbour entire region. I'm sorry to hear about the fire at the battery. There isn't any level of government that considers the considerable risks associated with renewable technology. We have an 87MW commercial solar project about three kilometres from our home which has had two separate fire dramas. The first came very close to the substation and panels. Several of the big fire trucks came in as the fire started across the road from the project but it was so boggy after recent rain they couldn't get near the fire. Fortunately three helicopter water bombers came in and extinguished the fire within metres of the panels and substation. The second fire at this same solar project started within the solar arrays last April. Fortunately the conditions were benign and I don't believe the panels actually ignited. The Rural Bushfire Brigade and NSW Firefighters attended and adopted a watch and wait approach. There was 18 hectares of solar panels damaged in the grass fire. Most people don't know that there are different types of solar panels and these ones are of the thin film cadmium/tellurium variety. The smoke was seen from our home and was thick and billowing. I don't know what protection the firefighters in the vicinity of the fire had or if they understood the nature of the panels that had been installed. Given that so many people use tank water here we are concerned that the smoke could settle on roofs and contaminate the water supplies. We don't know if the soil was contaminated and we are trying to find out what happened to the damaged panels. The project was only commissioned in 2019 and the original developer had stated that the panels would be shipped to Malaysia at end-of-life for specialist recycling and that this was the closest such plant to Australia. These panels require acid and chemical baths to separate out the 'valuable' materials. They must not go to landfill given their toxic nature. The project is on to its third owner and they too are looking to sell. The project has been plagued with problems, has been 'written down' and I don't believe it's listed on the stock exchange now. What do you think the chances are of those panels being properly disposed of? We have the misfortune of living in a designated Renewable Energy Zone and 37 projects have been proposed so far for our region. Our beautiful historic town will be surrounded by renewables including 69 wind turbines standing 280m high and 200m wide. There have been 800 turbines proposed so far for the region. It is just soul destroying.
@@margaretarmstrong2445 Water fire suppression systems built in are the answer both to the battery projects (fill the battery containers with water pressurised from a pump and damn quickly...that takes care of fire and thermal runaway. The solar panels all need fire sprinklers under them to dampen the ground in fact clear ground at all times should be a building permit requirement... As for the recycling... the original project builders should have a bond condition on them... 10% of the original project cost as a bond held in escrow and not refundable... all to be used to recycle at the end of the project whoever the final owners happen to be.n
@@margaretarmstrong2445 regional wind_turbine farms/parks attract storms! Global scale wind turbine farms ( on the Northern Hemisphere) already divert global wind circulation (diminishing the Coriolis effect) the Westerlies are diminished, more wind is streaming directly in North - South direction. In Europe, the North Sea winter storms are are diminished from raging heavily 2 or 3 days/nights to a mere few afternoon hours! in summer the thunderstorm clouds are slowed down in lateral movement, so they can tower up higher, causing local strong up-drafts and larger hail-stones! Not all changes in (warmer) climate effects, can be attributed to CO2_greenhouse effect. I have read that 50 times more CO2 is dissolved in the ocean waters than is in the atmosphere (50 times! not 50%)! There You go, narrow minded alarmists, claiming strict legal actions to "save" the climate! Geological processes are still stronger than human activities. 50% or more of all the ocean waters are at a cold 4°C all the waters below -1800_m; that is a lot of cold, probably left over from the last ice ages. Practically only the top of the oceans heat up and cause more evaporation. But in combination with the reduced global wind circulation, more of all that rainfall will come down over the oceans. Especially the Northern continents could be affected so.
@@margaretarmstrong2445 my thoughts and prayers are with you Margaret. The answer to these climate hoax crimes is to hold governments and their handlers to account; the issue is how to do that in this money and control obsessed world.
@@nicklovell8148 Thank you for your kind response. My aim is to educate people on the true nature of the renewables industry as much as I can, which isn't easy when even posts such as these are often removed, or the responses to my posts. If the general public knew the true nature of this infrastructure no one would support it. There is not one benefit to be had by going down the renewables track. It creates massive environmental damage at every stage of it's production, operation, and disposal. It will destroy our economy and it can produce only a fraction of its nameplate capacity. Of course this doesn't affect people living in the cities, but the electricity bills and collapsed economy will, and of course the blackouts. I'll keep writing to politicians too, but it's hard to get past the bureaucratic gatekeepers.
John. A retired RFS Mate that lives locally.. heard about the fire. He rang local police. And told them to evacuate the locals due to fumes.. and estimated the fire will last 4 days.. due to how many battery packs..
Someone should tell these guys about the hierarchy of control. If they don't have anyone keeping an eye on things, they don't even have the most basic and least effective administrative controls....
@@dfor50 Not to mention all of the "reserve volunteer" fire fighters will jump into action to watch the campfire while the "tax payer fare meter" runs. Seems like the locals are the only people that get shafted in this, as usual.
never saw a new car explode,, just warrenty claims, like, the door stix, or wipers dont work.. not,, my fkn 100k car burst into flames 3 hrs after i bought it.. but, its o.k., it saves the environment,al..people..
Years ago, I was interested in installing a Tesla ‘power wall’ in my house. At the time, it was too expensive….and I’m glad that it was. The more I know about this technology, the further away from it I want to be.
I will put lead acid batteries in my home before I put that many lithium cells in one place. Lion batteries are great,in small numbers, but that many together is too risky even with all the safety monitoring. The risk on an unextinguishable fire is just too much of a problem.
@15 about minutes, you talked about barriers to separate the modules so one disaster doesn't spread to nearby modules etc. Recently while passing by a power substation, (in a suburban area with houses next door), as a passenger rather than a driver, I noticed for the first time, massive concrete walls between the transformers and switches for each of the phases. So even in ordinary power systems this seems to be standard procedure.
Yep it’s been mandated for a fair while, along with containment systems in case transformers leak. I can’t imagine the firefighting runoff would be too healthy for anything consuming the groundwater.
Correct. Not only that - there are bund walls designed to contain the TOTAL amount of coolant/insulation oil within each transformer should it rupture. I worked in the power distribution industry for 47 years.
when they pump oil, diesel, petrol, into those huge round modules, theres an earth bank, big enough to contain a rupture, spill.. no fire, no explosion, no deadly fumes,. why,,are we fkng with ev bs..
Same thing in 'Murica!...a pile of batteries caught fire, and it took days to figure out they'd let it burn out. Local gov't didn't even know there was a business in the building!
If they built structures between them to stop them setting fire to each other then they would have to admit that they might catch fire.... I dont think they want to do that...
Any electrical installation can catch fire. Even cells that are substantially more resilient than their Cobalt brothers. Everything will burn if you get it hot enough, including LFP cells....
@@JohnSmith-pl2bk Some of them are. Many are make-work for bureaucrats. According to OSHA, I should be in a harness with fall prevention measures in place when I work higher than 4'. NOBODY does this. Because it's stupid. HEPA rated vacuum when drilling concrete for a few holes to mount a fixture? Again, nobody does this. Because it's stupid. The Reward vs Risk is not there.
Nonsense. Of course they would absolutely want to admit they might catch fire, and build structures between them to stop them setting fire to each other right inside the containers. Their bad if they didn't as a miss like that will carry a heavy insurance penalty. They should be designed so the fire reliably blows out the sides, not out the ends.
Not two hours: probably just a few minutes. The main use of these batteries - I believe - is to stabilise grid voltage. We used to get that free with the huge flywheels in the alternators at the coal power stations - not that we had as much need for it.
@@oldcynic6964You simply would not want to drain these batteries from full in "just a few minutes". At least half an hour (i.e. 2C) would be about the maximum discharge rate for this chemistry. Otherwise you're prematurely shortening their lifetime.
@@robertstanley3832 Well clean green Switzerland has one nuclear reactor beside each of 4 large cities...it used to be 5. They use the cheap night rate base load nuclear power to pump water back up into the mountain lakes...so that same water can then flow through the hydro generators at peak load during the day. The biggest water battery system in the world...all possible through nuclear power right at their cities.
You make very good points JC. One you may have missed is the electrification of underground ICE mining vehicles. Not the big stuff that runs on mains power, the converted ICE vehicles they use to greenwash the operation and look good. How will a thermal runaway look in a modified landcruiser at the bottom of a coal mine ? Maybe you could chase that up ? 👍
@@jetdigitalthose are coal fires. These things can't be put out. Got one here in Boulder, Colorado, US. Dam thing has been burning for 150 years and a few years ago started a grass fire that burn down over a thousand houses. Kind of like a underground evil giant waiting to come out and destroy all at any moment.
@@jetdigitalYou’re thinking of Centralia. The Centralia fire started in 1962 when some bright spark decided to clean out the accumulated rubbish in an abandoned coal mine by burning it. Turns out there was still plenty of coal left. The fire probably could have been contained in the early days and weeks but the town didn’t want to spend the money to cut the fire off at the pass, so to speak, and it eventually got to a point where there was simply no stopping it. The ground beneath the town became unsteady, cracks and sinkholes started open in everywhere & toxic gasses filled the atmosphere. Eventually it became clear that the only realistic option was to abandon town & the population began to dwindle, slowly at first, than more rapidly. A few people stayed on, though. As of 2020 there were still five official residents of Centralia, PA, although I’m pretty sure that number’s dropped since then. Geologists estimate that there’s enough coal left in the seam to keep the fire burning for about 250 years.
@@stanleytolle416Not the Centralia fire. I mean, it could have been, at one point, but the town wanted cheap solutions. By the time they realize there were none it was too late and the fire and spread too wide.
There was a similar fire in a “ big battery” near Geelong in Victoria a couple of years ago. The fire brigade just let it burn itself out. That took about 4 days.
Well, cmon now, some of these people are oxygen thieves man. Some are unfairly taking air from the more logic inclined and reality based of us. 😂😂😂😅😅😅😢
About 2 years ago same thing happened to the Big Battery on the outskirts of Geelong. Victoria's largest regional town. These too were Tesla Mega Packs. FYI.
@@douge1714 Oddly enough, the first Tesla Big Battery in Australia (the one in SA) hasn't experienced a thermal runaway event yet. Given that it's the oldest and presumably an earlier model than the other two, you'd think if any of these would have failed by now it'd be that one.
SAs big battery at Hornsdale was indeed a Tesla system, but it predated these “Megapack” systems and 😊uses a different assembly method. It is also suspected to heve used Samsung made cells, rather than the Tesla USA made cells in the Megapacks. So , several possible differences in the construction.
I can see it now John, city carparks with hundreds of thermal runaway fires amongst hundreds of Ev's. I My wife has an ev supplied by her job, it never goes into our garage, rather, it's on the driveway as far from our home as possible. I am not taking the risk. In agreeance with you with your thoughts and facts. Keep up the great content.
@@Subgunmanthat’s interesting- do you know which insurance companies… it would be nice to know (probably YOUI - they do anything to get out of paying a claim)
Saw the photo. There should be a firewall between each pack. We had to spend thousands on a firewall in our home. Which is crazy but no firewall here. These batteries are used for arbitrage. They fill them up with free green energy during the day and sell it back at Peek Price. Although the tax payer paid for these. Also, Redflow is an Aussie company but they didn't want to use anything we make as usual. Anything that creates jobs is BAD....
Megapacks are designed to withstand an adjacent megapack fire at only 6 inches on the narrow edge, no firewall necessary. They redesigned the steel vents at the top after a fire moved from one pack to a second pack last year due to high winds. All new packs have the redesigned vents ( hence, no adjacent packs were affected ) and all older units are being retrofitted. Tesla will do another analysis from this fire, make changes, and retrofit applicable hardware and software changes across the fleet worldwide.
Because they don't want any bad PR. This stuff will continue to be rolled out at great expense to the taxpayer, without any regard for safety, efficacy, or actual environmental damage, until people wake up and kick out all the WEF stooges in their governments.
@@davidnobular9220 If it was just about money, they wouldn't be doing these ridiculous white elephant projects. Read the WEFs 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Then you will understand that "degrowth" is one of the things on the agenda. They are actively trying to make things unsustainable for businesses, and the average person. The plan is not for everyone to own electric cars, but to give them the illusion they will all be transitioning to electric, so they will accept the coming changes. Ultimately the goal is for most people to have no access to private transportation, and for them to live in "15 minute cities" It sounds crazy, and it is. But that's what they are planning, and your leaders are completely captured by these people, and all the corporations are stupidly going along with it, in the hope that they will be allowed to stay in business as their entire business model is being legeslated away. They think if they back the winning team they will be rewarded, but they are actually just agreeing to their own death sentence. Our leaders know electric cars aren't going to work, and they know they are worse for the environment than conventional cars. Once EVs have served their purpose, they will also be bad, and they will make it unaffordable or illegal for you to drive them. Meanwhile they will also make it so you can't afford electricity, food, shelter ect, and your employment situation will become very precarious. "Sustainability" means making the entire economic, social and governmental order we currently have unsustainable. Just as the old communist revolutionaries did. And justike them, these people are focused on tearing down the current order, but really have few if any ideas about what to replace it with. They are dangerous lunatics, and in a sane world Klaus Schwab would be the preserve of Austin Powers type satire of the Bond villain archetype. Not a real person who somehow has managed to influence nearly every government in the world. It's crazy enough someone like him actually exists, but the fact that the most powerful people in the world listen to him and take him seriously? That's how you know we are completely screwed.
Consider how long it took the US to give up leaded gas. The UK still has a big asbestos problem even though they don’t mine the stuff anymore. It’s hard to stop stupid once it gain some momentum.
Had a similar fire not that long ago down here in Vic. The priority was to keep the adjacent packs from going into thermal runaway by spraying water constantly whilst also precipiating out as much nasty shit as possible. I don't know exactly what came of it but I do know there were major changes made in operating procedures before the pack was brought online.
So the glorified shipping containers could have pressurised water supply forced in at the bottom... and when the water gets to the top...the battery is flooded and runaway controlled
@@JohnSmith-pl2bk No once they go into runaway they can literally burn under water the best you can do is attempt to keep the heat down on adjacent packs to stop them going into runaway
As the numbers of these thermal runaway disasters keep keep rising steadily, whether it be this type of installation or just amongst the quickly growing population of EVs on this planet, I can't help seeing the similarity between Elon Musk's words of confidence re their safety, and the same words from the late Stockton Rush....and we all know how that ended.
Haven't you noticed the fast tracking or side stepping of normal planning regs for "green" projects? Perfectly ok to deforest large amounts of land (next to national parks) for a windfarm.
Seems to happen throughout the green agenda, just look at the reduction in fire resistance for eco cladding for Tower blocks. It seems when eco is involved everything else goes out of the window. Having seen a couple of videos of buses burning recently, I am not surprised that EVangelists think that ice vehicles are just as dangerous. What on earth happened to all those decades of fire resistant materials being mandated for pretty much everything, from car interiors to furniture. You might as well have filled the buses with wood, paper and paint thinners the way they burn. It obviously wasn't the fuel, it is the flammable interiors that are destroying the whole thing. It is like they are talking about getting rid of the refrigerants that were made to replace the very safe refrigerants used before the ozone hole scare. Now they are talking about using ancient refrigerants such as butane, ammonia and c02 for crying out loud. Imagine a butane leak from a fridge in your house! I saw a video of the aftermath of a fridge explosion, yes an explosion, in America. It totally destroyed the kitchen and fortunately no one was near it. But that is what they are planning. Ammonia is very toxic so you don't want that leaking in your house. And using co2 to save co2!!! We all know things leak occasionally, but at least mankind had advanced enough to find refrigerants and propellants that didn't pose an immediate threat to the user. And they started using fire retardent materials. Now we seem to be going backwards to where immediate harm is deemed preferable to a potentially imaginary harm decades into the future. Incidentally aerosol can propellant is often butane now, so is very flammable. Donk smoke while applying your hairspray folks.
Look at the EV that came off the Fremantle Highway. About a month later, one of the cars started to burn again as it was being taken off the ship. They plonked the EV into a big swimming pool to cool it down and stop the ship from bursting into flames again. But EVs and their batteries are perfectly safe.
The ABC said, or quoted, that "There is no worry for members of the public in terms of that toxic gas issue." If I lived there I'd take that as advice that it was a good time to visit relatives in S.A.
Another brilliant video John that every politician in every country should be made to watch. Here in the UK there are huge battery installations being built in large clear span buildings. Farmers are being offered incentives to either erect or convert these buildings which will house batteries with an estimated 20 years of life. In an outside installation such as the one you speak of there is a chance of fire fighting. In a large building with 40 or more battery units no one has a cat in hells chance.
Thanks for covering this J you’re a legend. I always say “in a world of opinion what do facts matter” its ironic that in a time when everyone has a voice few have any fact or truth. Its simple weve all got to ease up in our consumption and intercontinental travel
Very entertaining John. If ever I am game enough to mention my concerns with EV's and lithium batteries in general, I am bombarded by EV fanboys who are (I must congratulate the Americans for this most apt and descriptive term) butt hurt by any criticism of their pet.
Mentioned in one of your previous videos about what happens when one of our countries big batteries experiences thermal runaway. It was never a case of if, but when, just as your what if this happens in an underground car park filled with EVs, maybe located under a high rise. I believe due diligence, the hierarchy of controls just hasn't been conducted on big pictures stuff. There would be ways to engineer out some of these dangers, maybe underground bunkers. We haven't seen anything yet, just a matter of time. I was asked to conduct suitability testing on a magical lithium battery being looked at to replace diesel generators for aircraft starting in the 90s. During load testing the unit suffered a thermal runaway, the fumes put me in hospital overnight and the US company refused to supply a msds.
Boeing put these stupid things in the 787 for the avionics. Unsurprisingly they had fires, fortunately while on the ground. They just put it in a big metal box which was vented overboard via a bursting disk. Gotta love Boeing.
Fact is the answer is simple……drop this dangerous rubbish and go back to traditional power generation. The climate change scam is all that’s driving this and that’s just about government wanting to control us.
@@gregculverwell i'm from and still live in the lazy B's home area, Seattle. We definitely dn't love the new B since around that period, fifteen years ago , which is when they started making shit decisions for the first time EVER. Fascinating to see and disgustingly stupid (blame engineering-group-think, but in a very bad way/light, and blame the newer 'merica which is indeed zany, offputting and too many ultraconservatives who believe in nonsense, including simply illogical risk/reward ratios, including pie in the sky.
As a Yank me-self, very sorry to hear that about the american co. As u may know, american co's are THE most vulnerable to lawsuits for civil damages and ideally you'd sue them for refusing to provide that info, and or nail them for not having written one, if they didn't write one. Very disgusted with american corporate behavior since around 25 years ago, it started going way way out of whack. We are not happy campers here, as the slow rise of vile assholery/fckery has slowly gotten into far too many ppl including ppl as young as a decade younger than me, i'm just over 50. We're working on improving the society bit by bit now, as we take it back to the actually relatively secure society it was before, when it would have been socialy unacceptable to conceal carry a pistol, or open carry even in the more rural areas. Thirty years ago, when a rich kid who liked to pack heat came to a party, we thought of him as unstable. And he was.
Not forgetting Victoria's "Big Battery" fire which took out two megapacks in July 2021. The layout had the containers back to back in the middle row, and I'm pretty sure one container took out the other. I thought at the time they were too close together and there was no containment built in to the site. That project (350MW/450MWh) also underwent self immolation in the early commissioning phase of the project. I can't see these things having a 20 year life span. I use a lot of lithium ion, and it's not normal for them to last much more than ten years under ideal conditions. Think about that for a bit... LiFePO *is* safer, in as much as the temperature required for thermal runaway is almost an order of magnitude higher. Unfortunately when you put that many batteries in close proximity to each other it changes a risk from an outlier into a near certainty.
If this happens in the US, and a firefighting crew has to be on site, to monitor it, the city or county government, of that crew, is going to send you a bill. And they charge quite handsomely, on the hourly basis ! "Software monitoring" Sounds like Stockton Rush, before he was turned into paste, at Ocean Gate !
Coincidentally, I did fire and emergency training at work today, and the trainer didn't mention lithium batteries. So I asked him what to do in an emergency, and he didn't have too many answers.
I rang that 24 hour support number from Genex and the woman told me to run away from the explosion as quickly as possible. I am eternally thankful for that advice as I would never have thought of that.
Saw this in the early am and thought you'd be all over this. Thanks for the report, the great insight. Just hope we all learn; yeah, nah. On the subject of on-site water deployment, as a building designer here in NSW, all new works and well as adds & alts in bushfire mapped areas require at least 5klts of dedicated storage. Larger blocks require more, but at least 5klts for a granny flat or sunroom. Yet this installations? Not so much. Criminal.
It's a Chemical fire, the only way to stop these things is to cool them down - If you can - Might be an idea to watch the video before commenting though ignorance or are you being disingenuous ?@@parttimephilosopher7097
@@parttimephilosopher7097if you have the modules separated by some kind of barrier it's not at all unreasonable to disconnect the offending module and flood it with water. That's how most fire departments deal with EV fires. Either by spraying the battery directly or just putting the car into a shipping container full of water.
@@dudeinanofficechair7662 yeah, I know that. If they have a special blanket to cover the EV, that's better though. I don't know how well water could work with a Megapack since I think they are mounted to make sure water drains away quickly. I suspect it would not work well. Batteries are becoming a lot safer but we're a few years away from the risks being close to completely eliminated.
@@parttimephilosopher7097 if you care you can engineer it. Put each one in a bucket with a closable valve. If it starts to run away close the valve, hit the electrical disconnect, and turn on the faucet. You could even automate it if you want. There's probably a bunch of ways to accomplish similar levels of safety. I think the frustration is nothing like this was done. It would have cost more money, no one made them, and they didn't actually care. Maybe we'll find out they did take a bunch of precautions and this really was a fluke, but that's looking unlikely.
Love your work and it is very insightful and educational. Solar and EVs are a great concept, but more regulatory work and research are definitely needed. Keep up the good work, mate. Cheers.
They needed to build concrete encase walls around each module so it can be flooded by water. They needed pumps from a extensive water source. .Also each module needed a vapour capture system. One can only imagine the extra cost of these features? Suddenly the "ooh soon cheap" power source is not so cheap is it?
@@weinisable The Swiss have had pumped water storage for decades...courtesy of there 5 (now 4) nuclear reactors, one outside every large city... giving a 3 cents per kilowatt/hr 24 hour per day baseload electrical output... which at night is used to pump that water back up into the high mountain lakes... to be released via the hydro generators at peak load times the following day... Note: NUCLEAR CHEAP CONSTANT electricity generation...
hi john....been watching for a long time and the work you are doing to bring the EV fire problem to the public is your finest hour. i write to alert you (if you are not already aware) of a huge fire at Luton (London) airport in the UK. No word yet if EV to blame but the situation does kinda fit your examples of what can - and will - happen...cheers...Martin
If a 100kWh car battery has about 6000 lithium cells in it , a MegaPack at 3 mWh is 3000 kWh , or the equivalent of 30 car battery packs . This pencils out to 30 x 6000 cells or 180,000 cells per "MegaPack" . And 40 MegaPacks would be about 7,200,000 individual lithium cells. The number of critical failure points becomes astronomical.
Just read a news article & came here looking if you’d done a video yet. Funny how the article I read insinuated in the headline & at the beginning that the fire fighters could put it out but aren’t being allowed to. It wasn’t until well down the article that thermal runaway was mentioned.
I remember two or three decades back (the Energizer bunny and Duracell drumming monkey days), being told to avoid battery operated goods unless they were absolutely necessary due to their inherent toxicity - what happened?
Great to see a channel mostly about cars understanding the difference between power and energy when so many channels dealing with power generation and energy storage ironically get those mixed up; eg Undecided with Matt Shill and his team of 'researchers.' :)
And it seems that the initial response would have probably been from the local volunteer fire brigade (town of 1000 so maybe 20 firefighters). It would be interesting how much info they were given about the risk being deployed in the area. Did the plant contribute to the safety equipment needed , or just hope that they didn't get downwind of the fire.
My colleagues are currently doing engineering assessments for these ESS made by BYD. I don't know too much about it but I know it has fire suppression system and monitoring built in with air-conditioning etc. I'm still sceptical about it being that this system is storing 1mw which is a lot and you're right. It's literally packed inside a glorified shipping container. Nothing fancy about it,just standard 40ft. It's earmarked for windfarm here in Vic.
A 40ft container's worth of water in a storage tank... a pump and a 6 inch main into the bottom of the container of batteries. 5 minutes and she's full of water... thermal runaway averted...
I remember when Samsung phones use to self combust and it was all over the news everyday and the public wanted answers, now we have EVs and these large battery packs doing the same thing, it doesn’t seem to be a big deal news wise. Why?
Creeping normalization. It started with cell phones. Then those stupid one wheel 'hover board' things. And by the time it escalated up to automobiles no one gave a damn anymore because we're used to the notion that lithium ion batteries can self combust. It probably also doesn't help that the news simply will not print anything that might put a ding in the Green New Religion. "Don't write about all the burning electric vehicles...distract people with who the police shot or what Donald Trump said or who Russel Brand was bedding 15 years ago."
(Other Queensland battery projects)Redflow are to put a Zinc Bromine Battery into the Ipswich area and ESI/ESS are to put a Iron flow battery into the Wide Bay Region so there is not a total reliance on the combustible lithium type batteries.
Why is bromine used in fire extinguishers? Bromine is commonly used in flame retardants due to its high atomic mass and its general versatility across a wide range of applications and polymers.
That Redflow battery is only 4 MWh,..a trial size i suspect. The installed one for the King Island RE project, but it had so many problems it was removed. They are high maintenance with many pumps, pipes, valves , controls, tanks of liquids to manage. By comparason, Mega Packs are effectively Solid state.
@@weinisable The King Island Vanadium Redox battery (with Vanadium electrolyte) was replaced in 2014 with a CSIRO developed 170 tonne 3 MW(tech now made by East Penn Manufacturing, USA) advanced lead acid battery with supercapacitor. Redflow are planning to build their largest Zinc Bromine battery (20 MWh) in California.
There was a Mega Battery fire at Moorabool in Vic, back in 2021. Burned for 3 days. This was also prior to the system being fully commissioned. I suspect that ISO is lagging in regard to applicable standards and until these are available and mandated......nothing will change
B double driver here. The moment the boss gives me a flash new Interstate EV Big Banger to sleep overnight in!?????? That's the day I become a carpenter. 👍👋
John: Once your prediction that there is a huge explosion/fire/whatever, that kills a few people & hospitalizes many more, we may find that these batteries are banned I understand there are some promising alternative chemistries, that are essentially inert (at least compared to the Li Fe Ph bombs) & I hope we come to grips with this problem & find a solution. Thanks for your videos John. Cheers! Brian from Alberta Canada where you can't give away an EV (minus 40 to 50 C winter temps )
Quick solution to only the thermal runaway problems: The glorified shipping containers could have pressurised water supply forced in at the bottom... and when the water gets to the top...the battery is flooded and runaway controlled
I live on the street directly affected by this fire. We were NOT informed about the fire and were not told to close our windows etc. We depend on very shallow bore water for our house. We collect water off our roof. There is a waterway only a few hundred metres away. All the rain run off from the highway and our street rune directly into the creek. They are now planning another 10 hectares of batteries in the same vicinity.
John you are a legend mate, a true Aussie hero. I bought a Jeep according to your video reviews and didn't fall for Holden and Tesla trap. I've shared your video to almost all my colleagues.
@@Titans2138 but some people have had the best experiences with Jeep. Though Compass and Patriot are horrible for sure. Cherokee isn't that bad. Transmission issues is what they have greatly improved on.
I have worked in the chemical industry for 35 years and I am in complete agreement with you. I often wonder if there were actually any engineers involved on some of these schemes. The politicians are clueless.
Thanks for the report John, you are doing a great job of reporting every battery fire. Do you have any statistics on how often a Bluetti battery bursts into flames? I have one in my 4x4 to run my small draw fridge, it's charged by a solar panel. Should I remove and dispose of my Bluetti battery? Cheers mate, Pat Sparks.
After the fire, they still have to clean up the site of hazardous waste, expelled by the battery when it burned. And God knows how much went airborne and sprinkled dangerous fallout on the surrounding areas and neighborhood.
I live in a strata complex canada, 150 units, 200+ underground parking. The strata is sleep walking charger approvals, because they think they are all so virtuous and green. Can we not just think this over next 20/40 years ?
I worked in the whisky industry and we had a deluge system at the tanker bays on the off chance of a fire, it went off twice on its own but at least we knew it was doing the job it was intended to do lol
The best ambient temperature for lithium batteries is in the range of 5 to 20 Celius. Temperatures over 35 will trigger thermal runaway. Storing the battery installation in an underground cavern where temperatures remain stable is best.
I really dont understand why they would have put them all so close together. This is Australia, not Japan, we have the space to put a decent gap between them...
@@ttkddry True enough, but even then given the cost of the cables they will need to connect to the grid surely it would still be a fairly small cost increase percentage wise. I'm not suggesting we space them hundreds of meters apart, but maybe 20 or 30 meters all round wouldn't hurt...
@charlesmartell4484 I dont think you would need the dirt on top if you did that, but you would have water drainage issues, a concrete wall around each one would be probably be cheaper and just as effective.
Copper is expected to be around USD $100K/ton within ten years. Right now it will be 6-8K/Ton. Significantly more than peoples health and its easier to get new people than it is to get new Copper.@@ttkddry
I'm on a volunteer Fire & Rescue crew that has a new Megapack installation in our jurisdiction. This mirrors the advice we were given when we toured the site, "Stand back and let it burn".
Hi John, sorry for my previous comment . I was so incensed watching your video. I just had to comment. Going back to your mention of protecting the ground water etc, here in the UK we sometimes use diesel/oil for heating. In doing so it is a regulation that all fuel tanks are bunded. Meaning that the oil tank is within another (bigger) tank to collect any spillages/ leaks. To protect the ground water. The likes of LPG tanks are kept well away from buildings and drainage. As you know LPG is heavier than air.
These advanced battery technologies can be very dangerous. As a hazmat technician I responded to batterry/power source manufacturer in town. On a side note one of their clients is NASA so their stuff is in space and on Mars, they make some cool stuff. There was a fire where we basically just let it burn....Basically just protect what we could from exposure without risking personnel in a compromised building and toxic fumes. It was an exothermic metal fire generating its own oxygen, so couldn't drown it in water, choke it out of oxygen, and even after tons of foam it was not enough to fully put it.
Some of this boils down the human machine interface. The history of the New England textile mills is illuminating. The Woolen looms had yarn beaks nearly constantly, their operators became very fatigued. The silk looms broke down a few times a month, their operators were caught unawares and a real mess ensued. The cotton looms broke down just often enough to keep their operators attention without being overly fatiguing. One of the problems of electric stuff is the reliability. People get lulled into complacency. The warning buzzer goes off, the assistant says, "What's that all about?" The operator says, "probably a glitch, we'll look at it after lunch and a potty break."
the other issue here is, the location. NIMBY means it's going to be placed one turn-off away from Dingo Piss Creek but this also means that the local fire brigade is going to be first responders. These guys are geared for house fires, grass fires, car fires, not thermal runaway. At least at Bouldercombe the better equipped units from Rocky aren't too far away but the issue still stands.
I don’t think the issue with Fukushima was the location of the reactors per se, but the decision to place the backup generators below sea level and by the sea.
By the time you've run a complete cycle battery storage is about 50% efficient and, of course, they only store "green" energy which, as it happens, requires approximately one thousand times the land that a nuclear plant would. Not to mention nukes are the cleanest, greenest, safest method of producing electricity ever invented.
@@weinisable Your figure is only accurate for day one but averaged over the life expectancy of a Megapack you'll find my projection not too far from the mark. They make heat while charging and discharging and that is energy lost because physics.
@@kevinthomas7264 kevin, i suspect you are confusing round trip %…( charge MWh vs discharge MWh ) , with capacity retention over time. Charge/ discharge remains fairly constant @ 90+% , whilst caapacity retention over time does drop off. But Tesla cells have been proven to retain 80% capacity over 8 years, and are infact warranted to that effect for EVs ( commercial use will be negotiated) These new MegaPacks will likely have the LiFePo4 chemistry, which is known to have even better long life performance.
I experienced the "Yo-yo fad" , the "Ding-Bat" fad, the BMX bicycle fad, the "Flower-Power" fad and other fads in my life. The "Renewable -Energy" fad is by far the biggest one I ever experienced so far.
John, I am a Police Officer with a son who is an engineer. I am not a firefighter, but It concerns me when Officials allow a facility to be built in proximity to public and do not insist on safety precautions that are effective. I am sure mention was made of concerns, but politicians may have rolled over that feedback. Why immediate evacuation was not an option as a precautiionary measure ? Yes this is disgraceful !
I think I must be missing something here. This is a small town in the middle of nowhere, that has never previously needed to have a giant battery on the edge of town. One day they wake up and decide that they need one. What were they planning to use this battery for if it wasn't on fire?
It's between a major coal fire plant and the biggest population centre in the region so the main grid lines run near the township which makes it a good location for batteries. Well good for the company, not so much for the locals.
@@AutoExpertJCsomething doesn't add up about this Bouldercombe battery. 40 megapacks for 100MWh sounds like the original NMC Megapack 1.0 specnot the new 3.9MWh LFP Megapack 2.0 spec. You raise lots of valid points about mitigation but it is essential to understand which battery chemistry we are dealing with.
It's about 15k from Rockhampton, 75,000 people and about 8ks from Gracemere. So it's not in the middle of nowhere. Except if you live in Victoria when 700 ks takes you out of state.
Thank you John I put a 100 watt solar panel on my vehicle & 100 amp hr agm battery box powdered & a 100 amp hr agm battery to power my 20 L Waeko fridge freezer. Recently I up graded to a Life po 4 lithium iron phosphate 100 amp hr battery from Aldi. As I was told they were safe. I've always been against lithium but they talked me around to it, saying these batteries are safe.
This is why I didn't get one with my solar system. Considering where I live has reached 49.8°C once before & this year could be hotter, I knew it would be a bad idea.
So the glorified shipping containers could have pressurised water supply forced in at the bottom... and when the water gets to the top...the battery is flooded and runaway controlled. You can do the same with your battery at home....
@@JohnSmith-pl2bk so exacerbate the *electrical fire* by pouring water onto it creating a steam bomb and spreading electricity to everything the water touches...great idea. You'd make an excellent politician. Sounds just like something some political hack would come up with to make a bad problem worse.
As you are flooding the crapola of a thermal runaway situation , is that runoff water toxic and should they be collecting it as toxic waste? And how do you collect thousands of gallons of water that really doesn’t put out the fire??
Like living next door to a fireworks factory, but with less light show and more toxins in the air, ground and water. At best these things are sort of like the 1980's demountable buildings, so you can almost guarantee there's nothing but MDF, thin cladding and no cooling. The monitoring for batteries on remote sites, often it would just have an under/over volt reading, the rectifiers current state along with breaker triggers. Most of the time there would be your smoke and temperature on a separate management circuit that's usually pretty simple- its working, its rooted and call the fire department. By the time I was finishing up my career in operations management we'd done away with any kind of humans looking at flashing lights and it just went straight to the algorithm to send an SMS/Email to an escalation matrix to let 'someone; know it was busted.
The thing is, a battery brings all three legs of the fire triangle. It has fuel and oxidizer by the nature of being a battery (the redox pair that stores and releases its charge) and as it breaks down, the uncontrolled reactions between them liberate a fantastically large amount of heat. Dousing it with water would have little to no effect on it. Water, CO2, airport foam, dry chemical, and halon would all be ineffective. Just about the only way to fight a lithium battery fire would be to try to spread out the contents of the battery but that would be impractical and dangerous for a variety of reasons. So the 'right' thing to do is set up a perimeter and try to prevent the fire from spreading to structures or other vehicles.
John, I am an Electrical Engineer with a good 45 years experience accross a very wide range of, projects world wide and over the last 8 years design of solar systems and battery storage systems. Every point you have made in this video is totally valid and I have had an up hill battle getting clients to accept my designs of which incorporate the safefy measures you mention, so I continuously walk away. It seems morals, ethics and proffessional responsibility are rare, these days, its all about the $,
Kind regards
John Gurney
John, have you assessed the "Cerenergy" storage battery tech? Aussie company Altech has the rights to this which uses no lithium, cobalt, copper, graphite or manganese, and cannot catch fire....
ua-cam.com/video/-pnBiiHRb9M/v-deo.html
Services engineer here: I was asked to be involved in the equivalent very close sites to this (SW of Rockhampton but I'm bound by NDAs). All they wanted was hydrant coverage but no-one was going to be able to use these for pretty obvious reasons as DTS doesn't address such hazards. QFES advised they'd sit on a hill upwind and watch the site burn due to concerns about their employees safety. A bit better with some concrete barriers but something we didn't proceed with as the client was all about lowest cost as you say. Government has been asleep at the wheel with regards to legislation so it's really difficult to get a client to adopt recommendations, even when it's backed by available research and case studies (like this event is going to be)
@@ken-mb5cp Issue is that it's all about the dollars. Some risk mitigation measures don't cost a lot yet if it impacts profits and it's not a code requirement then good luck getting them implemented. Legislation exists for a reason but Australia hasn't kept up with the pace of technology with regards to batteries.
@@ken-mb5cp After 45 years of a career, retirement is a serious option - on a personal level, at some point the rewards aren't worth the effort. I'm almost to 40 years as an engineer myself - chemical and mechanical - and the current trends on these "Green" and "Renewable" energy projects has me running the numbers on what I need to have squirreled away in order to be able to retire.
A fundamental issue with these technologies is that they make zero economic sense without government subsidies - massive expenditures of our taxes - in order to be propped up and not fail miserably to pay for themselves.
Even in the upside-down world of state/centrally planned economics, these projects still need to be capitalized, and there are some limits to just how much of our taxed monies can be spent before a project still won't make a pretense of viability.
So, corners are cut in order to reduce CAPEX, and thus Total Installed Cost.
There is the usual tension between the finance types and the technical types, aggravated because we are now reaping the results of 30+ years of diminished manufacturing activity in the Western oriented countries - our "senior" engineers have much less practical experience than the previous generations, and the talent pool is shallow to begin with.
Smart kids with university degrees and access to the Internet just doesn't fully make up for not having been involved in more projects.
And, that is where we lose our institutional memory of incidents like Chernobyl and Bhopal and Texas City (2 different times!)
@@boriskrotchgruber3730 Does John think the technology is viable in the first place? That wasn’t made clear. If it is let’s get at the cause of the problem and fix it or at least lower the odds of thermal runaway. If it’s not let’s scrap it. I think it benefits society to move away from using fossil fuels for energy when there appears to be cleaner and cheaper solutions available. That being said I agree these fires are serious and need to addressed. I hope no one is hurt.
The fire at the Telsa battery farm in Victoria kicked off during initial testing for the commissioning of the facility. I was a member of the volunteer fire brigade and the battery farm fell into our primary response area, and we were still in the process of trying to work out what we would do if there was a fire there, as we were just a tin shed brigade with one tanker and farmers from the surrounding area. End story, one megapack went into thermal runaway due to an malfunction of the internal coolant system, caught fire, set a second pack on fire, and away it went. The plan we came up with was to keep cooling the surrounding megapack with water from multiple trucks and crews, and let the fire burn. It tied up resources and multiple crews for a week, and we learned on the fly. The one factor in our favour is that there are no nearby homes, as it was a fair way out of Geelong.
Just looking at some news sites, they state it was a minor fire that didn't require water. I believe the correct statement would be that it's a pretty freaking serious fire for which water would be freaking pointless.
So the glorified shipping containers could have pressurised water supply forced in at the bottom...
and when the water gets to the top...the battery is flooded and runaway controlled
you can't put enough water on those to put them out that's why they don't flood the urning ships with water it would sink the ship but I wouldn't put the fire out
@@JohnSmith-pl2bk for supporting evidence, ua-cam.com/video/4xjDdmv8urk/v-deo.html. That was for EV fires with water applied directly into the storage space. Old technology risks are mitigated, new technology risks are still in the 'for profit' stage ;-)
@@sprint48219 If you actually submerge a burning battery, it will go out.
@@sprint48219It isn’t about putting the fire. The idea is to flood it before the fire breaks out, thereby removing the heat that’s causing the thermal runaway.
Last year I was in the process of planning a conversion to lithium phosphate battery banks and electric rather than diesel motors on my catamaran yacht. My constant nagging worry was a battery fire or thermal runaway. I had previously been burnt and suffered burns to my throat and palate from a drones battery exploding while under charge. The thought of this happening at sea with nowhere to hide but the life raft finally made me cancel the project.
Fires at sea are a nightmare. A fire at sea that can’t be put out? That’s basically Game of Thrones Wildfire…
@@grahamstrouse1165 Auckland transport are in the process of building 2. EV ferries at McMillan and wing bodybuilders in Auckland now as has been reported in a newspaper, with pictures
@@Peye-pv4cbThey already have EV ferry's in un zed
LiFeP04 batteries, used properly, are generally very safe, but I`ve heard of mysterious "smoking battery" problems even with the exact model I use for emergency air conditioning in my camper. They are FAR safer than regular lithium ion cells though which can violently explode in flames, and I have 9 portable power packs of those and about 15 small power banks containing them. It`s scary.
Lithium Iron Phosphate's thermal runaway point is much higher than Lithium NMC. The issue with any of these batteries is if they get wet or submerged. This would be the major concern on a boat. It really depends on the setup and not something I would jerry-rig.
Did a job in an "explosives factory" once.
As you said, the factory and its process were set inside a huge earth mound with a staggered entrance to reduce the blast; the mound was designed to bury building to contain the blast and chemical fall out.
There were a set number of people to run the process; one in, one out, to limit the dead.
Firework makers are just as bad, essentially you limit the damage to only one death per incident...
@philwoodfordjjj8928 I did a few deliveries to the cracker factory at Bajool (actually, not too far from Bouldie). The safety protocols were intense. I had a 'buddy' with me the entire time I was on site, and at each point I entered or traversed, he'd stop and explain the safety procedures for that area, with the common thing being, "If an emergency happens, you stick by my side."
Li-ion batteries are oxidizer(Cobalt Oxide) and reducer (Li) near each other, separated by a thin membrane. This is an explosive by design! Plus you have hexafluoride in the electrolyte to make the explosion very toxic. Very environmental!
@@irvinewayne4086 though these are LiFePo, so no toxic cobalt.
Bouldercombe resident here happy to add some Erin B. to your show. The town does not have reticulated and processed water. Every house has both a bore water system and septic sewer. Many rely on rain water as an alternate to a water bore. So building a water dousing system at the site would have been a very expensive upgrade, but hey, it's only cow paddocks to the North and downhill from the batteries.
As for me I'm some 4.5km further South and 40m higher than the batteries and the typical SE breeze is from the East at the moment so anxiety levels are low. No doubt many of the STEM persuasion would agree with you John that the safety side has been left wanting, particularly when giving thought to if the batteries installed were conventional Lead Acid variants as opposed to the omnipresent Lithium types...
Oh, and the battery was still smoldering at 3:30pm, some 20hrs after the event initiated, with a handful of yellow shirted employees standing around. The Police and Fire service had all gone home.
We're currently fighting against a proposed 200MW stand alone BESS here in Central West NSW which will be around 4 kilometres from our home and and 6 kilometres from the town. The submissions for this project close next Wednesday. Our water treatment plant is less than 4 kilometres from the proposed site and many residents rely on tank water, and there are also creeks nearby. In addition there is a massive aquifer that runs underbour entire region.
I'm sorry to hear about the fire at the battery. There isn't any level of government that considers the considerable risks associated with renewable technology. We have an 87MW commercial solar project about three kilometres from our home which has had two separate fire dramas. The first came very close to the substation and panels. Several of the big fire trucks came in as the fire started across the road from the project but it was so boggy after recent rain they couldn't get near the fire. Fortunately three helicopter water bombers came in and extinguished the fire within metres of the panels and substation.
The second fire at this same solar project started within the solar arrays last April. Fortunately the conditions were benign and I don't believe the panels actually ignited. The Rural Bushfire Brigade and NSW Firefighters attended and adopted a watch and wait approach. There was 18 hectares of solar panels damaged in the grass fire. Most people don't know that there are different types of solar panels and these ones are of the thin film cadmium/tellurium variety. The smoke was seen from our home and was thick and billowing. I don't know what protection the firefighters in the vicinity of the fire had or if they understood the nature of the panels that had been installed. Given that so many people use tank water here we are concerned that the smoke could settle on roofs and contaminate the water supplies.
We don't know if the soil was contaminated and we are trying to find out what happened to the damaged panels. The project was only commissioned in 2019 and the original developer had stated that the panels would be shipped to Malaysia at end-of-life for specialist recycling and that this was the closest such plant to Australia. These panels require acid and chemical baths to separate out the 'valuable' materials. They must not go to landfill given their toxic nature.
The project is on to its third owner and they too are looking to sell. The project has been plagued with problems, has been 'written down' and I don't believe it's listed on the stock exchange now. What do you think the chances are of those panels being properly disposed of? We have the misfortune of living in a designated Renewable Energy Zone and 37 projects have been proposed so far for our region. Our beautiful historic town will be surrounded by renewables including 69 wind turbines standing 280m high and 200m wide. There have been 800 turbines proposed so far for the region. It is just soul destroying.
@@margaretarmstrong2445
Water fire suppression systems built in are the answer both to the battery projects (fill the battery containers with water pressurised from a pump and damn quickly...that takes care of fire and thermal runaway.
The solar panels all need fire sprinklers under them to dampen the ground
in fact clear ground at all times should be a building permit requirement...
As for the recycling...
the original project builders should have a bond condition on them...
10% of the original project cost as a bond held in escrow and not refundable...
all to be used to recycle at the end of the project whoever the final owners happen to be.n
@@margaretarmstrong2445 regional wind_turbine farms/parks attract storms! Global scale wind turbine farms ( on the Northern Hemisphere) already divert global wind circulation (diminishing the Coriolis effect) the Westerlies are diminished, more wind is streaming directly in North - South direction. In Europe, the North Sea winter storms are are diminished from raging heavily 2 or 3 days/nights to a mere few afternoon hours!
in summer the thunderstorm clouds are slowed down in lateral movement, so they can tower up higher, causing local strong up-drafts and larger hail-stones!
Not all changes in (warmer) climate effects, can be attributed to CO2_greenhouse effect. I have read that 50 times more CO2 is dissolved in the ocean waters than is in the atmosphere (50 times! not 50%)! There You go, narrow minded alarmists, claiming strict legal actions to "save" the climate! Geological processes are still stronger than human activities.
50% or more of all the ocean waters are at a cold 4°C all the waters below -1800_m; that is a lot of cold, probably left over from the last ice ages.
Practically only the top of the oceans heat up and cause more evaporation. But in combination with the reduced global wind circulation, more of all that rainfall will come down over the oceans. Especially the Northern continents could be affected so.
@@margaretarmstrong2445 my thoughts and prayers are with you Margaret. The answer to these climate hoax crimes is to hold governments and their handlers to account; the issue is how to do that in this money and control obsessed world.
@@nicklovell8148 Thank you for your kind response. My aim is to educate people on the true nature of the renewables industry as much as I can, which isn't easy when even posts such as these are often removed, or the responses to my posts. If the general public knew the true nature of this infrastructure no one would support it. There is not one benefit to be had by going down the renewables track. It creates massive environmental damage at every stage of it's production, operation, and disposal. It will destroy our economy and it can produce only a fraction of its nameplate capacity. Of course this doesn't affect people living in the cities, but the electricity bills and collapsed economy will, and of course the blackouts.
I'll keep writing to politicians too, but it's hard to get past the bureaucratic gatekeepers.
John. A retired RFS Mate that lives locally.. heard about the fire. He rang local police. And told them to evacuate the locals due to fumes.. and estimated the fire will last 4 days.. due to how many battery packs..
It will be at least a 24 hour watch by the fire service and all on overtime payable by taxpayers, of course.
I wish the fire would last more than just four days to really help the environment.
Someone should tell these guys about the hierarchy of control. If they don't have anyone keeping an eye on things, they don't even have the most basic and least effective administrative controls....
@@dfor50 Not to mention all of the "reserve volunteer" fire fighters will jump into action to watch the campfire while the "tax payer fare meter" runs. Seems like the locals are the only people that get shafted in this, as usual.
never saw a new car explode,, just warrenty claims, like, the door stix, or wipers dont work.. not,, my fkn 100k car burst into flames 3 hrs after i bought it.. but, its o.k., it saves the environment,al..people..
Years ago, I was interested in installing a Tesla ‘power wall’ in my house. At the time, it was too expensive….and I’m glad that it was. The more I know about this technology, the further away from it I want to be.
I will put lead acid batteries in my home before I put that many lithium cells in one place. Lion batteries are great,in small numbers, but that many together is too risky even with all the safety monitoring. The risk on an unextinguishable fire is just too much of a problem.
@15 about minutes, you talked about barriers to separate the modules so one disaster doesn't spread to nearby modules etc.
Recently while passing by a power substation, (in a suburban area with houses next door), as a passenger rather than a driver, I noticed for the first time, massive concrete walls between the transformers and switches for each of the phases. So even in ordinary power systems this seems to be standard procedure.
Yep it’s been mandated for a fair while, along with containment systems in case transformers leak. I can’t imagine the firefighting runoff would be too healthy for anything consuming the groundwater.
Correct. Not only that - there are bund walls designed to contain the TOTAL amount of coolant/insulation oil within each transformer should it rupture. I worked in the power distribution industry for 47 years.
when they pump oil, diesel, petrol, into those huge round modules, theres an earth bank, big enough to contain a rupture, spill.. no fire, no explosion, no deadly fumes,. why,,are we fkng with ev bs..
Those walls aren't for each phase, they are for each transformer. Each transformer has all 3 phases connected.
@@SuperSpeciesOk, I'll take another look one day. If I remember to.
Same thing in 'Murica!...a pile of batteries caught fire, and it took days to figure out they'd let it burn out. Local gov't didn't even know there was a business in the building!
If they built structures between them to stop them setting fire to each other then they would have to admit that they might catch fire.... I dont think they want to do that...
Explosives manufacturers are forced to do this by law...after many disasters.
OSH laws are written in blood...
Any electrical installation can catch fire. Even cells that are substantially more resilient than their Cobalt brothers. Everything will burn if you get it hot enough, including LFP cells....
@@JohnSmith-pl2bk Some of them are. Many are make-work for bureaucrats. According to OSHA, I should be in a harness with fall prevention measures in place when I work higher than 4'. NOBODY does this. Because it's stupid. HEPA rated vacuum when drilling concrete for a few holes to mount a fixture? Again, nobody does this. Because it's stupid. The Reward vs Risk is not there.
Nonsense. Of course they would absolutely want to admit they might catch fire, and build structures between them to stop them setting fire to each other right inside the containers. Their bad if they didn't as a miss like that will carry a heavy insurance penalty. They should be designed so the fire reliably blows out the sides, not out the ends.
Nothing like waking up and having a fine man like John reminding me of the utopian paradise I live in.
So all that risk to the community just to store 2 hours worth of power when the wind is not blowing? INSANE. These people need jailing.
Not two hours: probably just a few minutes. The main use of these batteries - I believe - is to stabilise grid voltage. We used to get that free with the huge flywheels in the alternators at the coal power stations - not that we had as much need for it.
They are a money printing machine for very short term grid energy sale. Buy low sell high profit
@@71Jay17
But but but they need testing...
right about 7pm every night when the power price is the highest...
Coincidence I tell you....
@@oldcynic6964You simply would not want to drain these batteries from full in "just a few minutes". At least half an hour (i.e. 2C) would be about the maximum discharge rate for this chemistry. Otherwise you're prematurely shortening their lifetime.
@@robertstanley3832
Well clean green Switzerland has one nuclear reactor beside each of 4 large cities...it used to be 5.
They use the cheap night rate base load nuclear power to pump water back up into the mountain lakes...so that same water can then flow through the hydro generators at peak load during the day.
The biggest water battery system in the world...all possible through nuclear power right at their cities.
You make very good points JC.
One you may have missed is the electrification of underground ICE mining vehicles.
Not the big stuff that runs on mains power, the converted ICE vehicles they use to greenwash the operation and look good.
How will a thermal runaway look in a modified landcruiser at the bottom of a coal mine ?
Maybe you could chase that up ?
👍
Holy shit😱😱😱
I think there is an abandoned mine burning now in a PA town that cant be put out. They were all relocated.
@@jetdigitalthose are coal fires. These things can't be put out. Got one here in Boulder, Colorado, US. Dam thing has been burning for 150 years and a few years ago started a grass fire that burn down over a thousand houses. Kind of like a underground evil giant waiting to come out and destroy all at any moment.
@@jetdigitalYou’re thinking of Centralia. The Centralia fire started in 1962 when some bright spark decided to clean out the accumulated rubbish in an abandoned coal mine by burning it. Turns out there was still plenty of coal left. The fire probably could have been contained in the early days and weeks but the town didn’t want to spend the money to cut the fire off at the pass, so to speak, and it eventually got to a point where there was simply no stopping it. The ground beneath the town became unsteady, cracks and sinkholes started open in everywhere & toxic gasses filled the atmosphere. Eventually it became clear that the only realistic option was to abandon town & the population began to dwindle, slowly at first, than more rapidly.
A few people stayed on, though. As of 2020 there were still five official residents of Centralia, PA, although I’m pretty sure that number’s dropped since then. Geologists estimate that there’s enough coal left in the seam to keep the fire burning for about 250 years.
@@stanleytolle416Not the Centralia fire. I mean, it could have been, at one point, but the town wanted cheap solutions. By the time they realize there were none it was too late and the fire and spread too wide.
As soon as I heard about this Fire I thought about what your take would be John, great video and I love the way you actually research these matters.
There was a similar fire in a “ big battery” near Geelong in Victoria a couple of years ago. The fire brigade just let it burn itself out. That took about 4 days.
50yrs time, people are going to look back on now, and ask WTF we were thinking with these batteries.
And yet we still have electric shock therapy, mulesing, boiling water nuclear reactors but no flying cars. Predict away my brother. Predict TF away!
Id say 20 years
@nickrinaudo1177 yes I think it will be very soon actually. Seems like the biggest politically promoted environmental disaster ever.
How they are stepping over safety concerns beggars belief
Gotta hand it to him, he's managed to spoof the whole world!......Amazing!
He is awesome.
Love ya, man, keep on telling it like it is, people need the truth like they need air.
Well, cmon now, some of these people are oxygen thieves man. Some are unfairly taking air from the more logic inclined and reality based of us.
😂😂😂😅😅😅😢
This is why for grid storage we really should be using zinc bromine flow batteries. Bromine can actually be used as a fire extinguisher.
Soon as I saw this reported first thought was wonder how quickly John can pump content out on this
You know John wasn't going to skip an opportunity to bash batteries.
@@OtisFlint, it may not keep the bastards honest, but they need to be kept accountable. They're it it for the money. Nothing else!
@@OtisFlintYou call it bashing, but it might just be getting the real message out there.
About 2 years ago same thing happened to the Big Battery on the outskirts of Geelong. Victoria's largest regional town. These too were Tesla Mega Packs. FYI.
They employed the same emergency response, too. Juzleditfknburrrn.
2 out of not very many in Aus...Elon is right about the fire testing
@@douge1714 Oddly enough, the first Tesla Big Battery in Australia (the one in SA) hasn't experienced a thermal runaway event yet. Given that it's the oldest and presumably an earlier model than the other two, you'd think if any of these would have failed by now it'd be that one.
@@TheKnobCalledTone.I'm guessing the energy density is lower and the engineering better for the first iteration, like many new technologies.
SAs big battery at Hornsdale was indeed a Tesla system, but it predated these “Megapack” systems and 😊uses a different assembly method.
It is also suspected to heve used Samsung made cells, rather than the Tesla USA made cells in the Megapacks.
So , several possible differences in the construction.
Hopefully the flames are at least green in colour….
You make perfect sense. Being serious but comedic at once is a great talent. But your wrist watch easily steals the show
I can see it now John, city carparks with hundreds of thermal runaway fires amongst hundreds of Ev's. I My wife has an ev supplied by her job, it never goes into our garage, rather, it's on the driveway as far from our home as possible. I am not taking the risk. In agreeance with you with your thoughts and facts. Keep up the great content.
I assume she leaves the iPhone supplied by her job, in the console of the EV overnight .. I will never have an Li battery in my house!
(sarcasm alert)
What could go wrong 😁
@@axelknutt5065 im looking at my iphone right now, its absolutely the same size as an EV battery!
Yep! Insurance companies are cancelling policies when they find out that you park an EV in an attached garage.
@@Subgunmanthat’s interesting- do you know which insurance companies… it would be nice to know (probably YOUI - they do anything to get out of paying a claim)
Saw the photo. There should be a firewall between each pack. We had to spend thousands on a firewall in our home. Which is crazy but no firewall here. These batteries are used for arbitrage. They fill them up with free green energy during the day and sell it back at Peek Price. Although the tax payer paid for these.
Also, Redflow is an Aussie company but they didn't want to use anything we make as usual. Anything that creates jobs is BAD....
Megapacks are designed to withstand an adjacent megapack fire at only 6 inches on the narrow edge, no firewall necessary. They redesigned the steel vents at the top after a fire moved from one pack to a second pack last year due to high winds. All new packs have the redesigned vents ( hence, no adjacent packs were affected ) and all older units are being retrofitted. Tesla will do another analysis from this fire, make changes, and retrofit applicable hardware and software changes across the fleet worldwide.
@@ericew oh great! They sound totally reasonable now. The wave of the future.
Why is no one else telling the public HOW dangerous the chemical cocktail fall out is
Because they don't want any bad PR. This stuff will continue to be rolled out at great expense to the taxpayer, without any regard for safety, efficacy, or actual environmental damage, until people wake up and kick out all the WEF stooges in their governments.
You know why..........🤬
Because......$$$$$
@@davidnobular9220 If it was just about money, they wouldn't be doing these ridiculous white elephant projects. Read the WEFs 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Then you will understand that "degrowth" is one of the things on the agenda. They are actively trying to make things unsustainable for businesses, and the average person. The plan is not for everyone to own electric cars, but to give them the illusion they will all be transitioning to electric, so they will accept the coming changes. Ultimately the goal is for most people to have no access to private transportation, and for them to live in "15 minute cities"
It sounds crazy, and it is. But that's what they are planning, and your leaders are completely captured by these people, and all the corporations are stupidly going along with it, in the hope that they will be allowed to stay in business as their entire business model is being legeslated away. They think if they back the winning team they will be rewarded, but they are actually just agreeing to their own death sentence.
Our leaders know electric cars aren't going to work, and they know they are worse for the environment than conventional cars. Once EVs have served their purpose, they will also be bad, and they will make it unaffordable or illegal for you to drive them. Meanwhile they will also make it so you can't afford electricity, food, shelter ect, and your employment situation will become very precarious.
"Sustainability" means making the entire economic, social and governmental order we currently have unsustainable. Just as the old communist revolutionaries did. And justike them, these people are focused on tearing down the current order, but really have few if any ideas about what to replace it with. They are dangerous lunatics, and in a sane world Klaus Schwab would be the preserve of Austin Powers type satire of the Bond villain archetype. Not a real person who somehow has managed to influence nearly every government in the world.
It's crazy enough someone like him actually exists, but the fact that the most powerful people in the world listen to him and take him seriously? That's how you know we are completely screwed.
Consider how long it took the US to give up leaded gas. The UK still has a big asbestos problem even though they don’t mine the stuff anymore. It’s hard to stop stupid once it gain some momentum.
Great episode John. You talk complete and utter sense mate! Keep the message coming!
Had a similar fire not that long ago down here in Vic. The priority was to keep the adjacent packs from going into thermal runaway by spraying water constantly whilst also precipiating out as much nasty shit as possible. I don't know exactly what came of it but I do know there were major changes made in operating procedures before the pack was brought online.
So the glorified shipping containers could have pressurised water supply forced in at the bottom...
and when the water gets to the top...the battery is flooded and runaway controlled
@@JohnSmith-pl2bk No once they go into runaway they can literally burn under water the best you can do is attempt to keep the heat down on adjacent packs to stop them going into runaway
@@JohnSmith-pl2bkrecipe for. Steam explosion
@@jasonfields2793
Not if vented as above.
@@shaynegadsden
and that;s what flooding does...
As the numbers of these thermal runaway disasters keep keep rising steadily, whether it be this type of installation or just amongst the quickly growing population of EVs on this planet, I can't help seeing the similarity between Elon Musk's words of confidence re their safety, and the same words from the late Stockton Rush....and we all know how that ended.
Haven't you noticed the fast tracking or side stepping of normal planning regs for "green" projects?
Perfectly ok to deforest large amounts of land (next to national parks) for a windfarm.
Perfectly ok to disturb vast areas of marine ecosystems for offshore windfarms.
Biggest scam ever: climate change.
Because we're all dead by 2030 if we don't do something now, so they tell us.
Seems to happen throughout the green agenda, just look at the reduction in fire resistance for eco cladding for Tower blocks. It seems when eco is involved everything else goes out of the window.
Having seen a couple of videos of buses burning recently, I am not surprised that EVangelists think that ice vehicles are just as dangerous. What on earth happened to all those decades of fire resistant materials being mandated for pretty much everything, from car interiors to furniture. You might as well have filled the buses with wood, paper and paint thinners the way they burn. It obviously wasn't the fuel, it is the flammable interiors that are destroying the whole thing.
It is like they are talking about getting rid of the refrigerants that were made to replace the very safe refrigerants used before the ozone hole scare. Now they are talking about using ancient refrigerants such as butane, ammonia and c02 for crying out loud. Imagine a butane leak from a fridge in your house! I saw a video of the aftermath of a fridge explosion, yes an explosion, in America. It totally destroyed the kitchen and fortunately no one was near it. But that is what they are planning. Ammonia is very toxic so you don't want that leaking in your house. And using co2 to save co2!!! We all know things leak occasionally, but at least mankind had advanced enough to find refrigerants and propellants that didn't pose an immediate threat to the user. And they started using fire retardent materials. Now we seem to be going backwards to where immediate harm is deemed preferable to a potentially imaginary harm decades into the future.
Incidentally aerosol can propellant is often butane now, so is very flammable. Donk smoke while applying your hairspray folks.
Very "on point" observation
Look at the EV that came off the Fremantle Highway. About a month later, one of the cars started to burn again as it was being taken off the ship. They plonked the EV into a big swimming pool to cool it down and stop the ship from bursting into flames again. But EVs and their batteries are perfectly safe.
@Lookup2Wakeup I did too... It was a Mercedes !
The media didn't know what caused that fire, but they were SURE it wasn't an EV.
The ABC said, or quoted, that "There is no worry for members of the public in terms of that toxic gas issue." If I lived there I'd take that as advice that it was a good time to visit relatives in S.A.
Another brilliant video John that every politician in every country should be made to watch. Here in the UK there are huge battery installations being built in large clear span buildings. Farmers are being offered incentives to either erect or convert these buildings which will house batteries with an estimated 20 years of life. In an outside installation such as the one you speak of there is a chance of fire fighting. In a large building with 40 or more battery units no one has a cat in hells chance.
YEAH MOAR OIL RIGS!!!!
Thanks for covering this J you’re a legend. I always say “in a world of opinion what do facts matter” its ironic that in a time when everyone has a voice few have any fact or truth. Its simple weve all got to ease up in our consumption and intercontinental travel
Very entertaining John. If ever I am game enough to mention my concerns with EV's and lithium batteries in general, I am bombarded by EV fanboys who are (I must congratulate the Americans for this most apt and descriptive term) butt hurt by any criticism of their pet.
Mentioned in one of your previous videos about what happens when one of our countries big batteries experiences thermal runaway. It was never a case of if, but when, just as your what if this happens in an underground car park filled with EVs, maybe located under a high rise. I believe due diligence, the hierarchy of controls just hasn't been conducted on big pictures stuff. There would be ways to engineer out some of these dangers, maybe underground bunkers. We haven't seen anything yet, just a matter of time. I was asked to conduct suitability testing on a magical lithium battery being looked at to replace diesel generators for aircraft starting in the 90s. During load testing the unit suffered a thermal runaway, the fumes put me in hospital overnight and the US company refused to supply a msds.
Boeing put these stupid things in the 787 for the avionics. Unsurprisingly they had fires, fortunately while on the ground.
They just put it in a big metal box which was vented overboard via a bursting disk. Gotta love Boeing.
Fact is the answer is simple……drop this dangerous rubbish and go back to traditional power generation. The climate change scam is all that’s driving this and that’s just about government wanting to control us.
@@gregculverwell i'm from and still live in the lazy B's home area, Seattle. We definitely dn't love the new B since around that period, fifteen years ago , which is when they started making shit decisions for the first time EVER. Fascinating to see and disgustingly stupid (blame engineering-group-think, but in a very bad way/light, and blame the newer 'merica which is indeed zany, offputting and too many ultraconservatives who believe in nonsense, including simply illogical risk/reward ratios, including pie in the sky.
As a Yank me-self, very sorry to hear that about the american co. As u may know, american co's are THE most vulnerable to lawsuits for civil damages and ideally you'd sue them for refusing to provide that info, and or nail them for not having written one, if they didn't write one. Very disgusted with american corporate behavior since around 25 years ago, it started going way way out of whack. We are not happy campers here, as the slow rise of vile assholery/fckery has slowly gotten into far too many ppl including ppl as young as a decade younger than me, i'm just over 50. We're working on improving the society bit by bit now, as we take it back to the actually relatively secure society it was before, when it would have been socialy unacceptable to conceal carry a pistol, or open carry even in the more rural areas. Thirty years ago, when a rich kid who liked to pack heat came to a party, we thought of him as unstable. And he was.
Not forgetting Victoria's "Big Battery" fire which took out two megapacks in July 2021. The layout had the containers back to back in the middle row, and I'm pretty sure one container took out the other. I thought at the time they were too close together and there was no containment built in to the site. That project (350MW/450MWh) also underwent self immolation in the early commissioning phase of the project. I can't see these things having a 20 year life span. I use a lot of lithium ion, and it's not normal for them to last much more than ten years under ideal conditions. Think about that for a bit...
LiFePO *is* safer, in as much as the temperature required for thermal runaway is almost an order of magnitude higher. Unfortunately when you put that many batteries in close proximity to each other it changes a risk from an outlier into a near certainty.
If this happens in the US, and a firefighting crew has to be on site, to monitor it, the city or county government, of that crew, is going to send you a bill. And they charge quite handsomely, on the hourly basis !
"Software monitoring" Sounds like Stockton Rush, before he was turned into paste, at Ocean Gate !
Coincidentally, I did fire and emergency training at work today, and the trainer didn't mention lithium batteries. So I asked him what to do in an emergency, and he didn't have too many answers.
Get the popcorn out?
@@stephenhookings1985 Poison popcorn? No.
Am I the only one when John described safety monitoring, pictured The Simpsons Homer and the bird when Homer wanted to work from home?
Me too
I rang that 24 hour support number from Genex and the woman told me to run away from the explosion as quickly as possible. I am eternally thankful for that advice as I would never have thought of that.
Well said John, makes the coal powered generators look good, when are people going to wake up to the BS.
Callide C, May 2021. How quickly we forget
@@theairstig9164💯
I can't wait to install a Tesla Powerwall in my home as soon as possible.
Saw this in the early am and thought you'd be all over this. Thanks for the report, the great insight. Just hope we all learn; yeah, nah. On the subject of on-site water deployment, as a building designer here in NSW, all new works and well as adds & alts in bushfire mapped areas require at least 5klts of dedicated storage. Larger blocks require more, but at least 5klts for a granny flat or sunroom. Yet this installations? Not so much. Criminal.
What's criminal? Throwing water on an electrical fire? Are you high on something? I guess you didn't think about or read what you're posting.
It's a Chemical fire, the only way to stop these things is to cool them down - If you can - Might be an idea to watch the video before commenting though ignorance or are you being disingenuous ?@@parttimephilosopher7097
@@parttimephilosopher7097if you have the modules separated by some kind of barrier it's not at all unreasonable to disconnect the offending module and flood it with water. That's how most fire departments deal with EV fires. Either by spraying the battery directly or just putting the car into a shipping container full of water.
@@dudeinanofficechair7662 yeah, I know that. If they have a special blanket to cover the EV, that's better though. I don't know how well water could work with a Megapack since I think they are mounted to make sure water drains away quickly. I suspect it would not work well. Batteries are becoming a lot safer but we're a few years away from the risks being close to completely eliminated.
@@parttimephilosopher7097 if you care you can engineer it. Put each one in a bucket with a closable valve. If it starts to run away close the valve, hit the electrical disconnect, and turn on the faucet. You could even automate it if you want. There's probably a bunch of ways to accomplish similar levels of safety. I think the frustration is nothing like this was done. It would have cost more money, no one made them, and they didn't actually care. Maybe we'll find out they did take a bunch of precautions and this really was a fluke, but that's looking unlikely.
Amazing video . Thank you sir for spreading the word . How sad and terrifying that every word you said is true . Regards from the UK .
Isn't this the second big Tesla battery fire in OZ?
Edit: Yes, the Geelong battery caught on fire 30.7.2021
What happens to the water which is contaminated ? Into the ground or sewage system ? Wonderful ! It just goes away.
Love your work and it is very insightful and educational. Solar and EVs are a great concept, but more regulatory work and research are definitely needed. Keep up the good work, mate. Cheers.
They needed to build concrete encase walls around each module so it can be flooded by water. They needed pumps from a extensive water source. .Also each module needed a vapour capture system.
One can only imagine the extra cost of these features? Suddenly the "ooh soon cheap" power source is not so cheap is it?
Just posted something similar.. It was the first thing to come to my mind. A no brainer. 👍
But batteries are not a cheap storage option anyway.
Pumped hydro is much cheaper on a large scale.
@@weinisable
The Swiss have had pumped water storage for decades...courtesy of there 5 (now 4) nuclear reactors, one outside every large city...
giving a 3 cents per kilowatt/hr 24 hour per day baseload electrical output...
which at night is used to pump that water back up into the high mountain lakes...
to be released via the hydro generators at peak load times the following day...
Note: NUCLEAR CHEAP CONSTANT electricity generation...
hi john....been watching for a long time and the work you are doing to bring the EV fire problem to the public is your finest hour. i write to alert you (if you are not already aware) of a huge fire at Luton (London) airport in the UK. No word yet if EV to blame but the situation does kinda fit your examples of what can - and will - happen...cheers...Martin
If a 100kWh car battery has about 6000 lithium cells in it , a MegaPack at 3 mWh is 3000 kWh , or the equivalent of 30 car battery packs . This pencils out to 30 x 6000 cells or 180,000 cells per "MegaPack" . And 40 MegaPacks would be about 7,200,000 individual lithium cells. The number of critical failure points becomes astronomical.
Just read a news article & came here looking if you’d done a video yet. Funny how the article I read insinuated in the headline & at the beginning that the fire fighters could put it out but aren’t being allowed to. It wasn’t until well down the article that thermal runaway was mentioned.
Lies by structure usually follow when they can't lie by omission.
Can you imagine a multi level parking mall filled with ev’s? The battery burning fallout would be glorious!!!!
I remember two or three decades back (the Energizer bunny and Duracell drumming monkey days), being told to avoid battery operated goods unless they were absolutely necessary due to their inherent toxicity - what happened?
The incidence of cancer went up 155% ?
Great to see a channel mostly about cars understanding the difference between power and energy when so many channels dealing with power generation and energy storage ironically get those mixed up; eg Undecided with Matt Shill and his team of 'researchers.' :)
John has an engineering degree, so you would hope he knows the difference.
And it seems that the initial response would have probably been from the local volunteer fire brigade (town of 1000 so maybe 20 firefighters). It would be interesting how much info they were given about the risk being deployed in the area. Did the plant contribute to the safety equipment needed , or just hope that they didn't get downwind of the fire.
My colleagues are currently doing engineering assessments for these ESS made by BYD. I don't know too much about it but I know it has fire suppression system and monitoring built in with air-conditioning etc. I'm still sceptical about it being that this system is storing 1mw which is a lot and you're right. It's literally packed inside a glorified shipping container. Nothing fancy about it,just standard 40ft. It's earmarked for windfarm here in Vic.
A 40ft container's worth of water in a storage tank...
a pump and a 6 inch main into the bottom of the container of batteries.
5 minutes and she's full of water...
thermal runaway averted...
BYD, the EV that keeps on burning in China.
@@JohnSmith-pl2bkUntil it all turns to steam. But certainly worth testing for emergency cooling.
I remember when Samsung phones use to self combust and it was all over the news everyday and the public wanted answers, now we have EVs and these large battery packs doing the same thing, it doesn’t seem to be a big deal news wise. Why?
Creeping normalization. It started with cell phones. Then those stupid one wheel 'hover board' things. And by the time it escalated up to automobiles no one gave a damn anymore because we're used to the notion that lithium ion batteries can self combust. It probably also doesn't help that the news simply will not print anything that might put a ding in the Green New Religion. "Don't write about all the burning electric vehicles...distract people with who the police shot or what Donald Trump said or who Russel Brand was bedding 15 years ago."
(Other Queensland battery projects)Redflow are to put a Zinc Bromine Battery into the Ipswich area and ESI/ESS are to put a Iron flow battery into the Wide Bay Region so there is not a total reliance on the combustible lithium type batteries.
Bromine makes the stuff in LiFePo4 look like mother's milk.
Why is bromine used in fire extinguishers?
Bromine is commonly used in flame retardants due to its high atomic mass and its general versatility across a wide range of applications and polymers.
That Redflow battery is only 4 MWh,..a trial size i suspect.
The installed one for the King Island RE project, but it had so many problems it was removed.
They are high maintenance with many pumps, pipes, valves , controls, tanks of liquids to manage.
By comparason, Mega Packs are effectively Solid state.
@@weinisable The King Island Vanadium Redox battery (with Vanadium electrolyte) was replaced in 2014 with a CSIRO developed 170 tonne 3 MW(tech now made by East Penn Manufacturing, USA) advanced lead acid battery with supercapacitor. Redflow are planning to build their largest Zinc Bromine battery (20 MWh) in California.
There was a Mega Battery fire at Moorabool in Vic, back in 2021. Burned for 3 days. This was also prior to the system being fully commissioned. I suspect that ISO is lagging in regard to applicable standards and until these are available and mandated......nothing will change
B double driver here. The moment the boss gives me a flash new Interstate EV Big Banger to sleep overnight in!?????? That's the day I become a carpenter. 👍👋
I knew I'd see a video from Johnno when I saw the news this morning....
Thank you for your no-bullshit journalism.
John: Once your prediction that there is a huge explosion/fire/whatever, that kills a few people & hospitalizes many more, we may find that these batteries are banned I understand there are some promising alternative chemistries, that are essentially inert (at least compared to the Li Fe Ph bombs)
& I hope we come to grips with this problem & find a solution. Thanks for your videos John.
Cheers! Brian from Alberta Canada where you can't give away an EV (minus 40 to 50 C winter temps )
Lol it won’t get banned. 😂😂😂 It will get more heavily taxed to “make them safer” which will make electricity more expensive.
Quick solution to only the thermal runaway problems:
The glorified shipping containers could have pressurised water supply forced in at the bottom...
and when the water gets to the top...the battery is flooded and runaway controlled
@@JohnSmith-pl2bk lol no. Lithium reacts with water. Liquid nitrogen would work much better.
@@unicornadrian1358
The lithium is on fire along with all the other chemicals in the battery.
Just flood it....submerge it...leave it for 48 hours?
We all know this type of event will unfortunately happen one day
Fighting the good fight John. Sharing your content wholesale. Keep at it dude.
The advertisement that played before this vid made me laugh. Was for Canada and how they are looking forward to their EV future. 🤔😆
I live on the street directly affected by this fire. We were NOT informed about the fire and were not told to close our windows etc. We depend on very shallow bore water for our house. We collect water off our roof. There is a waterway only a few hundred metres away. All the rain run off from the highway and our street rune directly into the creek. They are now planning another 10 hectares of batteries in the same vicinity.
John you are a legend mate, a true Aussie hero. I bought a Jeep according to your video reviews and didn't fall for Holden and Tesla trap. I've shared your video to almost all my colleagues.
Jeep is plastic junk according to the youtube mechanics that I watch (South main Auto)
@robertstanley3832 lol I don't know thr context you are writing this.
@@Titans2138 but some people have had the best experiences with Jeep. Though Compass and Patriot are horrible for sure. Cherokee isn't that bad. Transmission issues is what they have greatly improved on.
A dam! Can’t seem to build one for our own drinking supply.
I think we need to contact International Rescue and get the Thunderbirds out here. I’m sure “Brain” can sort all this out.
I have worked in the chemical industry for 35 years and I am in complete agreement with you. I often wonder if there were actually any engineers involved on some of these schemes. The politicians are clueless.
Thanks for the report John, you are doing a great job of reporting every battery fire. Do you have any statistics on how often a Bluetti battery bursts into flames? I have one in my 4x4 to run my small draw fridge, it's charged by a solar panel. Should I remove and dispose of my Bluetti battery?
Cheers mate,
Pat Sparks.
It just amazes me how these systems are put in well populated areas with a high degree of uncertainty of SAFETY
After the fire, they still have to clean up the site of hazardous waste, expelled by the battery when it burned. And God knows how much went airborne and sprinkled dangerous fallout on the surrounding areas and neighborhood.
Rural communities rely on tank water fed from their roofs.
I live in a strata complex canada, 150 units, 200+ underground parking. The strata is sleep walking charger approvals, because they think they are all so virtuous and green. Can we not just think this over next 20/40 years ?
What a waste of child labour..
haha
Bang on again John, especially as you say "disgraceful" enough of the lithium bombs.
I worked in the whisky industry and we had a deluge system at the tanker bays on the off chance of a fire, it went off twice on its own but at least we knew it was doing the job it was intended to do lol
The best ambient temperature for lithium batteries is in the range of 5 to 20 Celius. Temperatures over 35 will trigger thermal runaway. Storing the battery installation in an underground cavern where temperatures remain stable is best.
I really dont understand why they would have put them all so close together. This is Australia, not Japan, we have the space to put a decent gap between them...
Copper cables are more expensive than peoples health
Cheaper and more efficient - until this happens
@@ttkddry True enough, but even then given the cost of the cables they will need to connect to the grid surely it would still be a fairly small cost increase percentage wise. I'm not suggesting we space them hundreds of meters apart, but maybe 20 or 30 meters all round wouldn't hurt...
@charlesmartell4484 I dont think you would need the dirt on top if you did that, but you would have water drainage issues, a concrete wall around each one would be probably be cheaper and just as effective.
Copper is expected to be around USD $100K/ton within ten years. Right now it will be 6-8K/Ton. Significantly more than peoples health and its easier to get new people than it is to get new Copper.@@ttkddry
I'm on a volunteer Fire & Rescue crew that has a new Megapack installation in our jurisdiction. This mirrors the advice we were given when we toured the site, "Stand back and let it burn".
Hi John, sorry for my previous comment . I was so incensed watching your video. I just had to comment. Going back to your mention of protecting the ground water etc, here in the UK we sometimes use diesel/oil for heating. In doing so it is a regulation that all fuel tanks are bunded. Meaning that the oil tank is within another (bigger) tank to collect any spillages/ leaks. To protect the ground water. The likes of LPG tanks are kept well away from buildings and drainage. As you know LPG is heavier than air.
These advanced battery technologies can be very dangerous.
As a hazmat technician I responded to batterry/power source manufacturer in town. On a side note one of their clients is NASA so their stuff is in space and on Mars, they make some cool stuff.
There was a fire where we basically just let it burn....Basically just protect what we could from exposure without risking personnel in a compromised building and toxic fumes. It was an exothermic metal fire generating its own oxygen, so couldn't drown it in water, choke it out of oxygen, and even after tons of foam it was not enough to fully put it.
The chook's spinmasters will be working overdrive.
Some of this boils down the human machine interface. The history of the New England textile mills is illuminating. The Woolen looms had yarn beaks nearly constantly, their operators became very fatigued. The silk looms broke down a few times a month, their operators were caught unawares and a real mess ensued. The cotton looms broke down just often enough to keep their operators attention without being overly fatiguing. One of the problems of electric stuff is the reliability. People get lulled into complacency. The warning buzzer goes off, the assistant says, "What's that all about?" The operator says, "probably a glitch, we'll look at it after lunch and a potty break."
You absolutely nailed this one. Well done.
the other issue here is, the location. NIMBY means it's going to be placed one turn-off away from Dingo Piss Creek but this also means that the local fire brigade is going to be first responders. These guys are geared for house fires, grass fires, car fires, not thermal runaway. At least at Bouldercombe the better equipped units from Rocky aren't too far away but the issue still stands.
I never understand why these modules have no passive fire separation, or drencher systems as you state.
thought he hat3d jeeps
I don’t think the issue with Fukushima was the location of the reactors per se, but the decision to place the backup generators below sea level and by the sea.
By the time you've run a complete cycle battery storage is about 50% efficient and, of course, they only store "green" energy which, as it happens, requires approximately one thousand times the land that a nuclear plant would. Not to mention nukes are the cleanest, greenest, safest method of producing electricity ever invented.
Nuclear is the only mature energy source we have available which can produce clean electricity at scale.
Kevin, … you need to find better sources of information..
90+% round trip efficiency has been shown on previous similar systems.
@@weinisable Your figure is only accurate for day one but averaged over the life expectancy of a Megapack you'll find my projection not too far from the mark. They make heat while charging and discharging and that is energy lost because physics.
@@kevinthomas7264 kevin, i suspect you are confusing round trip %…( charge MWh vs discharge MWh ) , with capacity retention over time.
Charge/ discharge remains fairly constant @ 90+% , whilst caapacity retention over time does drop off. But Tesla cells have been proven to retain 80% capacity over 8 years, and are infact warranted to that effect for EVs ( commercial use will be negotiated)
These new MegaPacks will likely have the LiFePo4 chemistry, which is known to have even better long life performance.
I experienced the "Yo-yo fad" , the "Ding-Bat" fad, the BMX bicycle fad, the "Flower-Power" fad and other fads in my life. The "Renewable -Energy" fad is by far the biggest one I ever experienced so far.
"Safe and Effective"...right? Where have we heard that before.
John, I am a Police Officer with a son who is an engineer. I am not a firefighter, but It concerns me when Officials allow a facility to be built in proximity to public and do not insist on safety precautions that are effective. I am sure mention was made of concerns, but politicians may have rolled over that feedback.
Why immediate evacuation was not an option as a precautiionary measure ?
Yes this is disgraceful !
I think I must be missing something here. This is a small town in the middle of nowhere, that has never previously needed to have a giant battery on the edge of town. One day they wake up and decide that they need one. What were they planning to use this battery for if it wasn't on fire?
Nah - it's not for the town. It's for the grid.
It's between a major coal fire plant and the biggest population centre in the region so the main grid lines run near the township which makes it a good location for batteries. Well good for the company, not so much for the locals.
Nothing to do with the coal plant.
The battery is needed for the wind & Solar system stabilisation.
Its just a convenient spot near power lines.
@@AutoExpertJCsomething doesn't add up about this Bouldercombe battery. 40 megapacks for 100MWh sounds like the original NMC Megapack 1.0 specnot the new 3.9MWh LFP Megapack 2.0 spec.
You raise lots of valid points about mitigation but it is essential to understand which battery chemistry we are dealing with.
It's about 15k from Rockhampton, 75,000 people and about 8ks from Gracemere. So it's not in the middle of nowhere.
Except if you live in Victoria when 700 ks takes you out of state.
Thank you John I put a 100 watt solar panel on my vehicle & 100 amp hr agm battery box powdered & a 100 amp hr agm battery to power my 20 L Waeko fridge freezer.
Recently I up graded to a Life po 4 lithium iron phosphate 100 amp hr battery from Aldi.
As I was told they were safe.
I've always been against lithium but they talked me around to it, saying these batteries are safe.
This is why I didn't get one with my solar system. Considering where I live has reached 49.8°C once before & this year could be hotter, I knew it would be a bad idea.
So the glorified shipping containers could have pressurised water supply forced in at the bottom...
and when the water gets to the top...the battery is flooded and runaway controlled.
You can do the same with your battery at home....
@@JohnSmith-pl2bk so exacerbate the *electrical fire* by pouring water onto it creating a steam bomb and spreading electricity to everything the water touches...great idea. You'd make an excellent politician. Sounds just like something some political hack would come up with to make a bad problem worse.
As you are flooding the crapola of a thermal runaway situation , is that runoff water toxic and should they be collecting it as toxic waste? And how do you collect thousands of gallons of water that really doesn’t put out the fire??
Like living next door to a fireworks factory, but with less light show and more toxins in the air, ground and water.
At best these things are sort of like the 1980's demountable buildings, so you can almost guarantee there's nothing but MDF, thin cladding and no cooling. The monitoring for batteries on remote sites, often it would just have an under/over volt reading, the rectifiers current state along with breaker triggers. Most of the time there would be your smoke and temperature on a separate management circuit that's usually pretty simple- its working, its rooted and call the fire department. By the time I was finishing up my career in operations management we'd done away with any kind of humans looking at flashing lights and it just went straight to the algorithm to send an SMS/Email to an escalation matrix to let 'someone; know it was busted.
The thing is, a battery brings all three legs of the fire triangle. It has fuel and oxidizer by the nature of being a battery (the redox pair that stores and releases its charge) and as it breaks down, the uncontrolled reactions between them liberate a fantastically large amount of heat. Dousing it with water would have little to no effect on it. Water, CO2, airport foam, dry chemical, and halon would all be ineffective. Just about the only way to fight a lithium battery fire would be to try to spread out the contents of the battery but that would be impractical and dangerous for a variety of reasons. So the 'right' thing to do is set up a perimeter and try to prevent the fire from spreading to structures or other vehicles.