Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Big battery fire regulation confusion in Washington State

Unfortunately while each had a section on grid battery fires there was significant confusion as each cited a regulation that as I read it does not apply to grid scale battery complexes.

"Comments of David Wojick, Ph.D. on the Washington Department of Ecology"draft PEIS for wind and solar" regarding the potential impact of grid scale battery fires Submitted October 26, 2024 The wind and solar PEIS address the very serious issue of spontaneous fire in the huge battery complexes that often accompany wind and solar projects.

Permits are required when more than 15 cubic feet of most battery types are accumulated.

The title is "Grid scale battery fires loom large.

The project is named the Horse Heaven Wind Farm despite its massive solar and battery components.

The App is over 500 pages long and I can find just one sentence about battery fires.

Buried in a long paragraph on PDF page 366 we read "Lithium-ion battery storage may pose a risk of fire and explosion due to the tendency for lithium-ion batteries to overheat." This single sentence does not even refer to the project.

There is nothing about the number of giant battery containers or that it is a huge project in its own right, posing an equally huge fire threat.

The growing threat of grid scale battery fires is a very serious issue calling for equally serious action.

Clearly there is a real threat of enormous property damage and even loss of life if a battery fire gets out of control.

There are relatively few battery complexes in America yet there have been a significant number of fires. 

https://www.cfact.org/2024/10/28/big-battery-fire-regulation-confusion-in-washington-state/

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