Comments on: Fluence sources lithium battery modules from Utah for ESS /2024/09/fluence-sources-lithium-battery-modules-from-utah-for-ess/ Covering the world of solar power technology, development and installation. Thu, 12 Sep 2024 23:52:39 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.2 By: Solarman2 /2024/09/fluence-sources-lithium-battery-modules-from-utah-for-ess/#comment-147044 Thu, 12 Sep 2024 23:52:39 +0000 /?p=107298#comment-147044 Fluence/AES/Siemens consortium is under scrutiny for a AES or Fluence built BESS in San Diego that caught fire and burned at an Escondido BESS Energy storage unit on 9/5 last week. Once again one will have to wait up to maybe 18 months for a thorough investigation of this fire to determine the events and time line of the failure and fire. What I would find interesting on this event, what was the chemistry of the battery cells used that apparently failed into thermal runaway. Who manufactured these cells? LGES got caught in 2019, then gigged again in 2020 and 2021 when GM had their burning Bolt Syndrome. Is this a long term consequence in former LG Chem. manufacturing plants that were found to have defects in manufacturing that have been “corrected”, but what about hundreds of thousands to millions of cells manufactured by LG Chem before the problem raised its ugly head? How does one determine how many cells (could have been affected)? I’m thinking this is going to be a multi-year trial by fire proposition, until defective cells are all gone.

For me this is a ‘tell’ that perhaps the Electric Utility industry should, (pick their battles and ESS facility sites carefully and use something that is not as compact per MWh of energy storage like redox flow batteries perhaps LAES like MAN Energy Solutions or metal/air ESS units like those being promoted by company Form Energy or nickle hydrogen battery company EnerVenue. Just sayin’, find and construct something that doesn’t have a tendency to thermally run away and BURN.

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