Recently, the Energy Bureau of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region announced that on May 15th local time, a fire broke out at the Otay Mesa Gateway energy storage plant (lithium battery) in San Diego, California, USA. As of now, the fire has reignited twice since it was first brought under control on the 16th and has been burning for a full six days. There is no indication that the fire has been fully controlled.

The initial fire was almost completely extinguished on the afternoon of May 16th, but on the night it was extinguished, the first reignition occurred, and on the evening of May 17th, a second reignition occurred. More than thirty firefighters resumed their work and worked hard to extinguish the fire. On Saturday night, the fire suddenly broke out, spread to the building, and burned down part of the roof of the storage facility. Fire officials said in an interview with local media that the fire may take several more weeks to be completely extinguished.
The Gateway energy storage power station has an installed capacity of 250MW and 216 40 foot long lithium-ion battery containers. It was officially connected to the grid on August 9, 2020 and was the largest lithium-ion battery storage power station in the world at that time.

The California Fire Department stated that the cause of the fire is still under investigation. According to a report released on Saturday morning, lithium-ion batteries in the warehouse have "continued to experience thermal runaway", leading to a rapid increase in temperature and causing a fire. The fire department explained that such fires are difficult to extinguish because lithium-ion batteries generate oxygen when caught on fire. Therefore, although water-based fire extinguishers help cool burning batteries, they are rarely able to completely extinguish fires. In addition to explosions, the potential toxic gases generated by fires have also raised concerns, and the hazardous materials team has also arrived at the scene to ensure air quality and water flow are not contaminated.
According to the statistics of the 24th Tide Industry Research Institute, there have been at least 100 energy storage accidents worldwide since 2011. Regardless of the scale of energy storage, the source of thermal runaway of lithium-ion batteries cannot be cut off, and there are certain risks to the safety of lithium-ion battery energy storage stations. How to standardize the management of existing lithium-ion battery energy storage stations and avoid the safety risks of new energy storage projects from the source is worthy of our high attention and deep thinking.