On the site of a retired gas-fired power plant in Southern California, the Moss Landing energy storage station, once the world's largest, built by Vistra Energy, is experiencing an unprecedented survival crisis. This "super station" has been engulfed in flames four times in less than four years, with each incident exposing the vulnerabilities of lithium-ion battery energy storage systems.

firstThe phase of the Moss Landing energy storage station has a capacity of 300MW/1200MWh and began operation on December 11, 2020. The second phase has an installed capacity of 100/MW400MWh, while the third phase adds 350MW/1400MWh, bringing the total capacity to 750MW/3000MWh.

Since its commissioning, the energy storage station has experienced four fires, with the following dates and causes:

1. The first fire occurred on September 4, 2021. On that day, a malfunction in the fault detection system led to a false response to an overheated air conditioner, triggering the sprinkler system, which sprayed water onto the battery racks. This caused a thermal runaway in the batteries, leading to a fire. The incident caused no casualties or impact on the surrounding community but resulted in the damage of 7% of the battery modules and a subsequent shutdown of the project.

2. The second fire occurred on February 13, 2022. Similar to the first incident, it was caused by issues related to the water-cooling system, resulting in the melting of approximately ten battery racks.

3. The third fire occurred on January 16, 2025. The exact cause has not been fully determined, but reports suggest that the fire was caused by a malfunction of the facility's internal fire suppression system. The fire burned for five days and destroyed about 40% of the batteries inside the building. Fifteen hundred people were evacuated. In response, local community residents have filed lawsuits against the station operator Vistra Energy, PG&E, and other defendants.

4. The fourth fire occurred on February 18, 2025. It was caused by smoldering lithium batteries that had not been fully removed from the burned area. The fire was controlled by the morning of February 19. This is the fourth fire at the energy storage station, occurring only one month after the previous one. More than 70% of the facility has now been damaged.

In the days following the third fire at Moss Landing, the Los Angeles Times reported that Ivano Aiello, chair of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories at San Jose State University, conducted tests on the downstream estuary wetlands near the accident site. He found unusually high concentrations of heavy metal nanoparticles in the soil (particles that can penetrate deep into human lungs), with the main elements being nickel, cobalt, and manganese, which are the primary components lithium of nickel cobalt manganese oxide (NMC) batteries. Aiello stated that the concentrations of nickel, manganese, and cobalt on the soil surface were hundreds to thousands of times higher than those in the soil before the fire or compared to deeper soil layers. He added that heavy metals can undergo chemical changes as they move through the environment and may impact local aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems through the food chain. From the initial incident of "air conditioning mistakenly triggering the sprinkler system" to the subsequent failures of the fire suppression systems, the disaster trajectory of Moss Landing has perfectly illustrated the inherent weaknesses of lithium-ion batteries. The NMC battery modules provided by LG undergo intense exothermic reactions at the critical temperature of thermal runaway (typically 150-250°C). The flammable gases produced by the decomposition of the electrolyte (such as ethylene and propylene) mix with oxygen to create an explosive environment. The continuous destruction of ten battery racks in the February 2022 fire is a vivid demonstration of this thermal runaway chain reaction. However, more alarming is the structural design flaw of the system: traditional energy storage stations densely stack thousands of battery modules in a closed building, where a single module failure can easily trigger a "hot spot effect," as demonstrated by the 40% battery damage in the January 16, 2025 fire. Meanwhile, the station operator Vistra Energy's continued use of LG batteries after three accidents has exposed a severe neglect of battery lifecycle management.

According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) 2023 White Paper on Grid-Scale Energy Storage Fire Accidents, the technical review of the Moss Landing incident clearly pointed out that "the conventional design of using nitrogen inerting systems, in the case of Moss Landing, actually delayed the natural dissipation of heat, leading to a significant increase in the risk of re-ignition."

With the increasing frequency of lithium battery accidents, many countries around the world have explicitly called for high safety standards in the construction of new energy storage facilities. Recently, the Development and Reform Commission of Sichuan Province issued the "Interim Guidelines for the Safety Management of New Energy Storage Stations in Sichuan Province," which specifically encourages the use of vanadium flow battery technology, a safer alternative to lithium batteries, in new energy storage stations located in large and central cities. Compared to lithium batteries, vanadium flow battery technology uses aqueous electrolytes, completely eliminating the risk of thermal runaway and explosion. Coupled with its advantages of long-duration energy storage, long life, and flexible scalability, vanadium flow batteries are more suitable for large-scale energy storage and high-safety applications in densely populated areas.

ZHJ Energy has always been committed to mission the of "focusing on energy safety." Its independently developed energy storage solutions for high-safety-level sites have been stably deployed and have received customer recognition. These solutions are fully adaptable to high-safety-demand environments and densely populated areas, such as oil and gas storage facilities, paper mills, chemical parks, highway gas stations, and aviation hubs. They provide a safe and economical optimal solution for the green transformation of energy.

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