It’s another day, another green energy disaster in the making—this time featuring the very people who demand Net Zero, now backpedaling furiously to avoid living next to the technology that’s supposed to save the planet. Welcome to New York, where residents are suddenly realizing that lithium battery storage facilities are just a tad more dangerous than the windmills and solar panels they imagined would lead them to climate utopia.
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s ambitious plan to turn New York into a renewable energy powerhouse is colliding with reality as towns and cities push back against massive Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) facilities. These behemoth battery plants are necessary to store the sporadic energy generated by wind and solar—because, surprise, the sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow.
But here’s the catch: These lithium-ion storage facilities have a nasty little habit of catching fire, spewing toxic fumes, and being nearly impossible to extinguish. As Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella put it,
“They are being placed literally right next door to people’s homes, and even next to a gas station”
“The city is playing with fire by allowing this type of reckless policy to continue”.
https://nypost.com/2025/02/03/us-news/ny-residents-rebel-against-battery-storage-plants-for-wind-solar-power-as-going-green-goes-south-playing-with-fire/
In Duanesburg—where, hilariously, New York’s top energy bureaucrat Doreen Harris lives—the town voted to ban these facilities altogether, citing
“a threat to public health, safety, and welfare”
It seems that even the climate policy elite don’t want to live next to their own grand ideas.
Now, let’s talk about irony. Remember the Indian Point nuclear plant? It was shut down in 2020 because environmentalists claimed it was a safety risk. Fast forward to 2025, and the same activists are now screaming about the dangers of the giant lithium battery facility set to replace it.
“Indian Point was the safest thing since apple pie,”
said Roland Ciafone, a former maintenance supervisor at the plant. Who could’ve guessed that a nuclear plant designed with multiple safety redundancies might be safer than a lithium-ion fire trap?
The pushback in New York isn’t just some isolated NIMBYism. A similar lithium battery storage plant in Monterey County, California, recently erupted in flames, leading to the evacuation of 1,500 residents. Scientists later discovered high concentrations of heavy metals in the soil around the site. Glenn Church, a Monterey County official, described the fire as “the Three Mile Island event for this industry”. In other words, the green energy revolution is starting to resemble a bad rerun of history.
According to Church,
“This technology is ahead of government’s ability to regulate it and industry’s ability to control it”.
Translation: We are guinea pigs in an experiment where nobody actually knows what they’re doing.
Yet, despite mounting evidence of the dangers, New York continues pushing its 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which aims to cut emissions by 40% by 2030 and achieve 100% “zero-carbon” electricity by 2040. But without stable nuclear power and with communities rejecting battery storage, it’s unclear how exactly this miracle is supposed to happen. Magic, perhaps?
For years, environmentalists have insisted that wind and solar—propped up by giant lithium-ion batteries—are the only way forward. Now, as these battery facilities start going up in smoke (literally), even the most die-hard climate warriors are having second thoughts. When climate policy meets cold, hard reality, the results are often spectacularly disastrous.
New York residents who once chanted for Green New Deal policies are quickly learning that “going green” comes with a very real, very flammable downside. The only question left is: How many more battery fires will it take before policymakers admit that their grand plan is a spectacular failure?
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Having both parts of an energetic chemical reaction together is how one makes explosives. With LiIon batteries, one just gets deflagration, but the more energy stored in a reaction, the more energetic.
Given the character of “progressives”, I doubt they are devoted enough to competence over politics to be safe around anything that dangerous.
Correct. To describe lithium battery failures as fires is incorrect. Most failures are initially the result of uncontrolled chemical reaction without the need for atmospheric oxygen so it is not combustion in the accepted sense of fuel consuming atmospheric oxygen. They are much more difficult to control because the energy is self-contained and can be realised at high rates teven causing explosion.
But wait there’s more. Depending on the batteries, there are typically several flammable organic solvents and polymers used within and housing batteries that can undergo combustion.
Incorrect.
Metal + metal ixide fires are known collectively under the term thermite effect. The heat of burning releases oxygen from the oxide to continure combustion after atmospheric oxygen is used up.
Lithium battery fires combine burning from exposed, hot, petrochemical based polymer chemical fires, ignition of the lithium metal+iron oxide thermite reaction, and atmospheric oxygen burning the aluminum or plastic container – another variety metal fire. Most often overcharge, undercharge, or physical damage may cause the polymer to overheat, which may seem to a witness like an explosion. However, any of the three processes can be set off first, and lead to the other two directly, or through combustion of other surrounding materials. In a car or a building, the fire will involve or originate from other materials, more aluminum, tires, upholstery or more exotic materials like carbon fiber.
Small battery fires may be separated and contained until the various flammable materials are exhausted and the heat is gone. They only way to put out large battery fires is to smother them with a material like silica sand, and keep the atmospheric oxygen away until the involved materials are cool enough to avoid spontaneous reignition.
If it is in a house, car, or trouser pocket, I don’t suspect that anyone would care which specific description of combustion is involved.
The correct method of using lithium batteries is to keep them in modular separated containers with thermal and switched manual and auromatic electrical isolation, with separate automatic fire suppression systems, just like incindiaries or explosives.
Another important explosive storage detail include compartmentalisation. A critical step to limit the extent of the damage, ensuring the initial incident does not spread to other components.
Large battery storage systems do not comply with this, if they did, then fires wouldn’t propagate beyond an easily controlled event and certainly wouldn’t result in the loss of a facility or a fire that can only be controlled by allowing it to burn itself out.
Simple risk management should exclude the placing of any large scale BESS within any residential district or near to any critical infrastructure. Since the smoke from the fire is the largest risk, (once you are over 20m from the heat source), then the risk management should not be about the fire but the damage the smoke may cause. How far downwind do you need to be for the gases to dilute in the atmosphere to render them safe?
What level is safe? These batteries, if correctly evaluated for risk, may require their placement on remote islands or central to vast deserts.
The batteries do not need external oxygen to explode. And there is not necessarily any fire before the big bang.
“Explosions” in lithium batteries are mostly over expansion of the electrolyte and separator due to overheating. Overheating is mostly caused by overcharge voltage or current, over discharge over a short time causing polarity to reverse, physical damage to the casing, and/or external heat from another cell. Never said that there couldn’t be other sources, but it is like overheating any sealed container with an expandable material inside. Once it happens, the attendant electrical discharge can cause the electrolyte materials, now exposed to air, to burn even as it is still expanding.
Once you set off the lithium + FeO4, it is self-sustaining until the oxide is used up. After that, the polymer, lithium, and aluminum are happy to burn up any oxygen availble, probably combusting some of the nickel electrodes and other plastic and metalic components along the way. You get aluminum, lithium, and nickel hydroxides, as well as other fun chemicals – some of which are nerve poisons.
All this to say that firefighters have a really dirty, tough job frequrently made deadly or simply impossible by the vagaries of politics, cheapskates, and confidence games.
YES! Well written article. Pass the popcorn please. The climate utopia ship is sinking! BOOM!
And the band played on! 🤪
The insurance industry will put an end to the BESS madness. A few hefty payouts to owners and others impacted by battery fires will cause rates to skyrocket.
Many jurisdictions are denying EVs access to underground parking. Rules are being put into place about minimum spacing between parked EVs in public and corporate car-parks.
Leftists didn’t think about the risk-adverse attitudes of many Americans. They seemed to forget about the tort lawyers attracted to every disaster, big and small.
Very nice. This is exactly what I am talking about. The CAGW sham won’t be solved at the ballot box. Those voted into office think they know better than us. They don’t. Just think how fast all of this nonsense would come to an end if we just educated the average guy and showed him he is being lied to and cheated and all for nothing. He wouldn’t put up with it and there isn’t a damn thing the activists and politicians could do about it. Get the average guy working for us and all of this nonsense will just go away.
Yep, good call Bob.
However, people need to also be made aware that Wikipedia is just a swamp of blatant far left propaganda falsely identifying as a “community based knowledge resource”.
Here’s a “look behind the curtain” about them –
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/luis-cornelio/2025/02/03/exclusive-wikipedia-effectively-blacklists-all-right
Wikipedia states:
Er..Wiki, all your information is user-generated, ergo unreliable.
TMI Happened just two months short of fifty years ago and “No One Died at TMI.” [Or because of]
Well I have been living within a spits throw from Indian Point (not really but about 20 miles) since almost the beginning. When NY still had brains. I remember taking my 2 kids to their facility for a tour. Yes they really did those things. The steam was superheated by oil because the reactor wasn’t hot enough. I remember how small the turbine looked hooked up to this huge locomotive sized generator. I was a member of the Courtland Yacht club for several years on the site where Indian Point #3 was to be built. Obviously this never happened and here we are, energy poor and stupid.
The green alarmists can ignore reality, but not the consequences of ignoring reality. As in New York now.
Reality: 4,646 Alarmists: 0
They are closing in on a perfect game!
Proceeds from the false assumption that lithium batteries don’t require charging from reliable energy sources. And from the false claim that there is such a thing as a grid scale electrical storage system in a dynamic energy distribution network arranged to eliminate the need for storage.
the false assumption that lithium batteries don’t require charging from reliable energy sources
The assumption is not false.
Lithium batteries are not generators. The claim that they are only charged from wind and solar is a con for the ignorant. They are connected to the grid, and charge/discharge rates and times are not advertised or published – even though they are attached to public utilities.
Like the other fake renewable claims, grid-scale batteries theoretically charge from the grid at the same time that renewables are generating WITH other reliable sources. When charging or maintaining a charge batteries add to the overall demand of the load, like any other customer. Theoretically, when the “renewable” source can’t meet its contracted load, if the batteries are charged they are used to fill the gap for the contracted load period. Of course the battery and grid operators don’t publish their charge and discharge Wh, so we take their word for it.
Until batteries are charged to about 35%, they are not charged at their full charge rate. When they approach about 90% charge, the charge current is reduced. They have to be cooled. When fully charged they naturally discharge, requiring a low-current maintenance charge. All meaning that they take in more than they put out.
Grid scale batteries are a way to for customers to pay renewable upcharge twice for the same delivered electricity. They are a load, like any other appliance, not a power source. They increase demand, and don’t reduce it.
Charging Lithium-Ion batteries to 100% is rarely done because they can be damaged by overcharge or just being held at 100% long term. Electric cars and hybrids usually very conservatively set their “full” point to 90% or a bit higher. Max discharge is 2.5V per cell or 20% of capacity. Older ones set the minimum at 3.0V.
Lithium-Iron-Phosphate tolerates a much wider range of capacity use and won’t be ruined by long term 100% charge or any discharge down to almost 0%. Thus a smaller total capacity LiFePo4 can have the same or greater *usable* capacity of a Li-Ion that’s the same physical size. They’re especially good for replacing Lead Acid, which in “deep cycle” styles can only go down to 50% capacity so a 100 amp hour LiFePo4 is functionally equivalent to a 200 amp hour lead acid, and weighs a lot less so if there’s enough space a lot more usable capacity can be installed without exceeding weight limits.
Completely agreed on your first paragraph.
A quibble with your second:Less mass does not equal less space, and for a large-capacity stationary installation, such as a mythological grid-scale storage facility, the proper design including modular separation, fire and hazmat containment, and monitoring and control equipment eliminate the gains both in mass and volume.
I think unprotected and undontained Lithium batteries are probably safe and useful less than about 10Kwh capacity.
I have some Jackery power cells (falsely called generators) used for camping and around the house. I’ve have a lot of battery powered hand tools.
Without applying any algebra, all together they provide about the equivalent of 10 horsepower over 2-3 hours. They cost about 10 times as much as a 10hp motor and a gallon of gas, and I have one of those with a generator and many gallons of gas for when the batteries run out. The batteries also weigh much more and take up more space. Without using the generator for anything else, from discharge, I have to run for six to eight hour to recharge the batteries.
Anything much more than 10Kwh, as in EVs, large battery hybrids, and grid-scale storage, is asking for trouble.
It is all Trump’s fault. He has taken the wind out of the sails of climate ambition.
Trump said tonight that we ought to relocate the Palestinian people to nice places where they don’t have to worry about being killed, like Egypt or Jordan, and Trump says other nations would volunteer to help, and then Trump would go into the Gaza Strip and bulldoze out all the wreckage and debris, and turn it into a whole new fabulous place for people to live. Trump calls it “the Riviera of the Middle East”.
Trump says he wants peace in the Middle East. Trump says the Mad Mullahs of Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
Nobody can keep up with Trump.
I thought America was broke. But then we have Investing in Gaza. Golf amongst the unexploded munitions anyone … a USAID funded Casino, what about their alcohol and scantily-clad women issues …
Perhaps a pipe-bomb dream.
Trump says we need to think “outside the box”.
Trump thinks the Palestinian people need to be separated from the Hamas terrorists (I’m not sure that’s possible), so one way to do that is to move Palestinian people out from under the control of Hamas in Gaza to another country that is not controlled by Hamas.
Trump throws out an extreme scenario, people think he is crazy, and then they start thinking about the possibilities and discussing new ways of looking at the problem. Which is what Trump wants.
As Trump says, this situation cannot continue like this. Gaza is devastated. Thanks to Hamas and their murderous view of the world.
Hamas is not, and cannot be part of the solution.
Very few people realize or understand that those are the tactics he is employing.
To change the status quo, one must first disrupt the status quo. Only then can real changes occur.
A side benefit, or perhaps the underlying purpose, is to get people to think critically about all of these things, rather than be brainwashed and recite programmed rhetoric.
Time will tell if that assessment is accurate and if it works.
Be sure and put one in the building where Yoko Ono lives.
Melbourne Battery Warehouse Fire: 3,000 Lithium-Ion Batteries Burn
And that was the good news.
I would like to know where all the Lithium went. Obviously it’s no longer a metal, it’s likely a highly soluble salt. Downwind of Cheltenham, (the fire location), is market gardens that are still used for the commercial production of vegetables for the local market.
Are these growing areas subject to monitoring, if not, why not? The people of Melbourne, especially the south east, are not likely being exposed to chemicals that emanated from that fire.
https://www.google.com/maps/search/market+gardens+in+south+east+melbourne/@-37.9608679,145.0650722,6817m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDIwMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
To go from a possibilty of 4 years of Kalama Lama Ding Dong to watching the Green Grift and boy wonders filleting one Fedgov grift after another in a few months has made the mid winter doldrums far easier to take this year. Life is good.
Instead of this being the winter of our discontent, many Americans are brewing a second pot of coffee and sitting back to see what changes hath been wrought! The average time from conspiracy theory to fact has dropped from six months to two days; now that is REAL doged efficiency!
Yes! 🙂
The marxo-democrats are in full-blown meltdown, all they can do is screech and scream.
PANIC IN DC
NEW ENGLAND ELECTRICITY 100% FROM WIND AND SOLAR by 2050?
In New England, we have Net Zero nut cases. They know nothing about energy systems, but spout lots of nonsense.
“Keep it in the ground”, they say. “All electricity from wind and solar”, they say.
When presented with numbers and facts their eyes glaze over
Here is a simple analysis, if no fossil fuels, no nuclear, and minimal other sources of electricity
.
New England would need a battery storage system able to store about 10 TWh of DELIVERABLE electricity from batteries to the HV grid.
W/S output is seasonal and subject to weather patterns
Daily W/S output would be fed to the batteries, 140 TWh/y
Daily demand would be drawn from the batteries, 115 TWh/y in 2024
Roundtrip losses would be 25 TWh/y, more with aging
Transmission and Distribution to users incur additional losses of about 8%, or 0.08 x 115 = 9.2 TWh
The battery system would cover any multi-day W/S lulls throughout the year
Batteries would supplement wind and solar, as needed, 24/7/365
Wind and solar would charge excess output into the batteries, 24/7/365
.
Tesla recommends not charging to more than 80% full and not discharging to less than 20% full, to achieve normal life of 15 years and normal aging at 1.5%/y.
.
The INSTALLED battery capacity would need to be at least 10 TWh / (0.6, Tesla factor x aging factor x 0.9, outage factor) = 18.5 TWh, delivered as AC at battery outlet.
.
The turnkey cost would be about $600/installed kWh, delivered as AC at battery outlet, 2024 pricing, or $600/kWh x 18.5 billion kWh = $11.1 trillion, about every 15 years.
If all money were borrowed from banks, the cost of amortizing $11.1 trillion at 6% over 15 years = 1132 billion/y, which would be slightly less than the New England GDP
This is on top of the cost of wind and solar going through the battery.
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
And that generously assumes that there will BE consistent annual W/S output, which is dubious at best.
Overbuilding W/S systems reduces the likelihood of shortages.
Not all of the “overbuild” would be in service, 24/7/365
As a last resort, there is “demand management”
There will be “wind dances”; please wind blow!
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I did not mention insurance costs of risky projects.
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In the real world, banks would insist, Owners have 50% of the project, and banks 50%.
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Owners want 10%/y as a return on their investment in a high inflationary environment
.
That takes costs to a whole new level
.
You mention all this to woke, leftist people, as I have during my talks, they get very upset.
From the article: “The pushback in New York isn’t just some isolated NIMBYism.”
This seems to be happening all over the country. People in Oklahoma are questioning battery storage here, too.
They are questioning battery storage facilities and windmills and solar and the building of new electric transmission lines.
Batteries, panels, and windmills; goodbye! My sincerest apologies to L. Frank Baum!
No one has been hurt, let alone killed, by radiation from commercial or naval LWR designed and operated to US standards.
If you have ever smashed your finger with a hammer while driving a nail, I do not have to explain what hurt means. It is not some abstract concept.
Because of my experience in the US nuclear industry, this safety culture makes my family safer. Because of the safety culture at nuke plants, it was learned at coal plants.
Do a Google search of industrial accidents and Bhohal comes up. Now the US chemical industry is required to follow process safety rules. Better late than never.
Next on the list is Chernobyl. Yes people died from radiation exposure but not enough to make any list based on body count. Using school children to make fireworks in China dominates that list.
The USSR and CCP are not know for their safety culture but the culture of starvation.
Because of TMI, NRC was required to provide Congress a report on nuclear matters. If ever there is a time to practice situational awareness it is in a hospital. While using radiation has saved millions of lives in the US over 100 years, there were avoidable mistakes.
Storing electricity is dangerous, even in small amounts. Using a battery to start an ICE still requires safety precautions.
It is better to store fuel and make electricity as it is demanded. As it so happens I know a safe low carbon way to do it.
All LWR in the US are designed to load follow. The French do it because they do not have our coal and gas resources.
I am not suggesting we do it but it would be better than evacuating people to avoid toxic fumes from battery fires.
It’s common practice to explain an acronym when you first use it. It might be worthwhile stating that LWR stands for Light Water Reactor for the less technically literate.
BS, it is the internet. When writing a technical document I often do not spell out the first use of an acronym to give people something to comment on.
I wrote a test at a nuke plant that the NRC considered Chernobyl like. Two NRC engineers were sent for oversight. One comment was that the correct word was ‘ensure’ not ‘insure’. When I explained the reason for my word choice and that I would not change it, his response was he did not care but he had to make comments. He then told me to watch my back.
My test was nothing more than formally collecting data during a normal evolution. It is something every reactor operator and shift supervisor does informally. I started the test at midnight and by 4 am the senior NRC was on site concerned that the test was not going as he expected. I said the data was just what I expected and explained why.
He informed me that he was going to issue a NOV because of my lack of concern. Fine, let me know when it is published in the FR. I will be taking to the nearest federal court house to have you charged with making a material false statement.
The news media will love it. Private citizens charge the NRC inspector with lying. Do you think I can find a hundred naval academy graduates that were qualified as navy nukes at the NRC who will testify under oath that you know I was right.
Before going home I was told to go speak to our manager. I asked him to put it in writing and sign his name.
What is the point? I find it worthwhile to get legal evidence of wrong doing on paper. If a battery storage site or hydrogen fool cell car was near me I want to see the evidence that it is safe.
Something I learned in the navy. To be fair, my father told me to pay attention when the navy was teaching boring stuff.
Having a piece of paper that might be evidence is all it takes sometimes to get your point across to a bully.
It does help to be right. In the case of the test, I had 4″ of computer print showing no one could be hurt.
The US chemical industry was following process safety rules before the Bhopal incident, but the operators of the Bhopal plant weren’t. SOP was to have a chemical engineer on site 24/7, but at the time of the accident the Ch Eng who was supposed to be on site was at home having tea. The plant was supposed to have an exclusion area around where no housing could be built. At the time of the accident there was housing almost at the plant boundary.
Please specify the rule and when it went in to affect.
Just have the EPA declare that Li batteries that are spent or damaged are considered to be hazardous waste and must be disposed of accordingly and the responsibility for same is on the original manufacturer. Likewise, any damage resulting from the combustion of said batteries is the legal responsibility of the original manufacturer. You make a hazardous product, you’re liable. Problem solved.
Welcome to New York, where residents are suddenly realizing that lithium battery storage facilities are just a tad more dangerous than the windmills…
You sure about that?
Victoria wind farm shut down after turbine collapse, likely due to massive lightning strike | RenewEconomy
LOL. Look at it this way: falling turbines can only land within a circle whose diameter is their height. Maybe add an extra buffer zone for movement of wreckage after it hits the ground. So maybe 1.5x their height to be safe.
Toxic smoke from battery fires can travel for miles.
Anyhoo while the usual suspects in the MSM are asleep at the wheel the internet keeps up-
Melbourne Battery Warehouse Fire: 3,000 Lithium-Ion Batteries Burn – YouTube
California’s EV OBSESSION causes HAVOC for LA fire cleanup | MGUY Australia
It’s not the Three Mile Island event. Only a small amount of radioactive steam escaped TMI. The containment design functioned just fine, despite the best attempts of malfunction and human error.
All these Li-Ion battery banks catching fire are the Chernobyl for this industry.
No. Much worse.
There was only one Chernobyl.
FTA: “Gov. Kathy Hochul’s ambitious plan to turn New York into a renewable energy powerhouse …”
I call that an oxymoron.
Agenda: Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
Formerly: The beatings will continue until moral improves.
Now: The insanities will continue until irreversible damage is inflicted.
Slightly revised from earlier comment
NEW ENGLAND ELECTRICITY 100% FROM WIND AND SOLAR by 2050?
In New England, we have Net Zero nut cases. They know nothing about energy systems, but spout lots of nonsense.
“Keep it in the ground”, they say. “All electricity from wind and solar”, they say.
When presented with numbers and facts their eyes glaze over
Here is a simple analysis, if no fossil fuels, no nuclear, and minimal other sources of electricity
ELECTRICITY STORAGE WITH TESLA POWER MODULES
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/vermont-example-of-electricity-storage-with-tesla-powerwall-2-0s
.
It is assumed, 1) all W/S output, based on historic weather data, is loaded into batteries, 2) all demand is drawn from batteries, based on historic load on the grid, as published by ISO-NE.
An annual storage balance was created, which needed to stay well above zero; the batteries are not allowed to “run dry” in bad W/S years. The balance was used to determine the wind and solar capacities needed to achieve it.
.
New England would need a battery storage system with a capacity of about 10 TWh of DELIVERABLE electricity from batteries to the HV grid.
Daily W/S output would be fed to the batteries, 140 TWh/y
Daily demand would be drawn from the batteries, 115 TWh/y in 2024
Battery system roundtrip loss, HV to HV, would be 25 TWh/y, more with aging
Transmission and Distribution to users incur additional losses of about 8%, or 0.08 x 115 = 9.2 TWh
The battery system would cover any multi-day W/S lulls throughout the year
Batteries would supplement W/S output, as needed, 24/7/365
W/S would charge excess output into the batteries, 24/7/365
Tesla recommends not charging to more than 80% full and not discharging to less than 20% full, to achieve normal life of 15 years and normal aging at 1.5%/y.
.
The INSTALLED battery capacity would need to be about 10 TWh / (0.6, Tesla factor x aging factor x 0.9, outage factor) = 18.5 TWh, delivered as AC at battery outlet.
.
The turnkey cost would be about $600/installed kWh, delivered as AC at battery outlet, 2024 pricing, or $600/kWh x 18.5 billion kWh = $11.1 trillion, about every 15 years.
If all money were borrowed from banks, the cost of amortizing $11.1 trillion at 6% over 15 years = 1132 billion/y, slightly less than the New England GDP
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
Good article. I posted an article today describing comments that Richard Ellenbogen and I filed yesterday that argued that New York’s net-zero implementation process should be paused until issues like battery safety are resolved. The battery safety section included the analysis posted here describing the impacts of an evacuation zone in New York City. We also argued that New York still has no comprehensive plan, that any batteries built today are not needed for wind and solar which will not be available in New York City in large quantities for many years, and until the State decides on which magical dispatchable emissions-free resource they plan to use any batteries build might never be needed.
The simple fact is that utility scale batteries are required ONLY for intermittent renewable energy – wind and solar. The dispatchable fossil fuel or nuclear power plant does NOT require backup. Load following is done by (pumped) hydroelectric or gas turbine. The $trillions invested in added grid structures are not needed . It is a win-win to go nuclear.
A brief moment of clarity in a vast fog of fraud and propaganda. Resistance isn’t futile, it’s essential. Voters need to answer a few key question when they next vote for people who will determine the future of systems critical to social progress and sustainability:
Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries are safer, their only potential fire potential is hydrogen gas. The H2 is easily vented, so no build up would occur. NiMH batteries would be twice as big for the same capacity, but that’s not a problem for a fixed installation.