Updated 20 May 2024
A fire at the 250MW Gateway Energy Storage lithium-ion battery energy storage project in San Diego, California, reignited Friday morning after being initially extinguished, and continued to smoulder over the weekend. The local fire service said there were no casualties, but the roof had partially sagged in by Sunday but not collapsed. They were continuing to cool the interior of the building and monitor for thermal runaway.
The US county’s Alert San Diego website stated just after midnight on Friday that firefighters were at the scene and the county sheriff’s department had issued an immediate evacuation order to everyone in the impacted area. That requires immediate movement out of the affected area due to an imminent threat to life.
LS Power, which owns the site, said that when it opened in August 2020, its facility was the world’s biggest BESS. It has several other BESS projects under construction, the biggest in Queens, New York (316MW).
The EPRI failure event database said the battery module was used for energy shifting and came from LG Chem. The system is 3.7 years old, it stated.
Quoting the San Diego Tribune, EPRI stated that water was pumped into the building’s fire suppression system to extinguish it. A 600-foot safety barrier was maintained for over 22 hours, as air monitors were showing high levels of hydrogen.
A drone and unmanned robot were used to monitor the fire, measure air quality and take temperature readings. It said firefighters opened the building once heat was no longer detected. Clean-up after the initial extinguishing was handed over to the site’s property manager.
The San Diego Tribune reported that businesses in the area were evacuated, and Donovan state prison was told to shelter inmates and staff as a precaution against poisonous fumes and potential explosions. Some 50 firefighters attended the scene on Thursday morning, along with county and city hazardous materials teams and the sheriff’s bomb squad, it said.
It reported fire officials saying the fire was initially put out in about 45 minutes by the site’s internal fire prevention system.
The cause of the fire was not immediately known. LS Power – a New York-based energy company with an office in California –said all four of its on-site employees were accounted for and safe. A spokesperson for its subsidiary, Rev Renewables, told BEST on Saturday: “In the last 12 hours, the fire at the Gateway battery storage facility reignited. Local fire response units have remained on scene and are applying water from outside the building. There remains no damage to any businesses in the vicinity. While unfortunate, this development was not unexpected as these kinds of fires can reignite and take time to be fully extinguished. We remain in close coordination with local first responders and will provide updates as this situation develops.”
AES, a Fortune 500 renewable energy company, is planning to construct the 320MW/1,280MWh Seguro lithium-ion BESS project on a 22.5-acre site between San Marcos and Escondido in California.
Many local residents have protested against the project. They say it is in too confined an area and poses a fire hazard, according to the Union Tribune.
