Firefighters bring large battery fire near Geelong under control | Hacker News Reader

Firefighters bring large battery fire near Geelong under control

news.cfa.vic.gov.au

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Discussed yesterday:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28034815 (90 points/80 comments)

According to recent reports[1], Tesla is transitioning to using Iron Phosphate (LFP) Li-ion cells in it's Megapack stationary storage products. Unlike nickel-based cells, LFP is highly resistant to fire and thermal runaway.

Presumably, this particular installation was still using nickel-based cells.

[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2021/05/11/tesla-transitions-to-lf...

It's been... interesting watching Tesla migrate from their more oddball technical decisions to using the same tech as the rest of the industry. LFP is a really conventional tech for stationary storage as well as vehicle applications with less demanding power-to-weight requirements. They also seem to have mostly switched from the AC motors that inspired their name to permanent magnet brushless motors like the rest of the car industry.

Conventional wisdom is that grid storage product was offered because battery production was outstripping what they could ship in cars at the time.

Remember that heavy industry isn't like software, you don't get to Just Decide to match the product to the market and switch when it makes sense. You make a bet years in advance on resource contracts and factory capacity, and if the needles don't match you need to find some way to generate revenue from what you actually have, not what you want to produce.

But yes: LiFePO4 has a high internal resistance (which is bad for applications with high current loads) and somewhat poor energy density (bad for mobile applications), but is significantly cheaper at scale due to the elimination of Cobalt and has an absolutely massive cell durability advantage (GREAT for grid storage).

But you won't see phosphate batteries in anything but budget/commuter EVs. They aren't something Tesla is going to bet on for their main production choices, but absolutely something you'd expect to see them optimize as they scale.

> "But you won't see phosphate batteries in anything but budget/commuter EVs."

I'm not sure about that. Elon Musk said on the most recent Tesla earnings call that he expects the industry to shift heavily towards LFP over time.

Obviously the cost savings and cobalt avoidance are a significant reason, but LFP has some other advantages. Tesla's LFP Model 3 SR+ actually has slightly more range and faster charging than the NCMA version, at the cost of about 100 kg extra weight. Plus you can charge LFP to 100% every time without having to worry about accelerated battery degradation.

I'd agree that LFP is becoming conventional in stationary storage, but it's still relatively unusual in passenger vehicles outside of China. As far as I know, Tesla is unique amongst "western" automakers in using LFP cells in some of its cars.

The Wheego LIFE [0] was built with a lithium iron phosphate battery back in 2011. The body shell was Chinese, but the electric part of the car was built in the US. Apparently it was a crap car, but tesla definitely isn't the first US company to produce a car with lithium iron batteries.

That said, chemistry has come a long ways, the Wheego is more like a hotrodded golf cart than an actual car. That was the norm for 2011 though.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/eco-nomics/2012/03/14/can-tiny-...

Is this transition happening for their home battery products too?

Speculation, but I think this is likely to happen at some point. Perhaps when there is a new model of Powerwall introduced.

LFP makes sense in many ways for stationary storage, but it does have lower energy density, so you couldn't keep the same kWh in the same form factor without some changes.

Who's paying for the transition? The customer or Tesla?

Funny this got downvoted. Was this comment controversial in any way?

>Who's paying for the transition? The customer or Tesla?

Since nearly all Tesla revenue comes from Tesla customers I would imagine the customers will be ultimately footing the bill.

>Was this comment controversial in any way?

Honestly it comes off as cynical and a little dumb -- which is why it might be grey. If a business agrees to a cost -- it will be the customers paying for that cost. Your peevish "Who is paying for this" tone suggests you're being indignant as though you're being asked to cough up some dollars here.

And like reddit asking why you're being downvoted will lead to more downvotes.

It's a relevant question because Tesla knowingly sold demonstratively unsafe technology to customer and the tax payer will ultimately have to pay for all the damage it's going to cost long term(and in fact already does).

People like you who really love Tesla for some reason seem to be willingly ignorant of that fact. As others have mentioned before even DIY batteries were recommending other battery technologies for precisely these reasons.

Tesla either really didn't know, which would be massively incompetent, which I don't believe or willfully misled buyers into buying for this purpose unsafe products.

If this was the first time this happened(Tesla marketing unsafe products as safe until they got caught) you could brush it away as honest mistake, but since it's not, it's safe to say they just wanted to quickly market an unsafe product.

It's not a cynical question by the way, but a sarcastic one. No idea why you decided to take it so personal though. There is a slight chance, that Tesla actually replaces this with something less dangerous, which would be the right thing to do, but that's unlikely to happen, since people like you in government believe that when the scammer scams you, the scammer isn't to blame, but it's the customer that should foot the bill.

Given that this didn't happen in the USA, there's also the off-chance, that someone in that country actually holds Tesla responsible for what happened.

I’m not a Tesla fanatic—I’m rather disgusted by many of Tesla’s practices—but I agree with the parent. If you buy experimental technology from a company with a reputation for cutting corners, and said technology happens to be rather flammable, don’t be surprised when it bursts into flames. Who’s going to foot the bill? Obviously the taxpayer.

Either the customer or the investor. All of the current Tesla capital comes from the investors.

They've just started breaking even now, and it can take a while to cover all the past costs. As of the latest 10-Q the accumulated deficit (sum over all past earnings) is -$3.6B. The total capital raised from investors is well over $15B.

Tesla had an effective 0 free cash flow in 2018, 1.1B USD in 2019, and 2.8B USD FCF in 2020. In terms of net income they have been positive since Q2 2020; 15 months.

They have been more than "start(ing to) break even now". It would be more accurate to say they have been more than breaking even since some time between 2018 and Q1 2020 depending on your measure; capex, opex, financials (interest, depreciation, etc), unexpected charges, etc

Depreciation and thus CAPEX over time is definitely a real charge, and so is stock based compensation from the point of view of the shareholder (think of the largest in history stock grants to a single person, that is the legendary Elon's stock grants; to quote a famous show - "this guy fucks"). It's not easy to beat the accuracy of GAAP income unless you know the company / sector in great detail and can introduce custom modifications. Going "yolo adjusted-EBIDTA stonks" and simply removing charges to increase "income" is rather optimistic/stupid.

But yeah, it is starting to look okay if not good. I was (well technically still am, but the position is tiny now) one of the shorts in TSLA, but I am done with that, didn't quite work :)

Yes, at the end of the day, the customers will decide if they want to pay for it. If they decide they decide not to, the investors will pay.

Just like any other kind of investment ever done.

Perhaps they meant that new customers will (not) be paying for the upgrade of cars of old customers.

I downvoted because it was reading the original comment in a bad / unhelpful way and didn't contribute to the discussion.

I think it's a fair question - hardware companies have recalled and replaced dangerous components before.

I got a free replacement battery from Apple in the mid 2000's when they said that a batch of their batteries had a "small fire risk"...

If I'm being cynical, I guess it depends if their line is:

"the old battery is dangerous which is why we've changed the materials we use"

"we're changing the materials we use, and that has this interesting side effect that totally coincidentally fixes a dangerous issue with out old batteries"

What does this question even mean? What does paying for mean in this context? Are you asking if Elon takes the cost out of his personal bank account? Or if they send every tesla customer a bill for new battery tech?

What is the difference between the customer or tesla paying?

I don't mind your question, but I find the answer is undefined.

It's not as if someone somewhere sits down and makes this choice. Tesla charges prices the market wants to pay, at volumes Tesla can manufacture, and tries to minimize its expenses. What happens in the end in terms of profit and loss is subject to literally thousands of variables, not just a change in a battery pack tech.

This is especially the case for an industry that's heavily into R&D and innovation.

This will be for future Megapack orders/installations/deliveries.

This is like reading that Apple is transitioning to ARM desktops and asking who will pay for it.

You get downvoted because the question is redundant. It's like asking who is paying for the next gen iPhone or whatever. You buy the product as is and when a new better generation of the same product comes out you don't get a free upgrade because you bought the old version.

All your comments turn up dead now.

Not a car battery.

> a 13-tonne lithium battery inside a shipping container

The other ~99 container battery packs survived.

The fire spread to a second pack. You can see in the images that they are laid out in pairs. So two out of 80 burned completely, and we don't know what damage was caused to the others. One at least looks pretty singed.

The bad thing isn't the fire itself. It required multiple fire units to be on site at all times. That's resources you can't use anywhere else for that time.

Oh, so only the 1 would be likely to start a massive bushfire if this happened in summer? That makes me feel better.

They’re located in high voltage switchyards, because they basically have to be - and the nearest bushland is separated by a comfortable 20km of pasture. You can read up on Powercor and Augrid’s bushfire mitigation work if you’re having trouble sleeping.

I assume they're not putting batteries literally in the middle of bush forests.

Any more likely than a gas/diesel fire? I'd imagine most of the fire risk is at the start, when first responders haven't arrived yet. Once they arrive any wildfire risk is minimal because it can be immediately put out. In that respect there probably isn't a big difference between a gas fire that burns for 1hr and a battery fire that burns for 4 days.

As per article, the CFA wasn't able to put it out, and had to just let it burn. If this was in summer then that would be taking resources away from quickly responding to the hundreds of other callouts they get - I'm not super happy with the idea of volunteers spending their time to babysit a chemical fire from equipment that clearly hasn't been designed for local conditions.

You're right most of the risk is at the start - my anger is directed at a big U.S. tech company landing Victorian firefighters with a babysitting job.

If they actually do have many fires to deal with (which I doubt, most firefighting departments don't) then they can just put a barrier around it and leave it. No need to babysit.

There are a number of points on this that are wrong;

a) temperatures in that region can regularly get over 40°C (104°F) during summer, a stray spark or flare up can easily get out of hand

b) during bushfire season sometimes as many as 10,000 fire fighters can be deployed (professional as well as part time volunteers) with fires sometimes consuming more than 1 million acres during one season. Most bushfire season fire fighters are very busy; in the 2008-2009 season it lasted from September to March.

c) the best way to contain a lithium fire is to keep the temperature down, which means fire fighters on site with hoses for an extended period.

Another link to a story about the Megapack fire, with photos:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/30/22602411/neoen-tesla-mega...

It's interesting how closely placed the two center rows are. That seems to invite a spread of the fire. The land looks pretty remote/rural, so I can't imagine space is a constraint. I wonder if there's a technical reason for them to be so close together.

Bigger site costs more, requires more fencing, more concreting, more wiring, more security staff and cameras, etc.

I expect someone did the maths and decided that the low (and probably insured) risk of a fire taking out two rather than one container outweighed additional concrete/fencing/land/wiring.

Wow something from Melbourne comes to the first rank in HN!

actually I still can't find any explanation why the fire starts at all. Or maybe they haven't found out yet

Edit: I don't get the downvotes, I am from Melbie, nothing is controversial here

It happens, unless there's something surprising/unusual to be found that caused it like remnants of oily rag, or empty bottle marked 'molotov cocktail', I assume more time & energy will be spent on 'are the existing racks/containers/etc. enough to contain and isolate fires' (or no they're not, why, we thought they were).

If a phone battery say catches fire it's generally not such a big deal - it's not surrounded by a million other phone batteries, and won't take four days to burn out.

> If a phone battery say catches fire it's generally not such a big deal

Unless it's in your pocket!

Fire root cause analysis is tricky. There is a high probability that no precise root cause will ever be identified.

Am I naive if I expect these systems to be crammed full of sensors logged on-site and remotely?

Not at all. And this happened during testing for the battery’s commissioning, so there should be a lot of eyeballs on the monitoring.

I bet people downvote more than they upvote. That would be a cool stat to see next to people's usernames in posts.

Yeah, I thought when I opened HN without the downvote option I was so happy (compared to browsing reddit). But then I just realise that button will appear aft 500 karma lol.

So same same thing

>> inside a shipping container

These things don't look like shipping containers. They appear to be the same size/shape and have the proper attachment points to be handled as shipping containers, but are they actual containers?

Even Tesla wouldn't go so far as to mount batteries inside standard shipping containers. They might make ok housing but with all the thermal/electrical issues a bespoke design would be appropriate. The money saved by using a stock container is nothing compared to the cost of the product installed inside.

Who claimed that these were shipping containers? It comforms to the applicable ISO standards, it is transported like a shipping container. It is a shipping container

From the linked article:

"They found a 13-tonne lithium battery inside a shipping container was fully involved and crews wearing breathing apparatus worked to contain the fire and stop it spreading to nearby batteries."

A fire literally inside a shipping container is a very specific thing that firefighters train for. There are even some unique tools for handling them (spray nozzles inserted through drilled holes.)

This could be very useful in winter.

The power of positive thinking

Whats stopping them from erecting a barrier around the battery in question and just burying it in sand?

That would worsen it, as the sand would act as an insulator and increase the temperature of the battery rather than dissipate it.

A battery « fire » is powered by the energy stored within, not by something being combusted.

Burying it in sand would presumably keep it hot for even longer. Sometimes the best strategy is simply to move everything combustible away from it and let it burn out by itself. A heat-proof barrier might have helped.

Wouldnt it just burn for years then?

This battery chemistry is self-oxidizing. It doesn't need contact with the air to burn.

A coal mine has been burning for 50.

https://www.history.com/news/mine-fire-burning-more-50-years...

There's one coal seem fire in Australia that's been going on for 6000 years.

If that was the case we would just set fire to them and extract energy from the heat produced.

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