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Comment by parker_mountain | Hacker News Reader

Missing the point.

Horrible, toxic fires are not exclusive to batteries. I have personally lived through two horrible gas-based fires, which is anecdotal. However, there are tons of examples.

This current fire is a disaster, yes. And it should be investigated rigorously. And we should learn from it, and if willful negligence was involved, prosecute accordingly.

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I wonder if the hazards from chemical batteries tips the scales in favor of otherwise less economical flywheel energy storage.

Storing battery-tier volumes of energy in spinning flywheels sounds terrifying on scale - a cursory search indicates 1kWh ~ 1 KG of TNT.

I guess it depends on the risk of an exploding flywheel, but batteries seem likely to fail in a much less explosive manner as opposed to a failed flywheel.

What’s “KG” in this context? As in, serious question because I can’t parse that sentence. Is it supposed to be “kg”?

Yes it’s a kilogram.

Thermal runaway is a contagious failure mode.

My thought was that a failed flywheel would be locally catastrophic but as long as you are not building homes right next to them, it would be safe for the surrounding community and not inconvenience or put civilians danger.

Typical flywheel energy storage relies on enormous mass rather than high rotational speed. I don't think that flywheel storage is necessarily hazardous.

Sure. Other types of energy plants burn. This might be the only one for which Elon Musk has culpability, though.

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