Lawrie is a former vice president of Sempra U.S. Gas & Power and a developer of large-scale natural gas, solar, wind and battery projects for 24 years. He lives in Escondido.
The recent fire at a large battery energy storage facility in Otay Mesa is a fascinating video. The battery burned for nearly two weeks, spewing toxic fumes and forcing the evacuation of the industrial area. Guards and inmates at the nearby prison were sent to safety centers..
Surprisingly, Virginia-based AES wants to build a battery project more than five times larger near Escondido, on a site surrounded by residential buildings and close to a local hospital. The company’s proposal is currently under review by San Diego County staff and leaders.
Large-scale battery energy storage facilities are coming to your area, bringing both benefits and risks. On the plus side, they could accelerate the transition to green energy by storing solar energy during the day and making that energy available in the evening and at night.
The downside is that these facilities use lithium-ion batteries, which are notorious for spontaneous “thermal runaway,” a chemical chain reaction that can cause fires and highly toxic smoke. The smoke contains harmful airborne chemicals, including hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen cyanide, sulfur dioxide, and hydrogen chloride. In high concentrations, these chemicals are deadly. In low concentrations, they cause permanent, debilitating damage to the lungs.
Fires at battery energy storage facilities are very difficult to stop, and can take days or even weeks to kill. To make matters worse, the Otay Mesa fire is not an isolated incident. In fact, fires at these facilities are relatively common, with at least 15 in 2023 alone. And the larger the battery facility, the more likely and frequent fires there are. The Electric Power Research Institute has published data from 2018, the first year that battery facilities began to be installed in large numbers. The first two years were disastrous. If we ignore those two years and average over the recent history (2020-2023), we get an annual fire rate of 0.20 fires per 1,000 megawatt-hours of batteries installed.
AES has named its proposed megaproject “Seguro,” which means “safe” in Spanish, but it’s clearly not safe. The 1,280-megawatt-hour Seguro project has a 28 percent chance of a major battery fire each year. The proposed site is just west of Escondido in San Diego County and is surrounded on all sides by existing homes up to the fence line. Palomar Medical Center is just 1,600 feet downwind, and Palomar recently rejected AES’s request to run power lines across the hospital’s property (to connect Seguro to the power grid).
The arrogance of this proposal is astonishing.
We rely on technology and assume it won’t harm us. In the right location, large battery installations can meet that expectation. But large installations are industrial in nature, both in appearance and especially in the risks associated with them. Large installations should only be located in industrial or sparsely populated areas. Only very small installations should be allowed in or between homes or near hospitals or schools. For example, an 8-megawatt-hour installation (say, 2 megawatts with 4 hours of storage) has about a 10 percent chance of fire over 60 years. Is it safe to install it next to a home? It merits further analysis, but one thing is beyond question: the proposed 1,280-megawatt-hour Seguro installation is a very bad idea. We urge county leaders, who will decide the fate of the AES proposal, to reject it with a firm “no.”
The County currently has no zoning regulations to regulate the emerging battery energy storage industry. The astonishingly absurd AES proposal is a stark reminder that battery developers need zoning regulations to guide their site selection. We urge the County to develop the necessary zoning regulations as soon as possible. Battery proposals are moving forward at a rapid pace.
