Fire Chief Joel Mendoza of the North County Fire District said at this point, most of the fire had gone out. A water-based mitigation system did not work as designed, Vistra's senior director of community affairs Brad Watson said at the conference. Earlier in the day, a Monterey Sheriff official had said there were no active fire suppression efforts going on, "as the best approach, according to fire staff, is to allow the building and batteries to burn."

Yeah, I think massive chemical batteries for storing excess electricity to facilitate a contrived green energy market is a bad idea.

  • Boomkop3@reddthat.comEnglish
    4·
    6 hours ago

    You’re right, but I think less dense but safer and more sustainable options are the better choice for this

    • scratchee@feddit.ukEnglish
      11·
      4 hours ago

      We can all agree on that, Clearly li-ion is a bad choice for static use cases.

      But right now it’s the cheapest option, and it looks likely that will stay true for quite a while unfortunately.

        • scratchee@feddit.ukEnglish
          11·
          3 hours ago

          Weirdly it’s not, except maybe gravity batteries where nice reservoirs happen to exist already. It should be but it’s not right now.

          Li-ion has economy of scale right now. I do think molten metal etc will overtake eventually, but they’re currently playing catchup and li-ion has dropped in price so much over time that it’s surprisingly cheap even where it should make no sense.

            • scratchee@feddit.ukEnglish
              1·
              56 minutes ago

              I know, I just threw out one of the many contenders for grid power.

              Iron water does look promising too.