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Summarised by Centrist
Writer Francis Menton on the Manhattan Contrarian blog draws attention to repeated fires at grid scale battery storage facilities in the United States.
Menton argues the risks are being underexamined as governments expand renewable energy systems that rely on large lithium-ion batteries.
Menton focuses on battery energy storage systems designed to support wind and solar generation during periods when power output is low.
He says large-scale battery buildouts are proceeding without publicly available feasibility studies showing how much storage would be required to stabilise an electricity grid over extended calm or low sunlight periods.
He documents multiple fires at battery storage sites in California and New York. In California, the Moss Landing battery facility, a 300 megawatt system containing about 100,000 lithium ion batteries, caught fire in January 2025. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, about 55 percent of the batteries were damaged. The same site previously experienced fires in September 2021 and February 2022.
In New York State, Menton cites three separate battery fires in 2023, including incidents in East Hampton, Warwick, and Chaumont. He notes that a Convergent Energy and Power facility in Warwick experienced another fire on December 19, 2025. Reports from Etica AG said the fire prompted a multi agency emergency response and air quality monitoring, though no injuries were reported.
