What you need to know
The AES Corporation is a global Fortune 500 power company based in Virginia with $45 BILLION in assets and revenue of $12.7 BILLION in 2023 alone. They are proposing to build a utility-scale battery storage/solar facility on 724 acres in what is currently zoned as a residential area less than a mile from homes in an urban-wilderness area of Santa Fe County. The 570,000 lithium-ion battery cells would be housed in some thirty-eight, 40-foot containers. They plan to have 4 workers on site only during business hours and the facility would be monitored remotely by automated fire protection and mitigation systems that have a potential 25%+ failure rate.
AES’ proposal does include an attached solar array with more than 205,000 solar panels as well as a 2.3 mile, up to 70-foot-tall high voltage, above ground, transmission line and a new 1-acre substation to connect to PNM’s electric grid.
The global energy giant’s focus on the solar array is an attempt to divert attention away from the very real dangers of a utility-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) surrounded by more than 10,000 homes in Eldorado, Rancho Viejo and Rancho San Marcos.
With persistent and ever increasing high winds, very high wildfire risk, no west-end exit in Eldorado nearest the BESS and more than 20 minutes from adequate fire response and Haz mat personnel, the worst-case consequences of locating a utility-scale battery facility here are terrifying.
AES is a company with a history of disregarding environmental concerns and dangers.
With 54 violations and over $40 million in fines for environmental, safety, and employment-related offenses, AES is not the Earth-friendly company they claim to be. To learn more about AES and the proposed Rancho Viejo Project, please see our FAQ.
Potential dangers
After numerous lithium-ion battery energy storage system fires, The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) created a public data base of BESS failure events which continues to grow. Please note however that EPRI only lists BESS fires from media coverage and Matthew Paiss, Technical Advisor, Battery Materials and Systems for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in his August 20, 2024 Explosion Control Compliance in BESS Design seminar stated, “The EPRI database is questionable in its accuracy. It’s far from complete. There are more incidents that are occurring. But the lack of transparency in this space is problematic because it’s difficult to share learnings and have the codes and standards and learn from those failures.”
EPRI has a graph on their website showing failure statistics for BESS. We want to point out that what they don’t show is the fact that as the number of battery cells deployed increase exponentially, the number of failures will grow exponentially as well.
We’ve curated a playlist of videos documenting the potential dangers of a facility of this type in rural Santa Fe County including the three fires AES had in their facilities in the last five years.
3rd AES BATTERY FIRE IN ESCONDIDO, CA — Sept. 5, 2024
Battery Storage Facility Fire Prompts Evacuation
Partnering with San Diego Gas & Electric, AES provided the batteries for this large project. In the video you can see high power hoses being used to keep the other containers cool, while letting the fire burn itself out. “Battery fires are becoming less rare,” admitted one of the early responders.
“While the San Diego County Board of Supervisors had unanimously rejected a proposed moratorium on battery energy storage systems (BESS) only a month ago, Escondido has now officially passed an interim urgency ordinance prohibiting new commercial BESS developments within the city.” — PV Magazine, Oct 11, 2024. Although it’s unclear what will happen when this temporary moratorium ends November 23, 2024.
2nd AES BATTERY FIRE IN CHANDLER, AZ — April 18, 2022
HAZMAT situation causes quarter-mile area evacuation
In this video, note the impact of the fumes and smoke on the community. The first responders took a defensive strategy and didn’t open the doors, instead sending in robots to ventilate the container. Later reports said this fire continued for two weeks.
This was a 10MW facility with 3,200 lithium-ion batteries, much smaller than the one planned at Rancho Viejo in Santa Fe that will have 570,000 lithium-ion batteries.
1st AES BATTERY FIRE IN SURPRISE, AZ — April 19, 2019
Most dangerous fire in the history of BESS fires
This facility had only one container with Li-ion batteries, so imagine a facility with 38 of these containers. Follow the timeline of the event and notice the multiple failures that occur. The Battery Monitoring System (BMS) stopped communicating because of the Fire Suppression system discharging. The company managing the facility never reported the fire, but after more than an hour the fire was reported by a passerby.
Despite its proximity to thousands of homes, the Rancho Viejo project will not have personnel there to monitor 24/7 and will rely on remote monitoring systems. A February 2024 study by Clean Energy Associates (not affiliated with CEC), discovered 26% of inspected BESS had quality issues related to fire detection and suppression systems and 18% had quality issues with the thermal management systems. As they stated in the report, these systems “are critical for functional safety, and defects in these systems can lead to increased risk of fire.”
This is new technology and it’s important to note that even in a major city fire department, they had not yet developed skills, knowledge, and tools to understand what was happening or what to do about it. Imagine the effort and costs required to bring a rural volunteer fire department up to appropriate expertise.
HAZMAT situation at Chandler battery storage facility causes quarter-mile area evacuation
This is another AES Facility in Chandler, AZ. In this video, note the impact of the fumes and smoke on the community. This was a 10MW facility, much smaller than the one planned at Rancho Viejo. Listen to how long this event had been going on, more than 4 days!
Fire at Chandler battery storage facility prompts evacuations
Here is more that fire in Chandler, AZ at another AES Facility fire. This fire is after the Surprise, (Peoria) AZ fire. Again, you see and hear the impact of the fumes and smoke on the community. However, in this video you can see the volumes of water being used to cool the facility while the fire continues. You can see the pooling of the water on the ground around the facility and you can imagine the toxicity of this water and the damage that kind of pooling would cause in our fragile environment.
Battery modules “overheat” at Vistra’s Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility
This video is about a fire that occurred on September 4, 2021 at the Moss Landing BESS in California. Note how the Fire Lead played down the toxicity, and the “company-speak” the system operator used to deflect the impacts of the fire. We know the levels of toxicity of the NOVAC fire suppression system and AES is hiding the toxicity of the gassing of the planned Li-ion batteries to be used at Rancho Viejo. This BESS had been online for a month and already had a fire.
Moss Landing BESS Fire
Here is more about the fire at the Moss Landing BESS in California. Note this fire was the third at the facility that had only been open for months! Again a “Shelter in Place” had been ordered with significant impact to the community. The closures impact businesses and traffic as well. In this video, you can see the dark volume of smoke coming from the fire.
Fire Inside Solar Battery Storage
This video is about a BESS fire in San Diego. Again, note the toxic smoke from the container and the significant impact on the community. More “Shelter in Place” and school closings.
LI residents concerned about plans for lithium-ion battery storage facility
This video highlights that other communities are acting. Not to stop solar with battery storage, but to make sure that proper consideration is given to location.