World’s biggest lithium battery storage facility now completely offline after weekend incident

The recent incident at the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in Monterey County, California, the world’s biggest lithium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS) project, reflets the high level of safety precautions that are required and implemented in these types of installations. Whilst these measures are important for ESS with all battery types, installations which use lithium-based batteries can have an elevated risk of thermal runaway and explosion, although these types of incidents are extremely rare.

Although this specific incident was managed by the suppression system, the damage to batteries also demonstrates that whether large scale or small-scale ESS and UPS installations, battery monitoring and projection is required for both safety and preservation of battery life. A market worth over $140 million in 2027 is identified in SAR Insight’s recent Energy Storage Battery Management Report, which includes analog front-end battery monitors, BMS controllers and battery protector ICs.

Ryan Sanderson Director, Power Technologies

Ryan is Director of Power Research at SAR Insight & Consulting which spans power supply, conversion, control and management from a component and enabling technology perspective.

Scroll to Top