California firefighters had to douse a flaming battery in a Tesla Semi with about 50,000 gallons (190,000 liters) of water to extinguish flames after a crash, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday.
In addition to the huge amount of water, firefighters used an aircraft to drop fire retardant on the “immediate area” of the electric truck as a precautionary measure, the agency said in a preliminary report.
Firefighters said previously that the battery reached temperatures of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (540 Celsius) while it was in flames.
The NTSB sent investigators to the Aug. 19 crash along Interstate 80 near Emigrant Gap, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) northeast of Sacramento. The agency said it would look into fire risks posed by the truck’s large lithium-ion battery.
People also dont get the differece between average and marginal. Adding consumption doesn’t build more wind farms. Adding extra electricity consumption means in short run burning more coal and gas. They are the ones that can be ramped up / ran more hours.
In the long run they might build more nuclear, but that takes a (very) long time. Generally they’re building solar and wind pretty fast already, it is hard (costly) to ramp that up.
Adding new sources of electricity consumption just keeps the fossil fuel power stations running for longer. Efficiiency is stuff like electric mass transit to replace as many car trips as possible - and using as much wires as possible instead of batteries. But no all the money will go into facilities and subsidy for battery powered cars.
I think that’s only gas plants, that can react dynamically to changes in the grid?
I think what we need is consumer electronics that can tolerate more variation in the grid power supply - e.g. a laundry machine that runs on 80% voltage just as well, but then takes a bit longer to finish.
Nuclear power plants are only preferable to burning fossil fuels, and only when run by responsible entities (i.e. not by humans ;) - definitely not by profit-oriented corps) - I hope we can transition to enough wind, water & solar power, but we definitely need to cut down on energy consumption.