STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A massive fire broke out at a battery energy storage system facility in Peoria, Arizona, earlier this month, requiring a large-scale response from multiple area fire departments and the shutdown of surrounding streets. The cause of the fire has not yet been identified, and no injuries were reported, but local reports noted that at least two Tesla Megapacks — similar to those installed in several battery energy storage sites on Staten Island — burned and smoldered for hours.
The facility, which is considered the largest stand-alone battery energy storage system in Arizona, is operated by Salt River Project, which owns seven other such sites throughout the state.
According to Salt River Project’s website, the 25-megawatt (MW) battery storage facility has been online since 2021 and stores enough energy to power about 5,600 typical residential homes.
The blaze was reported at 4:14 p.m. on Oct. 1 and stabilized by Peoria Fire-Medical units at around midnight, a spokesperson for the department noted. The scene was then turned over to Salt River Project’s site representatives for fire watch and continued monitoring.
“Site representatives were present through the event and worked closely with our Incident Command,” the spokesperson said.
Local media reports noted that the Salt River Project site consists of a series of Tesla Megapacks that are connected directly to SRP’s energy grid.
The same branded Megapacks have been installed in several battery energy storage sites on Staten Island. The lithium-ion structures — which started popping up in several NYC neighborhoods in 2022 — are designed to remove pressure from the city’s stressed grid, using rechargeable batteries to store electrical energy from various sources, and then releasing that stored energy when needed.
There are currently more than a dozen of them located on Staten Island, each constructed to help the state meet some of its ambitious environmental goals. And many more are in the pipeline — several of which are set to receive more than $1.5 million in incentive awards from the New York Energy Research and Development Authority.
Residents who live near the facilities have voiced concern about fire risk and environmental hazard. But developers continue to clarify that all necessary safety measures have been taken.
“The FDNY has examined the site and has no safety concerns. The City and the International Fire Code require a distance of 10 feet between any battery and a building —which this project abides by,” a representative from NineDot Energy, which has several battery projects on Staten Island, told the Advance/SILive earlier this year, referencing a site in Manor Heights that is located directly next to a residential home.
NineDot also noted that the FDNY has “examined and tested the BESS technology used on this site [Tesla Megapacks] and determined the technology is safe for use in NYC, in large part because of the several layers of safety redundancy, which prevent so-called ‘thermal runaway’ [i.e., a fire spreading from one cell or module to another].”
The spokesperson for the Peoria Fire-Medical Department said they could not yet comment on whether or not the Arizona fire was an instance of thermal runaway.
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