alsym press releases - kn

The Grid is Strained – And the Stakes Are Rising

U.S. energy infrastructure has not had an easy last couple of years. Aging fossil fuel power plants have retired faster than new, more efficient ones can be deployed in their place. Outdated transmission lines continue to cause outages and struggle to handle the influx of load growth after two decades of very little change. Data centers, consuming as much energy as entire cities, are demanding rapid upgrades with high costs shared among everyone. Meanwhile, hurricanes in places like North Carolina and wildfires in California have devastated energy infrastructure, leaving vulnerable communities now weighing their options on how to rebuild.

Last month on January 16, a significant fire erupted at the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California, one of the world’s largest lithium-ion battery storage sites. The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office issued an evacuation order to approximately 1,500 residents in Moss Landing and the Elkhorn Slough area due to potential exposure to toxic smoke. The fire continued to rage and smolder through the night into the morning, and due to the challenges in extinguishing a fire of this type and size, firefighters were forced to allow the fire to burn out on its own. An investigation will commence to unveil the root cause of the incident.

The world increasingly relies on rechargeable batteries for its vast and growing energy needs. Batteries power everything from personal electronic devices to vehicles to industrial equipment, and in recent years, they have demonstrated the value they can bring the grid by storing and managing intermittent renewable energy.

Data centers are the backbone of innovation and growth in our increasingly digital world, from cloud computing to the internet of things to expansion of generative AI. In just the past few years the data center industry has boomed, and demand for services and infrastructure bolstering the digital world have grown immensely. In 2023, US data-center space expanded by a remarkable 26%, according to real-estate firm CBRE, with a record amount under construction.

We know about lithium-ion batteries and their flammability risks. Over the last two years we’ve seen incidents including electric vehicles spontaneously combusting to energy storage systems burning for days on end. But here at Alsym we’ve been noticing another particular situation where lithium-ion batteries are causing problems: landfills. It seems every other day we’re hearing about a lithium-ion battery that started a fire in a landfill, waste processing plant, or a bin lorry. So what gives?

With increasing demand for energy and the urgent need to diversify energy production and consumption, the power grid is set to undergo a significant overhaul. Key innovations include the integration of advanced batteries for energy storage, smart grid technologies, and the democratization of energy generation.

In an era where change is happening rapidly, there undoubtedly exists some anxiety about where we get our commercial goods from and if we can be sure we can get them when we need them. For industries critical to national goals, be it security or meeting climate reduction targets, we are seeing countries taking action to decouple their supply chains to take back control and reduce exposure to interruptions. One of those industries governments are anxious about is the batteries that go in electric vehicles, energy storage systems, military equipment, and many more devices of the 21^st century.

In the world of data centers, power is everything. Data centers operate 24/7 and rely on a specially engineered system of primary power and backup generators, with batteries bridging the gap in between. These power redundancies are in place to enforce the golden rule in data centers: you cannot have downtime and you cannot have a power outage.