A fire at AES Corp.'s Dorman Battery Storage Project in an industrial area of Chandler, Ariz., continues to burn 10 days after igniting due to unknown causes.
"For now, the fire is being allowed to burn itself out and there currently is no estimated timetable for when that might completely burn," Patty Garcia-Likens, a spokesperson for utility Salt River Project, which has a 20-year contract for the plant's output, said in an April 27 email.
The utility, known as SRP, is assisting the Chandler Fire Department and AES "to determine how to address the situation," Garcia-Likens said, adding that a sprinkler system inside a building where the batteries are located continues to spray water to keep temperatures lower. The battery, a 10-MW/40-MWh lithium-ion facility, was completed in 2019.
AES may begin investigating what happened in early May, according to a company spokesperson.
It is the second battery system in Arizona supplied by AES affiliate Fluence Energy Inc. to catch fire, following an April 2019 explosion at an Arizona Public Service Co., or APS, project in Surprise, Ariz., that sent eight firefighters to the hospital with chemical and chemical-inhalation burns and delayed the Pinnacle West Capital Corp. subsidiary's battery storage plans.
The 2019 fire, the second APS battery fire following an incident in 2012, was later attributed to an internal failure in a battery cell from supplier LG Chem Ltd. that triggered thermal runaway inside the facility. The Dorman project also includes LG Chem batteries.
No injuries were associated with the latest battery blaze as firefighters in Chandler did not enter the building because of the previous incident in Surprise.
The accident came days after the Arizona Corporation Commission rejected SRP's request to build a large-scale natural gas plant, with some regulators suggesting the utility failed to sufficiently consider battery storage as an alternative.
The utility views batteries as an important new asset, however, and plans to add 450 MW of new storage to its portfolio by 2023 despite the fire in Chandler.
"SRP is committed to procure those resources," Garcia-Likens said.
S&P Global Commodity Insights produces content for distribution on S&P Capital IQ Pro.