Energy storage project coming to Naval Base San Diego – San Diego Union-Tribune

An $8 million battery energy storage project is coming to Naval Base San Diego, using zinc-based technology that its makers tout as nonflammable.

Eos Energy Enterprises announced Tuesday the stand-alone system will help boost reliability of operations at the base and provide energy resilience to the U.S. Navy’s western fleet.

The project will be powered by Eos Z3 Cubes, with battery duration ranging from four to eight hours, depending on the use case.

The zinc-based liquid technology is different than lithium-ion batteries used in many other storage facilities.

“They’re highly safe, no flammability risk,” Eos CEO Joe Mastrangelo told the Union-Tribune of the company’s batteries. “They’re fully recyclable at the end of their useful life and they’re highly flexible.”

A string of recent fires at facilities using lithium-ion batteries have raised questions about the safety of energy storage projects. Lithium-based batteries can experience “thermal runaway” — a condition in which the batteries overheat, ignite and spread from one battery to another, making it difficult for emergency crews to fully extinguish.

On Jan. 16, a fire at the 300-megawatt portion of Vistra Energy’s Moss Landing facility near Santa Cruz led to the evacuation of 1,200 residents. The blaze burned for two days and closed a section of Highway 1 for three days. Crews are still in the midst of cleanup efforts.

Fires have also broken out in the San Diego area — the most prominent in Otay Mesa at the 250-megawatt Gateway Energy Storage facility in May 2024. Fire officials said the batteries kept re-igniting and it took nearly 17 days before the last remaining crews left the site.

But Mastrangelo said when the Eos Z3 Cubes are overcharged to more than 150%, “the temperature in the battery rises to the point where you hit the boiling point of the electrolyte and when that happens, you’ll have steam come out of the module. You don’t see thermal runaway like you’ve seen with lithium-ion technology.”

The Naval Base San Diego project is scheduled to be completed early next year, Mastrangelo said. He would not  disclose the number of megawatts or megawatt-hours the storage facility will deliver, saying it’s proprietary information.

The entire $8 million project is funded through a grant from the California Energy Commission.

Covering more than 1,600 acres of land and 326 acres of water along the San Diego Bay, Naval Base San Diego is the principal homeport of the U.S. Pacific Fleet of 56 ships and two auxiliary vessels.

Three months ago, the energy commission announced a similar project at a military installation in the San Diego area — a $42 million grant to build a 6-megawatts and 48-megawatt-hour battery storage facility at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.