A runaway lithium-ion battery fire inside a San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) renewable energy storage yard in Escondido, California, that started about midday on Sept. 5 appears to be out, but officials are keeping residents and school children away from the area in case the fire reignites, fire officials reported.
Smoke and heat from the batteries died down about 1 a.m. Friday and temperatures remain low inside the facility at 571 Escondido Street, about 30 miles north of San Diego, Tyler Batson, a division chief with the Escondido Fire Department, told The Epoch Times.
“We’ve had some positive developments,” Batson said. “There has been no smoke or fire production since 1 a.m.”
The lower temperature has allowed some technicians to get inside the facility to confirm whether excessive heat was still emanating from the batteries involved in the fire.
According to fire officials, a technician working inside the facility noticed a fire in one of the battery racks. Escondido Fire Department responded at 12:09 p.m. on Thursday and immediately called in San Diego city and county hazmat teams for assistance.
The yard contains numerous racks of lithium-ion batteries that store up to 30 megawatts of renewable energy collected from solar panels. The energy is released into the grid when the sun goes down or during peak energy use.
Teams from San Diego and Escondido worked with crews from Capstone Fire and Safety Management, a private company contracted with SDG&E to respond to incidents at the facility.
The renewable-energy battery yard is enclosed by a fence and is a relatively small site, Batson said, but it contains several containers of batteries stacked together.
Lithium-ion batteries are known to maintain heat for a long time, prompting officials to continue monitoring the situation and keep people away from the area, according to Batson.
Homes and businesses for several blocks around the building remained under evacuation orders on Friday afternoon and residents were asked to leave the area.
“We just want to be sure this fire is completely out before we release the [evacuation] orders,” he said.
Although smoke has filled the area around the facility, constant monitoring did not detect any harmful chemicals in the air, including carbon dioxide, according to Batson.
The Escondido Union School District also canceled school operations at three campuses on Friday, including the district office, the Del Dios Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Rock Springs Elementary.
Escondido police issued a shelter-in-place order for all areas within Enterprise Way, west of Interstate 15, Auto Park Way, and West Mission Avenue.
The Escondido renewable energy battery facility was approved in 2016 by the California Public Utilities Commission to fast-track energy storage as part of the state’s climate action agenda.
This is the third battery project fire in the past year in the region. In September 2023, a fire broke out at the Terra-Gen battery storage facility in Valley Center, California. And in May, a battery energy storage facility caught fire in Otay Mesa, located on the border of Mexico, sparking fear among residents about toxic fumes.
County leaders are planning to consider placing a ban on additional battery storage sites until stricter fire safety restrictions are put in place.
