>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLzE1LAqoMQ
Battery storage facility inChandlercontinues to burn after two weeks
>229 views | May 2, 2022
Several surrounding businesses had to be evacuated after a Chandler battery storage facilitybegan burning two weeks ago.
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<Earlier report on fire>
>https://news.yahoo.com/fire-crews-tend-massive-smoldering-034526911.html
Fire crews tend to massive, smoldering battery in Chandler facility
>April 21, 2022·Arizona Republic
The Chandler Fire Department evacuated people after a battery facility began smoldering on April 21, 2022.
Chandler fire crews on Thursday used a robot to open a door and ventilate a massive battery in Chandler that has been smoldering since Monday. The battery is in an approximately 6,000-square-foot building off 56th street south of Loop 202, and used to store electricity for the power grid. It is owned by a company called AES Corp., and it stores energy for Salt River Project. Mark Miller, an AES Corp. spokesperson, said it’s too early to speculate the cause of the incident and emphasized that resolving the situation safely was the top priority. Miller said an investigation into the cause will be underway over the coming weeks. “There will be extensive work to understand what happened,” Miller said. Chandler firefighters had been keeping an eye on the smoldering facility since Monday morning and Thursday opened a door to the building with a robot to avoid risk to first responders, Battalion Chief Keith Welch said. After nine first responders were injured by a similar battery fire at another utility in 2019 in Surprise, SRP spokesman Scott Harelson said the utility was sure to communicate with local firefighters about how to handle problems that might occur at the Chandler facility. The facility is called the Dorman battery storage system and SRP announced it in 2018. It has a capacity to store four hours of electricity with an output of 10 megawatts of power, about enough for 2,500 homes. Welch said crews used the robot to open the door shortly after 7 p.m. and planned to monitor the facility for several hours at least before sending another remote vehicle into the facility to check the interior conditions. "It has gone as we hoped," he said. An interior sprinkler system has been spraying water on the smoldering battery since Monday, he said. "It’s going as it's designed as far as suppressing the hazard in there and keeping the atmosphere cool," Welch said.