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New York’s Year of Battery Fires Keeps Getting Worse

Seventeen people have died so far. Officials blame a plague of cheaply-produced, unsafe batteries.

11/14/2023

Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

A lithium-ion battery sparked a deadly blaze that killed three family members in a Brooklyn brownstone over the weekend, the FDNY revealed on Monday. Two electric scooters, powered by lithium-ion batteries, were found at the site.

Per WABC, the fire started in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights at around 4:30 a.m. on Sunday. Though firefighters arrived at the scene in under four minutes, the brownstone was already engulfed in a wall of flame. The fire ultimately claimed the lives of three generations of the West family: Albertha West, 81, as well as her son, Michael West, 58 and her grandson, Jamiyl West, 33. Twelve others were injured.

It’s a story that has become all too common in New York City. According to FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh, Sunday’s fire brings the total number of people killed by battery fires to 17. Two hundred and thirty eight total fires have been linked to the batteries, according to officials. When produced under accepted standards, lithium-ion batteries are safe, as The New York Times notes. But cheaply-produced, unregulated batteries for e-bikes and scooters are proliferating, particularly among delivery workers.

"We owe it to the West family to do everything we can to make sure we do not lose one more New Yorker to these devices," said Kavanagh. "We are on track to surpass 100 fire deaths this year. That is an extraordinary number not seen in decades."

Lithium-ion battery fires are notoriously difficult to put out, as our own Matthew Zeitlin explained earlier this year. Tightly-packed battery cells can give way to dangerous thermal runaway, resulting in fires that are prone to re-ignition. Batteries also do not smolder before exploding, making it impossible for smoke detectors to, well, detect them.

"They explode – and the second they explode, there may be so much fire at that moment, you can't get out," Kavanagh said.

Kavanagh specifically called out big corporations like Amazon, Walmart, Grubhub, and Uber Eats as the true instigators of NYC’s prolific year of fires. These companies are ultimately responsible for a huge underground market of low-cost and unregulated batteries, bikes, and scooters, she claimed.

“There is blood on the hands of this private industry,” Kavanagh said. She added, “We anxiously await to hear from the delivery apps and the online retailers who we have reached out to and not heard back.”

Charu Sinha

Charu Sinha is the audience editor at Heatmap. She was previously a news writer at Vulture, where she covered arts and culture. She has also written for Netflix, iHeartMedia, and NPR.

Sparks

The Country’s Largest Power Markets Are Getting More Gas

Three companies are joining forces to add at least a gigawatt of new generation by 2029. The question is whether they can actually do it.

Matthew Zeitlin •

02/26/2025

Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Two of the biggest electricity markets in the country — the 13-state PJM Interconnection, which spans the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, and ERCOT, which covers nearly all of Texas — want more natural gas. Both are projecting immense increases in electricity demand thanks to data centers and electrification. And both have had bouts of market weirdness and dysfunction, with ERCOT experiencing spiky prices and even blackouts during extreme weather and PJM making enormous payouts largely to gas and coal operators to lock in their “capacity,” i.e. their ability to provide power when most needed.

Now a trio of companies, including the independent power producer NRG, the turbine manufacturer GE Vernova, and a subsidiary of the construction firm Kiewit Corporation, are teaming up with a plan to bring gas-powered plants to PJM and ERCOT, the companies announced today.

The three companies said that the new joint venture “will work to advance four projects totaling over 5 gigawatts” of natural gas combined cycle plants to the two power markets, with over a gigawatt coming by 2029. The companies said that they could eventually build 10 to 15 gigawatts “and expand to other areas across the U.S.”

So far, PJM and Texas’ call for new gas has been more widely heard than answered. The power producer Calpine said last year that it would look into developing more gas in PJM, but actual investment announcements have been scarce, although at least one gas plant scheduled to close has said it would stay open.

So far, across the country, planned new additions to the grid are still overwhelmingly solar and battery storage, according to the Energy Information Administration, whose data shows some 63 gigawatts of planned capacity scheduled to be added this year, with more than half being solar and over 80% being storage.

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New York’s Year of Battery Fires Keeps Getting Worse

Seventeen people have died so far. Officials blame a plague of cheaply-produced, unsafe batteries.

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