California bets on iron-salt battery power to protect against wildfire
A battery made from cheap and non-flammable iron and salt could provide emergency power in one of California’s high wildfire risk zones
By Jeremy Hsu
29 July 2025
Batteries made from iron and salt in ceramic tubes pose less fire risk than lithium-ion batteries
Inlyte Energy
A battery made of iron and salt could provide emergency power – without the threat of fire – near one of California’s oldest redwood forests.
The 200-kilowatt battery will be paired with solar panels at the Alliance Redwoods Conference Grounds in Sonoma County, California. This facility is in a high wildfire risk zone in a redwood forest, and it’s only 16 kilometres from the Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve, home to some of the state’s tallest and oldest trees. During extreme weather and wildfires, firefighters and evacuees rely on the conference site, but it’s also vulnerable to electricity grid outages.
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“The way we looked at the technology is, how could we make a safe, abundant, low-cost energy storage system,” says Ben Kaun at Inlyte Energy in California. “And that led us to very large cells with a very cheap and abundant active material, iron and salt.”
The battery project could deliver up to two weeks of emergency backup power once it becomes operational in 2027. That could keep the lights on in the conference grounds and also supply energy to a firefighting water pump station nearby, without putting the iconic redwoods at risk.
That is because these easily-sourced battery materials – powdered iron and salt contained in a ceramic tube – are also non-flammable. “We can put these batteries and battery cells quite close together without any sort of fire and explosion risk, which is a main issue with packing tons of lithium-ion batteries close together,” says Kaun.
