The massive fire at one of the world’s largest lithium battery storage plants in Northern California has shocked a local community concerned about possible long-term consequences and put the emerging industry’s safety practices under scrutiny.
The fire at a Vistra Energy power plant and battery facility in the Monterey County community of Moss Landing began Thursday afternoon, forcing evacuations and the closure of Coastal Highway 1. A Monterey County official on Friday called it the largest fire of its kind ever.
The Moss Landing Power Plant, about 90 miles south of San Francisco, is owned and operated by Vistra subsidiary Dynegy and also houses two independent battery storage plants. The plant on fire is owned by Vistra Energy, while a second battery storage facility at the same location is owned by Pacific Gas and Electric, which said the incident was not a PG&E event.
According to the Monterey County Emergency Operations Center, no injuries were reported in the fire, which burned itself out as is standard procedure for such fires. However, smoke from the fire has forced other residents who were not under evacuation orders to close their windows and stay indoors.
Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church called the incident a “Three-Mile Island event” for the industry, referring to the 1979 partial meltdown of a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. The battery energy storage systems industry, known by the acronym BESS, develops systems to store energy from electric, solar, electrical, wind and other energy systems.
Massive battery projects involving hundreds of megawatts are becoming increasingly common in the US and around the world. California law requires investor-owned utilities to store energy and the state is expected to need 50 gigawatts of battery storage to meet its 2045 goal of getting all of its energy from carbon-free sources from today’s 7 gigawatts, according to Reuters.
“I think this could best be described as a worst-case scenario of a disaster that happened here. No one really predicted anything in this area,” Church said. “This is truly much more than just a fire, it is a wake-up call for this industry. And if we want to move forward with sustainable energy, we must have safe battery systems in place.”
Church said he has answered numerous questions from his constituents about why it happened, how it happened and how to prevent a similar accident in the future. Kerk added that it is the fourth fire at the locationa former Pacific Gas and Electric facility, since 2019, and said he and other county officials were previously confident that wouldn’t happen again. He called for better safety protocols for the industry at the federal, state, local and private levels.
The inferno burning on the shore of Monterey Bay is also located next to ecologically sensitive areas like Elkhorn Slough, designated as a “wetland swamp of international importanceChurch said that while he understands the need for the battery industry, he said the transition to sustainable energy “cannot and will not happen before the safety of families and the environment.”
“This should never have happened,” said a visibly shocked Church. “And so there are clearly some information gaps here, there are some security gaps here, there are some gaps here that are going to take some time to understand, but they have to be — there have to be lessons that we can learn from this.”
Church said it was the largest fire of its kind ever and also called for an independent investigation into the incident.
“If sustainable energy is to be a future, it really has to rely on safe energy,” Church said. “And I’m not going to rest and let this lie until I know we have a safe environment and a safe operation in the Moss Landing area.”
Vistra Energy’s Texas-based senior director of community affairs, Brad Watson, also spoke at the news conference, saying the company considers itself part of the community and has taken the incident very seriously. Watson apologized to everyone affected by the current situation.
“We are hurting today because we know that it has especially affected and disrupted the people who live around our location, our neighbors, our friends and businesses, and for that we are truly sorry,” Watson said.
Watson said it will listen to community residents about how the company can consider ways to provide assistance. The company contracted with an air quality monitoring company to keep residents informed about potential health impacts from the fire’s smoke and to coordinate findings with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The cause of the fire had not yet been determined as of Friday afternoon. It was still burning, but at a small pace compared to Thursday evening, said Joel Mendoza, chief of the North County Fire Protection District.