On January 17th, a fire broke out at Vistra Energy’s Moss Landing battery storage facility in California, causing smoke to rise.
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A fire at the world’s largest battery storage factory in California has destroyed 300 megawatts of energy storage, forced the evacuation of 1,200 local residents and posed a potential health threat to humans and wildlife. Smoke was released. The accident wiped out 2 percent of California’s energy storage capacity, which the state relies on as part of its transition to more renewable electricity and less use of fossil fuels.
The fire broke out on the afternoon of January 16, gutting a concrete building containing lithium batteries at the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in Monterey County, California. Other buildings on the site, including additional battery storage facilities and a natural gas plant, were not affected. By the morning of January 17, local authorities reported minimal flames and smoke.
“This is more than just a fire; it’s a wake-up call for our industry,” Glenn Church, a member of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, said at a news conference. “Advancing sustainable energy requires deploying safe battery systems.” After a press conference on the morning of January 17, the fire reignited that afternoon, leading to an extension of the evacuation order.
Because lithium fires burn at high temperatures and release toxic substances such as hydrogen fluoride, firefighters do not deal with these types of fires directly and allow them to burn out on their own. There were no reports of fire-related injuries, and air monitoring systems detected no signs of hydrogen fluoride. But Dustin Mulvaney of San Jose State University in California said the smoke from the fire likely contained heavy metals and PFAS, known as forever chemicals.
Local officials are currently advising Monterey County residents to stay indoors and keep their doors and windows closed. Inhaled heavy metals and PFAS can pose health risks to local residents and farm workers. These substances could also affect wildlife such as sea otters that live in the nearby Elkhorn Slough salt marshes, Mulvaney said.
The destroyed building was one of two battery facilities in Moss Landing owned by Texas-based company Vistra Energy. The facility has previously experienced less serious incidents, including battery overheating and fire suppression system failures. But the facility that went up in flames this week had a water-based fire suppression system in place, and it’s unclear why it failed, Vistra Energy officials said at a news conference. They are still investigating the root cause of the fire.
Despite this incident, a report from the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute says that between 2018 and 2023, the largest number of failures in utility-scale battery systems for the power grid will occur between 2018 and 2023. It has fallen by 97% worldwide. An organization based in Washington, DC.
“This significant decline is observed despite the fact that the deployment of utility-scale storage continues to grow at a high rate,” said Maria Chavez of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Battery storage systems are designed with multiple levels of safety features aimed at preventing and mitigating issues such as the risk of fire. Unfortunately, accidents like the one that occurred at the Moss Landing facility still occur. may occur.”
Mulvaney said California is better prepared than most U.S. states to respond to such incidents, with a state law requiring local governments to develop emergency response plans with battery developers. He explained that we need to learn from events like this when designing future battery storage systems.
However, the loss of most or all of Moss Landing’s 300 megawatt facility would severely impact Vistra Energy’s total on-site energy storage capacity of 750 megawatts and California’s total energy storage capacity of 13,300 megawatts. It will be done.
Moss Landing has served the state’s power grid by storing renewable energy and reducing reliance on fossil fuels such as natural gas plants, Mulvaney said. While rebuilding and restoring battery capacity could take years, this is a major It’s a challenge.
“A battery fire like this is impossible,” Mulvaney said. “You can’t lose 300 megawatts of battery overnight like this.”
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