The company’s Central Coast battery storage facility, which it claims to be the largest in the world, caught fire on Thursday night, prompting Monterey County officials to issue evacuation orders.
An email from Vistra Energy, the owner of the Moss Landing Power Plant and its adjacent lithium-ion battery complex on the coast of Monterey County, acknowledged that a fire had broken out in one of the facilities on Thursday afternoon and that employees working there had been evacuated.
“Once the fire is extinguished, an investigation will begin,” spokesman Jenny Lyon said, adding that the cause of the incident has not yet been discovered.
Residents in the area were previously advised by the Monterey County Sheriff to shut their windows “out of an abundance of caution.” Highway 1 was closed by the California Highway Patrol near the plant as well.
In a Thursday social media post, the area’s Democratic assemblymember, Dawn Addis, expressed her “deeply concerned” about the battery storage plant’s safety.
She expressed her need for explanations and responsibility about the recurrence of the incident in Moss Landing. “To ensure that the Central Coast is forever spared the horror of battery energy storage fires, I am investigating all possible avenues for their prevention.”
As part of California’s endeavors to fortify its grid with renewable energy, the energy storage facility, which was most recently constructed in 2023 by the Texas-based Vistra, was a key aspect of these efforts. For up to four hours, its 750 megawatts of storage can power almost 562,000 households. By 2045, the state of California expects to have tripled its current energy storage capacity, or 52,000 MW, in order to fulfill energy demands and achieve its target of net-zero emissions.
In 2021, a broken heat detector damaged Vistra’s Moss Landing battery facility. Also in 2022, a nearby battery factory that was supplied by Tesla and owned by Pacific Gas & Electric had a minor fire.
An initiative was put to the vote in Morro Bay last year over safety concerns; the goal was to prevent Vistra from obtaining the necessary licenses to build a battery facility close to a power station in the area. The project is still moving forward with a streamlined state permitting procedure, so the November measure won’t have much of an impact.
