I would be willing to lay actual real money down here (of which I have not nearly enough) – that residents near the Vistra battery storage facility – the largest of its kind in the world – in Moss Landing, California, have had enough.
To refresh your memories, on January 16th, at 3 in the afternoon, a fire broke out.
Smoke pours from a smoldering fire at Vistra Corp.’s Moss Landing battery storage facility in Moss Landing, California, US, on Friday, Jan. 17, 2025. A fire broke out at Vistra Corp.’s Moss Landing complex in California, one of the world’s biggest battery storage facilities,… pic.twitter.com/fSKXcdPXXa
Evacuations for 1500 people commenced, and ‘seal yourselves in your homes’ orders ensued as authorities let the blaze burn itself out.
A fire broke out at the world’s largest battery storage site (Moss Landing Power Plant) in California on the 16th of January, the fire burned for 5 days and destroyed 80% of the sites batteries.
Tactics deployed were to allow the building/batteries to burn, and not to firefight. pic.twitter.com/WVmqf2RNnp
Not only were residents affected, but the batteries that went up in flames inside were a critical component of CA’s ludicrous dependency on renewables. They had just been awarded a major 15-year contract with Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) to store and deliver up to four hours’ worth of that stored excess capacity to the grid when shortages occur.
RA requirements include delivery of electricity in four-hour blocks, which is why most new-build battery storage facilities in the state have durations of that length.
PG&E’s new contract for Moss Landing Phase III, also known as MOSS350, is under a 15-year term and was approved by California regulators in April 2022.
So this plant has a 15-year contract to pick up PG&E shortages and can do so in up to four-hour blocks of extra go-juice.
Just look at the number of batteries that were added in the expansion. Crimeny.
…Vistra Energy noted that the expansion was completed on schedule within a 16-month timeframe, adding more than 110,000 battery modules in 112 containerised units. It comes after the company reported in May that the expansion was on track, as it announced its most recent financial results.
Two weeks later, residents were already feeling used, abused, and lied to…
Residents in the Moss Landing area are furious. The anger they expressed in interviews just a few days after being trapped in their homes, sealed up as best they could for days after the fire due to the fumes and ash, was palpable.
They want the facility gone.
…”It is a charred, stinking mess. And it is just, and it’s poison now. Okay? We’ve been poisoned,” said Patricia Yeargin, who has a clear view of the Moss Landing towers from her front porch.
“They’re telling us to wear masks. They’re telling us to go inside our house and not come out. They’re telling us they have to, uproot us from our, neighborhoods,” Yeargin said. “And we need to be taken someplace till this thing gets less toxic, for people. So we know what it’s doing to our water down there. We know what it’s doing to our animals.”…
…when they got word that their beautiful and pristine Elkhorn Slough right by the facility, which feeds into the world-renowned marine sanctuary of Monterey Bay, was now testing with high levels of heavy metals.
…San José State University has been monitoring the local ecologically rich but environmentally sensitive Elkhorn Slough estuary by Moss Landing for years, and when they came back for routine testing after the fire, the team found alarming results.
Research scientists at San José State University’s Moss Landing Marine Laboratories said they have detected “unusually high concentrations of heavy-metal nanoparticles in marsh soils at Elkhorn Slough Reserve” after the Moss Landing battery facility fire on Jan. 16.
The nanoparticles the university’s laboratory found left no doubt they were fire-related.
…The nanoparticles are used in cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries, making a clear connection between the increase in heavy metals in the soil and the battery facility fire.
On February 6, the Moss Landing community started the lawsuit ball rolling, filing suit against PG&E, Vistra, and others.
Community members have filed a lawsuit against Vistra Energy, PG&E and other defendants over the Moss Landing battery storage facility fire that occurred on Jan. 16.
…The civil complaint alleges that the burning of lithium-ion batteries in the fire has caused “the release of massive plumes of smoke, ash and toxic chemicals into the surrounding communities. Those exposed to these emissions have suffered, and continue to suffer from inconvenience, annoyance, and personal discomfort.”
The defendants are accused of negligence, reckless, intentional, and/or abnormally dangerous actions and inactions that created conditions to exist that were harmful to health.
…“This fire is a wake-up call for the energy storage industry,” said lead attorney Gerald Singleton of Singleton Schreiber, “Communities living near these facilities deserve better safeguards, transparency, and accountability. Energy sustainability should never come at the expense of public safety.”
Nobody involved with the renewables industry gives a rip what the peasants think, less mind what they want.
According to the lawsuit, the developers weren’t upfront about what was in the facility, how it was constructed, or the actual state of the safeguards in place at all when there had been actual reassurances that this design was so much better.
…The fire at the Vistra Energy site was centered in an enclosed, refurbished building that harkened back to the early days of the Moss Landing Power Plant.
During a special session of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, Pete Ziegler, regional vice president at Vistra Energy, who oversees the Moss Landing facility, told supervisors that 100,000 battery modules were stored in the building.
The lawsuit contends that housing the lithium-ion batteries indoors is “dangerously unique” as only 1% of lithium-ion storage facilities are indoors, a fact the defendants knew or should have known.
Johnson said the way the batteries were stored, in racks, was also problematic.
Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church, in comments posted on social media on Feb. 7 said that some of the Vistra Energy batteries “were permitted to be stacked inside buildings. It was one of those buildings that burned in January’s fire.”
“It’s much more dangerous to stack up lithium-ion batteries all on top of each other underneath a roof because when there is thermal runaway it can’t be stopped,” Johnson said. “It just goes from one battery to the next battery until they’re all on fire, and that’s exactly what happened here.”
…At a press conference the morning after the fire ignited, Fire Chief Joel Mendoza of the North County Fire District said the Vistra facility was equipped with a fire suppression system, which had failed.
“Despite the presence of a built-in heat suppression system,” the lawsuit contends, “the system failed to prevent thermal runaway in the battery system and the resulting fire spread uncontrollably.”
Now, to that litany of failure, negligence, possible malfeasance, and corporate arrogance, you can add one more unforgivable sin (and thanks to GlobalTrvlr for the heads up).
Last week, residents once again got the ‘SEAL YOURSELF IN YOUR HOME’ order (or wear a respirator to work outdoors) because those burnt-up batteries from the fire almost exactly A MONTH AGO?
Lit themselves off again.
CLOSE DOORS AND WINDOWS | “Out of an abundance of caution, safety agencies urge residents to close windows and doors overnight. Updates will be forthcoming,” advised the County of Monterey. https://t.co/18gUsidnPa
These cursed lithium-ion things are like vampires – they will not die.
Fire reignites at Moss Landing lithium battery storage facility; residents told to close windows
Monterey County residents near Moss Landing were told late Tuesday to close their windows and doors overnight after a fire broke out at the Vistra Energy lithium-ion battery storage facility near the Moss Landing Harbor.
The fire was emitting “light smoke” according to a press release from county spokesperson Maia Carroll that said first responders and the North County Fire Protection District were in a unified command at the facility in a message sent at 10:03 p.m.
…The county said the unified command was monitoring the situation for air particulate matter and metals and that updates would be forthcoming.
The atmospheric river now drenching CA – and part of CAs naturally occurring rainy season – is being blamed for the fire, leading pissed-off residents to ask reasonable questions they can’t get answers to. Questions like, ‘Are we indefinite prisoners?’ and “What the hell are we breathing?’
…”It’s definitely a concern because we don’t know if it’s going to keep on reigniting like it did last night,” Moss Landing resident Derek Sousa said. “It’s going to be on everyone’s minds if we have to keep on evacuating. We don’t really know what fresh air we’re breathing in right now, so we just still try to keep everything closed until we get a better answer.”
Officials warned that heavy rain and moisture could cause the batteries to catch fire after the initial fire. This could happen again in the future.
County officials have their hands in the air and scuffling their feet in the dirt, saying they can only test the water. But don’t worry – whatever’s in the air falls to the ground and then the county can test for it.
WHUT
As for the county taking charge of that ‘clean-up,’ well, that’s another pickle, see. It’s out of the county’s hands because Vistra is handling it as the plant is on company property, which is private property. And it’s gonna ‘take a while.’
WHUT
Nothing like transparency to make the neighbors feel good about a dicey situation, and it sounds to me as if county officials are, as we’d say in the Marine Corps, totally OBE (Overcome by Events).
You might want to look at new ones whenever that time comes around, y’all…just sayin’.
As far as any support for the plight of residents from their oleaginous state chief executive, the most they’ve gotten from Randall Flagg-lite was a call for an investigation, with a curious description of the circa 2020 Moss Landing plant as an ‘older facility.’
It’s CYA to nervous CA under siege from his accelerated storage facility building plans all over the state, as I pointed out in an earlier post. As in, “Oh, the NEW ONE PLANNED FOR YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD is so much better than that OLD burning one.’ 2020 is not ‘modern.’
…Seriously – that’s their line. A 2020 storage plant is ‘outdated’ – the ‘new’ is much better ‘newer’ than the not-so-old ‘new.’
Everything they build now is really, really good – trust them.
…On Wednesday, three state legislators representing the coastal area affected by the fire asked the state’s utility regulators “for a fully transparent and independent investigation, updated safety enforcement, prevention enhancements, and for the Vistra BESS to remain offline until safety is guaranteed.”
In the meantime, concerned residents staring down battery plants in other parts of the country can take some solace in the fact that Vistra’s Moss Landing facility was one of a kind, conceived and designed before modern safety standards were adopted for large grid batteries. Battery safety standards have been updated multiple times since it was built.
It might even be a chore to keep up with how often this one burnt-out shell lights off.
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