Environment | Battery fire in Moss Landing: Newsom calls for investigation into major fire

Five days after a serious fire at one in all the world's largest battery storage plants in Moss Landing, Gov. Gavin Newsom has called for an investigation into the blaze that rocked California's renewable energy industry.

“The governor believes this incident should be investigated to determine the cause and identify any steps that can be taken to make older facilities like Moss Landing safer,” said Daniel Villasenor, a spokesman for Newsom. “As the governor said, as this technology advances, California has made significant efforts to improve battery safety and reliability.”

Villasenor said Newsom believes Vistra, the Texas company that owns the burned battery plant, and the California Public Utilities Commission, a state agency, should each investigate. The commission's safety and enforcement division is scheduled to fulfill with plant officials on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, local officials on Tuesday called on the 2 firms operating at the positioning to shut their battery storage facilities there indefinitely until the reason for the fireplace might be determined and measures might be taken to scale back the chance of one other fire.

By a 5-0 vote, the Monterey County Board of Supervisors decided in an emergency meeting to ask Vistra, the corporate whose 750-megawatt plant burned, and PG&E, whose neighboring 182-megawatt plant didn’t burn, to suspend operations until the causes have been eliminated The causes of the fireplace within the renewable energy plant “have been identified and eliminated”.

“This technology surpasses the government's ability to regulate it and the industry's ability to control it,” Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church said. “This process we’re in right now, which is about constantly learning, just isn’t working. It puts communities at risk.”

The vote got here after a tense three-hour meeting wherein dozens of North Monterey County residents raised questions on the dramatic fire's health impact on their families, possible ongoing water and soil contamination and the way in which facilities are granted county permits were issued openly and the way security might be improved.

“We all had a metallic taste in our mouths, burning eyes, burning throats and yellow residue all over our belongings,” said Michelle Clary, a resident of Royal Oaks, 4 miles east of the power. “If you can't get it out there, this technology has to stop. You have to be able to express it.”

The fire began at 3 p.m. on Thursday. Within hours, 100-foot-high flames shot from the concrete constructing where Vistra operated 300 megawatts of battery storage as a part of its facility on a former PG&E natural gas power plant site inbuilt the Fifties. The fire sent a column of toxic smoke rising into the sky. Police evacuated 1,200 people by Friday night and closed Highway 1 until Sunday.

The fire department didn’t fight the fireplace but waited until it burned itself out. Lithium battery fires are notoriously difficult to place out. They burn at high temperatures and might emit toxic gases that may cause respiration problems, skin burns and eye irritation.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials arrange air monitors Thursday evening. At Tuesday's meeting, Monterey County Environmental Health Director Rick Encarnacion said no monitors had detected levels of particulate matter – or soot – or hydrogen fluoride, a toxic gas that may result from lithium battery fires, that were above state health guidelines .

Vistra officials confirmed this claim.

“We continue to monitor the site and can confirm that there is no active flame,” said Peter Ziegler, vp of Vistra. “A limited amount of smoldering continues. Air monitoring conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency and independent air quality experts continues to indicate that the site and surrounding area are safe and do not pose a threat to the public.”

The fire was the fourth on the Moss Landing site since 2019. Two occurred on the Vistra site in 2021 and 2022. Investigations determined they were attributable to a malfunction of a sprinkler system that released water and damaged several LG battery units overheating. The other happened on the adjoining PG&E site in 2022, when an improperly installed vent guard on one in all the 256 Tesla units there allowed rainwater to enter and short-circuit the batteries.

However, this hearth was much larger. According to Vistra and the fireplace department, almost the complete 300-megawatt portion of the positioning was destroyed. One megawatt is sufficient to power 750 households.

Neither Vistra nor PG&E said Tuesday how long the 2 plants would remain closed.

Vistra's Ziegler said the corporate's employees haven’t yet been in a position to begin inspection because a few of the batteries are still smoldering.

There was some confusion Tuesday over whether Vistra and PG&E had accomplished contingency plans under a law signed by Newsom in 2023. State Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, said it doesn’t appear that PG&E has submitted a plan to Monterey County, as required by the law he authored, SB 38.

Late Tuesday, PG&E spokeswoman Lynsey Paolo said the corporate submitted an emergency response plan to Monterey County's North County Fire Protection District in July. When asked to release a duplicate, she said the corporate wouldn’t accomplish that since the plan contained confidential information.

Vistra submitted an emergency facility to the county in September 2023, 4 months before the law went into effect. County officials said Tuesday that the plan doesn’t include a “worst-case scenario” of a serious fire, but only plans to take care of a small fire.

“The impact of this fire has been profound – from the financial difficulties of small businesses affected by the highway closure to the stress and disruption caused by the evacuation,” Laird said. “These challenges highlight the importance of not only managing the immediate consequences, but also implementing long-term solutions to prevent similar incidents in the future.”

Originally published:

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