An enormous fireplace that destroyed a lot of an enormous battery storage facility in Moss Touchdown raised questions Friday, and potential new hurdles, for California’s efforts to shift most of its electrical energy technology to renewable power like photo voltaic and wind.
The dramatic fireplace on the the Vistra battery storage plant, one of many world’s largest, prompted the evacuation of 1,200 folks in Northern Monterey County, closed Freeway 1 and despatched massive clouds of poisonous black smoke billowing from at one of many world’s largest battery storage crops.
Offended native officers stated Friday that they’d been misled by Vistra, a Texas-based power big that constructed the 750-megawatt plant in 2020.
“There’s got to be lessons learned from this,” stated Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church. “There actually must be a full unbiased investigation of what’s occurred right here. That is the biggest fireplace of this kind that’s there’s ever been, and this can be a rising expertise, a rising trade.
“This is really a Three Mile Island event for this industry,” Church stated, referencing a high-profile accident at Three Mile Island nuclear energy plant in Pennsylvania in 1979. “If renewable energy is going to be the future it really needs to be safe energy.”
The plant, throughout from Moss Touchdown Harbor on the location of a former PG&E energy plant that was constructed within the Fifties, holds tens of 1000’s of lithium batteries. Fireplace crews didn’t have interaction with the fireplace however reasonably waited for it to burn out by itself. Lithium battery fires are notoriously tough to extinguish. They burn at excessive temperatures and may emit poisonous gases that may trigger respiratory issues, pores and skin burns and eye irritation.
Joel Mendoza, chief of the North Monterey County Fireplace Division, stated Vistra’s fireplace suppression system, which had labored in prior conditions, wasn’t adequate and the fireplace overtook the system. He stated that air high quality screens arrange by officers from the U.S. Environmental Safety Company had not detected hydrogen fluoride gasoline, one of many predominant hazardous supplies that may come from burning batteries.
Such gasses, together with soot and a lot of the dangerous emissions from the batteries seem to have shortly drifted to greater elevations, stated Richard Stedman, govt officer of the Monterey Bay Air Sources District.
“The plume was at least 1,000 feet high,” he stated Friday. “We’re not expecting it to impact people on the ground. It looks like it has been pretty well dispersed. We’re not anticipating health impacts on people.”
Battery storage is vital for enabling California’s expanded use of photo voltaic and wind power.
As a result of the solar doesn’t shine at evening and the wind doesn’t blow on a regular basis, California has been more and more counting on enormous battery storage crops to seize electrical energy in the course of the daytime and launch it on the grid at evening, lowering the danger of blackouts throughout scorching summer season months when demand is excessive.
Battery storage has elevated sevenfold previously 5 years in California, from 1,474 megawatts in 2020 to 10,383 megawatts by mid-2024, in keeping with the California Power Fee. A megawatt is sufficient electrical energy to run 750 houses.
Since 2020, corporations in California have constructed extra large-scale battery storage initiatives than anyplace on the planet besides China. 5 years in the past there have been 36 such crops within the state. By 2024 there have been 175, with dozens extra deliberate or beneath development.
However the crops have had fires and more and more are elevating issues from native officers in communities the place they’re proposed.
After Vistra proposed constructing a 600-megawatt battery storage plant on the waterfront at a former PG&E plant web site in Morro Bay in San Luis Obispo County, opponents put a measure on the poll to dam it. It handed in November with 60%.
“The situation playing out right now in Moss Landing has been the concern of our community for the past few years,” stated Morro Bay Mayor Carla Wixom on Friday. “People are worried about a fire and the consequences of it. We have a high school right across the street from there, and only one way in and one way out.”
Wixom stated she and lots of others in Morro Bay help renewable power and battery storage. However she stated it might be extra acceptable to be constructed subsequent to massive photo voltaic farms in rural locations just like the Carrizo Plain east of Paso Robles, reasonably than in additional populated areas.
Final summer season, after two fires occurred at San Diego County battery storage services, San Diego County supervisors required county officers to attract up tighter guidelines that will prohibit battery storage crops close to houses, faculties and different services.
Mark Jacobsen, a professor of environmental engineering at Stanford College, stated fires at battery crops are uncommon. By serving to the state’s renewable power continue to grow, they’re lowering the quantity of electrical energy generated from pure gasoline, which in flip reduces soot and smog, he stated.
“I don’t consider this a disaster. San Bruno was a disaster,” Jacobsen stated, citing the explosion of a PG&E pure gasoline pipeline in 2010 that killed 8 folks and destroyed 37 houses in a San Mateo County neighborhood.
Jacobsen stated the battery storage trade must do a greater job explaining to the general public the security programs on its services and the way they work. However all types of power storage and technology have danger, he stated.
“Natural gas kills 5,000 people a year from air pollution,” he stated. “Gas is far more dangerous in terms of causing death, illness and catastrophic risk. Not only the use of it, but the drilling and fracking for it.”
Emergency officers stated Friday they don’t know the way the fireplace began. Three smaller fires have damaged out since 2019 on the Vistra plant and an adjoining PG&E battery storage plant, which was not broken.
“Our company takes very seriously what happened last night and we are hurting today because we know primarily its impacted and disrupted the people who live around our site — our neighbors, our friends and businesses — and for that we’re sincerely sorry,” stated Vistra spokesman Brad Watson.
State Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, wrote a legislation after different fires on the location requiring battery plant operators to develop emergency response and evacuation plans.
“This is very serious,” Laird stated Friday. “We really need battery storage. But we really need to have everyone safe. We are going to have a big debate about those conflicting goals.”
