The Tribune (San Luis Obispo, Calif.)
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Jan. 17—As a fire erupted at the Moss Landing battery plant Thursday night, forcing evacuations and sending a pillar of smoke over Monterey County, Morro Bay residents watched the news and worried what a similar incident could mean for their town if a battery plant were built here.
A 750-megawatt battery energy storage facility at Moss Landing caught fire on Thursday afternoon, prompting the evacuation of of more than 1,000 residents due to air quality concerns, Monterey County spokesperson Nick Pasculli said.
No one was injured in the blaze, he said.
Texas-based energy company Vistra Corp. runs the facility, and it wants to build a similar battery plant in Morro Bay.
Those plans were met with new community outcry in Morro Bay on Friday.
The grassroots organization Citizens for Estero Bay Preservation placed a measure on the 2024 Morro Bay ballot designed to block the battery plant — which passed with almost 60% of the vote.
The group said that battery storage facilities are prone to catching fire and dangerous to locate in highly populated areas like Morro Bay.
The Moss Landing Fire is everything Morro Bay residents feared — and everything they'd like to prevent, group co-founder Barry Branin told The Tribune.
"They're all shocked and alarmed," Branin said on behalf of Citizens for Estero Bay Preservation. "These batteries need to be located somewhere else — away from the ocean and away from people."
Vistra did not respond to The Tribune's requests for comment, but a company spokesperson addressed the fire at a press conference in Monterey County on Friday.
"Safety is Vistra's top priority," company spokesperson Brad Watson said. "Our company takes very seriously what happened last night, and we are hurting today because we know primarily it's impacted and disrupted the people who live around our site, our neighbors, our friends and businesses, and for that we are sincerely sorry."
Moss Landing fire prompts evacuations
Vistra's facility caught fire at 3 p.m. on Thursday, prompting the evacuation of about 1,200 nearby residents from a 7,600-acre area due to air quality concerns, Monterey County spokesperson Nick Pasculli said at a press conference on Friday.
The fire was contained inside a concrete building that houses 300 megawatts of batteries.
Monterey's North County Fire Protection District Chief Joel Mendonza said the facility's fire suppression system failed during the fire, which allowed the blaze to spread inside of the building.
"No fire suppression activities are being taken, and the fire is being allowed to burn itself out," a news release from the City of Morro Bay said.
The fire was largest between 8 and 10 p.m., Mendoza said. By Friday morning, about 5% of the fire remained, he said.
"We have very little active flame. We have very little products of combustion being put out into the atmosphere," he said.
Preliminary air quality reports found that the blaze did not release a toxic chemical called hydrogen fluoride, Mendoza said, but the Fire Department did not share if other chemicals were released by the fire.
The California Highway Patrol posted six road closures around the facility, including closures on Highway 1, CHP spokesperson Nicholas King said.
The evacuation order was still in place during the press conference on Friday morning.
"This would best be described as a worst-case scenario," Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church said. "It's really a wake-up call for this industry, and if we're going to be moving ahead with sustainable energy, we need to have safe battery systems in place."
He called for an independent investigation into the cause of the fire, along with better safety protocols for battery storage facilities at local, state, federal and private levels.
"I myself, was personally assured — and I know with other county officials too — that this was not going to happen, there were safety protocols in place," Church said. "Well, obviously, that failed. I think that just shows the nature that nobody knows really what we're dealing with here in this technology."
This fire wasn't the first incident at the facility.
In 2021, batteries overheated at the battery plant. The incident did not cause a fire but prompted Vistra to temporarily close the facility.
There was also a fire in 2022 at Tesla's Elkhorn Energy Battery Storage Facility, also located at Moss Landing but not owned by Vistra. The North County Fire Protection District closed Highway 1 while firefighters fought the fire, the incident report said.
Assemblymember Dawn Addis and her staff are formulating a plan of action to address the incident, and she will do everything she can to prevent another battery fire from happening on the Central Coast, she told The Tribune on Friday.
"We need to know how this happened, why it happened, and who could have prevented this from happening and why they didn't," said Addis, whose district stretches from Santa Cruz to the SLO County and includes both Moss Landing and Morro Bay. "The community here needs to know that their needs are going to be met moving forward, particularly when it comes to safety."
"Battery energy storage systems exist because we need climate solutions, and those solutions cannot cause risk to human health," she added.
Morro Bay reacts to Moss Landing fire
Vistra originally applied to the city of Morro Bay in 2021 to build a battery plant on the retired Morro Bay Power Plant property.
Then, in October, Vistra withdrew its application from the city, and the company announced plans to seek approval through the California Energy Commission instead.
The California Energy Commission and Coastal Commission can bypass local zoning rules to approve large renewable energy projects like Vistra's proposed battery plant.
Citizens for Estero Bay Preservation hopes that the California Energy Commission and Coastal Commission will listen to Morro Bay voters and strike down the battery plant project — especially after the Moss Landing fire, Branin said.
They worry that a fire at the facility would jeopardize the safety of nearby homes and Morro Bay High School.
"Our citizens are very alarmed, they're very concerned about this being pushed through by the state," Branin said. "The push to have California reach these battery goals in a short period of time without some reasonable understanding seems to not be working, and it needs to be looked at carefully."
City staff will present an update on the Moss Landing fire at the next City Council meeting on Jan. 28, the city's Friday news release said.
The council will also consider an urgency ordinance that would pause the city's ability to process new battery plant development permits for up to two years. This wouldn't prevent the California Coastal Commission and Energy Commission from approving the project, though.
"Since Vistra also owns the former power plant property in Morro Bay and has proposed a similar Battery Energy Storage System project in our city, this situation is particularly relevant to us," the city said in a news release on Friday.
This story was originally published January 17, 2025 at 3:54 PM.
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