Dear Friends & Neighbors,
There is considerable uncertainty and misinformation regarding the recent fire at Vistra’s Moss Landing Battery Energy Storage System (BESS). That is completely understandable. The approval of both Vistra and PG&E’s battery facilities never received the fullest review and robust public discussion that they deserved. They were promoted as a great step forward for our energy future. The downside was never properly vetted. That leaves many questions.
I will try to answer with some basic facts as best I understand them, as the permitting and previous fire and smoke incidents occurred prior to my election to the Board of Supervisors.
The reason Moss Landing is now a site for battery storage facilities dates to the 1940s. When Pacific Gas and Electric built the Moss Landing Power Plant in 1949, it quickly became the largest power plant on the West Coast. At one point, it produced more electricity than all the power plants in Los Angeles. In the 1970s, it was the second largest fossil-fueled power plant in the world. All of that created a massive infrastructure to deliver electricity throughout California.
It was that elaborate electrical infrastructure that prompted Vistra to settle on Moss Landing as the site for what would be the largest BESS facility in the world. In 2019 and 2020, three permits were granted for two BESS facilities at Moss Landing. One is operated by Vistra with LG batteries. The other is operated by PG&E with Tesla batteries. Both operations were approved by the Monterey County Planning Commission. The 2019 approval had no public opposition. Limited opposition arose for one of the 2020 permits. It was appealed to the Board of Supervisors by an environmental attorney and local group, but an agreement was made between them and Vistra before the supervisors had a chance to vote on it.
The batteries are placed inside containers. Some of the batteries were permitted to be stacked inside buildings. It was one of those buildings that burned in January’s fire. Other batteries were placed outside, separated a few feet from each other. There remains one building with batteries stacked inside that has not burned. Keeping batteries outside is supposed to prevent fire from spreading to other batteries. It was the spread of flames from one battery to another, inside a building, that caused the most recent fire.
The local media covered the approval of the permits in 2019 and 2020, but all the proponents — business, labor, environmentalists, state officials and others — spoke glowingly of this wonderful, safe technology that would move us to a sustainable, carbon-free world. It is now embarrassingly and painfully obvious that the guarantees made were simply naïve and impossible to keep.
Lithium batteries are the preferred choice for energy storage because of the high density of energy that can be charged in them. It is the density of the energy that contributes to these batteries being unstable. That instability has forced the industry to create new batteries that are safer but are also less efficient. However, no one has guaranteed a fire cannot develop from one of these safer batteries.
Water causes a violent reaction to lithium, but copious amounts of it can also put a lithium fire out. However, that is not recommended for battery facility fires because the batteries usually reignite. Last May, there was a battery fire near San Diego at the Otay-Mesa facility. They used water to keep it under control. The flames were doused, but the batteries burned for many more days than the fire at Moss Landing. That is why the preferred way to deal with a lithium fire is to let it burn itself out as quickly as possible.
This is the fourth fire incident at Moss Landing. The first two were at Vistra’s facility. There were no flames, but there was smoke. They are called high-temperature incidents, but could easily have led to fire. The third incident, in 2022, was at PG&E’s facility and did cause a fire that required a shelter-in-place order and the closure of Highway 1. One of the outdoor battery containers burned in that case. The previous incidents were the result of both engineering and human error.
When the United States Environmental Protection Agency arrived shortly after the fire broke out, they were looking for hydrogen fluoride and particulates. The EPA stated that no hydrogen fluoride was present and that particulates were below the threshold for unsafe conditions. What was not clear is that the EPA was only looking for particulate size and quantity, not the composition of the particulates.
The EPA tested for one of the pollutants that measures air quality index – particulate size. This is what the Monterey Bay Air Resource District (MBARD) does when it produces an evaluation of air quality. Neither agency tests for heavy metals. Heavy metals testing was done by Dr. Ivano Aiello of the Moss Landing Marine Labs around the Elkhorn Slough and by the California Department of Toxic Substances Control with Monterey County Environmental Health Department. There is also a private business that gathered samples for one of the community groups that arose because of the fire. Vistra has also hired CTEH, a national company often involved in industrial incidents like this one. There has been little data or results from any of these tests made public at this time, but that information should be forthcoming in the near future.
There is concern that rain could cause the unburned batteries to reignite because of the chemical reaction when between water and lithium. This is the reason that the North County Fire Protection District sent out advisory warnings over the weekend. The cleanup will take months. As batteries and debris are moved, there is also the possibility of a flareup.
Vistra and PG&E’s battery facilities are both regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission. Monterey County does not regulate how the either of these facilities operate. The greatest influence that the county has on battery facilities is during the granting of permits, but that opportunity passed us by in 2019 and 2020. However, the state has interfered with even that. New laws allow battery storage facilities to appeal to the state to overrule local control.
Until this fire, Vistra had an application to add more outside batteries, but that application has been pulled by the company. At this time, both Vistra and PG&E’s battery facilities are offline and are expected to remain offline for some time.
The Board of Supervisors appointed Supervisor Kate Daniels and me to serve on an ad hoc committee to review what, if any, powers that Monterey County possesses to regulate battery storage facilities. A preliminary report is expected towards the end of February.
North County is our home. The disruption and potential damage to our lives and environment is inexcusable. It will take time to learn the full extent of that damage. In the meantime, I will not hesitate to use every power that I can find to keep us safe.
As always, don't hesitate to reach out to my office for assistance. You can reach us at 831-755-5022 or district2@countyofmonterey.gov.
Sincerely,
Glenn Church
District 2 Supervisor
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