Experts are linking a massive fire at the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility to the project’s design, saying it’s unlikely to be a widespread phenomenon, while others warn the blaze must serve as a “wakeup call” for the energy storage industry to address safety concerns.
Canary Media Executive Director Eric Wesoff, who saw the January 16 fire at Moss Landing from about half a kilometre away, said the flames grew over the span of a few hours. When the alarms first went off at around 3 PM that day, “it didn’t seem as if it was a very big emergency,” he said. “Then, at about 6 PM, it became a 100-foot-tall inferno type of affair with a black smoke plume…
It was apocalyptic,” Wesoff added, “orange fire lighting up the night sky, the sound of engines starting, and people packing up their vehicles to get the hell out.”
The fire at the Vistra Corporation-owned facility prompted 1,700 residents to evacuate. It also raised environmental concerns about air quality and toxic runoff. The cause is unknown, but this was the most destructive of several fires to occur at the location, consuming the entire building.
Glenn Church, supervisor of Monterey County where the facility is located, said at a news conference that the incident “is really a lot more than just a fire, it’s really a wakeup call for this industry,” adding that safe systems need to be in place to move ahead with sustainable energy developments.
But experts say Moss Landing is an outlier among battery energy storage systems (BESS), suggesting its design puts it at greater risk. Of the 26 battery storage failures in the United States since 2011, four have been at Moss Landing—more than at any other single location.
The U.S. has seen 25,000% growth in storage assets since 2018, but there has not been “a corresponding increase in the number of fire incidents at BESS sites,” Andrew Thiele, senior director of policy and government affairs for Energy Storage Canada, wrote in an email to The Energy Mix.
Some of Moss Landing’s features explain the recurring fires. It housed lithium-ion batteries made with a nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) chemistry that is now outdated. NMC batteries were initially designed to have high energy density for use in electric vehicles, but that creates a higher risk of the batteries experiencing thermal-runaway—a chain reaction that produces heat more rapidly than it can dissipate. Newer systems mostly use a safer lithium-iron-phosphate chemistry, writes Canary Media.
Furthermore, the facility was one of the earliest of its kind, and tried to make use of the existing structure of a closed power plant to house the batteries. The batteries were put together in a large room, whereas newer designs often isolate units in separate containers to prevent a fire from spreading from one unit to others.
Battery fires have already prompted new legislation aimed at setting stricter regulations, like Assembly Bill 303—the Battery Energy Safety & Accountability Act—introduced by California assembly member Dawn Addis (D-Morro Bay), reports the Los Angeles Times. The bill will also give municipalities control over whether to allow a battery project. Currently, energy developers can bypass local governments and go directly to state regulators.
Proponents of clean energy, who say BESS is essential for leveling out the variable energy supply from sources like wind and solar power, expect the fire will be raised as a warning against the technology. Citing another comment by Monterey County supervisor Church—that the Moss Landing fire is “a Three Mile Island event for this industry,” in reference to a 1979 nuclear reactor meltdown in Pennsylvania—Inside Climate News Reporter Dan Gearino writes that he expects “to spend years hearing Church’s quote be used to oppose any battery project, even ones that have little in common with Moss Landing in terms of design and technology.”
BESS developers and advocates point out that standards and regulations have changed to address safety concerns since Moss Landing was built. Thiele says Canada has “an evergreen body of codes and standards based on industry best practice” that holds safety as a top priority for new and developing BESS.
“While we are not concerned about projects being developed in Canada as a result of the Moss Fire, as an industry we will ensure the lessons learned there are applied to continue to inform safety standards and best practices in Canada,” Thiele wrote.
