By Kennedy Maize
“The Monterey County Board of Supervisors held an emergency meeting Friday morning to discuss the fire. County Supervisor Glenn Church told KSVW-TV, ‘There’s no way to sugarcoat it. This is a disaster, is what it is’.”
The world’s second largest lithium-ion battery storage facility broke into flames last week (Jan. 16) some 77 miles south of San Francisco at Vistra Corp’s Moss Landing gas-fired power plant site, prompting an evacuation order of site workers and some nearby areas. The fire initially began to subside but flared up again the next day.
Firefighters decided to let the fire burn itself out rather than trying to extinguish it. A Monterey official told Reuters, that “the best approach, according to fire staff, is to allow the building and batteries to burn.” Officials said the fire finally burned out on January 20.
CNBC reported on Friday that about 40% of the building has been consumed in the fire, whose cause remains under investigation.
The Vistra plant has 750-MW of power storage capacity, or 3,000-MWh of electric delivery, providing backup power to solar-heavy Oakland-based Pacific Gas and Electric.
When Texas-based Vistra completed the construction of the project in August 2023, it claimed Moss Landing battery storage was “the largest of its kind in the world.” Since then, it has been eclipsed by the Edwards & Sanborn Solar + Energy Storage site in Kern County, Calif., a joint Air Force and local utilities project at 875-MW and 3,287-MWh.
The Monterey County Board of Supervisors held an emergency meeting Friday morning to discuss the fire. County Supervisor Glenn Church told KSVW-TV, “There’s no way to sugarcoat it. This is a disaster, is what it is.”
The fire has also generated broader political interest. California Assemblywoman Dawn Addis (D-Morro Bay) issued a statement as the news of the fire spread. “I am deeply concerned and have serious questions about the safety of this battery energy storage plant. I will be looking for transparency and accountability for why this happened again at Moss Landing. I am exploring all options for preventing future battery energy storage fires from ever occurring again on the Central Coast,” she said. She is chair of the California Legislative Central Coast Caucus.
Prior Problems
Renewable Energy World reported that the Moss Landing battery array has a checkered history, noting that the fire broke out in the earliest, 300-MW, section of the plant. In September 2021 a software problem
caused a heat suppression system to activate and douse three 100 MW racks of batteries…,Fire crews were called, but Vistra ultimately determined there was no fire, nor did the incident cause any harm to outside systems or any personnel.
In February 2022, in the 100-MW Phase II building next door, a “second, nearly identical incident involving the early detection safety system occurred…”
California’s Big Bet
California is leading the nation in battery energy storage. No current figures are available, as the sector is growing so fast it is difficult to keep up. At the end of November 2023, according to the Energy Information Administration, California had 7.302 GW of battery storage, followed by Texas at 3.167 GW. No other state had 1 GW of battery storage. BloombergNEF reported that California saw 8,171-MW of storage from 2021 through 2023.
That makes California a test bed for battery storage, including increasing information about fires. Lithium-ion batteries are well-known for catching on fire and utility-scale fires get a lot of attention. Bloomberg reported last week,
After several fires at large battery installations—including a 2022 blaze that briefly shut down California’s Highway 1—developers switched battery formulas so that cells are less prone to overheating.
A Prior Fire
Last May, a fire broke out at L.S. Power’s 250-MW Gateway Li-ion project near San Diego. The fire prompted evacuations and road closures in the vicinity of the plant not far from the Mexican border. The fire burned for 11 days.
The Palo Alto-based Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) tracks grid-scale battery energy storage systems worldwide. In a 2023 paper, EPRI said, “Over the last 4 years, there have been on average 10 such failure events annually, even as global battery deployments have increased 20-fold.” [1]
[1] EPRI’s research consists of:
- Evaluation of battery cell and system failure characteristics to inform safety mitigation technologies;
- Development of incident response guidelines;
- Stakeholder safety training and education.
———————————–
This was originally posted at The Quad Report, the blog site of electricity expert Kennedy Maize. It has been slightly updated and edited.
…the best approach, according to fire staff, is to allow the building and batteries to burn.”
Approach? Surely withdrawal?
I wonder what the surrounding air quality is like, it can’t be good.
I wonder what the surrounding air quality is like,?
Like all renewables … It’s “Green & Clean” !!!
Well, OK, if you want to be picky … it’s black & toxic & will kill the locals;
but, we have a planet to save & subsidies to farm, so stop complaining !!
Well, that’s me told…
Maybe the builders of the similar facility in Scotland beside the M74 near the A70 junction should be told as well.
You actually think they would listen? Gosh.
Probably not, but if they are told and then the thing goes up then they would be culpable.
In the UK nobody gets held to account- especially people like Jacqui Smith
Unless you’re Farage, then you get your account closed
There is no need for grand standing and getting to the bottom of anything by “investigating”
Just a waste of time.
The best approach is to have no batteries
Just have 60% efficient CCGT plants, which last about 40 years, vary their output as needed, to offset the daily solar bulge.
THAT WOULD BE SO MUCH LESS COSTLY PER KWH, AND SAFER
CO2 has a very minimal effect on global warming, even if it were to double, per Dr Happer
CO2 is the gas required by all flora and fauna on earth. That includes us
Net Zero is suicide pact advocated by insanely woke people, which includes the IPPC, and monied elites getting rich at the expense of all of us
Replace them with a nuclear reactor.
Yes, I definitely agree and gave you a “+” , but the earth (plants) need
much more CO2 before the next ice cycle. Much more concrete, etc.?
Better yet just build the gas plants, run them normally and quit wasting money on solar.
The same impact as the train fire in Palestine, Ohio. “Nothing to see here, move along.”
Vistra owns and operates the Moss Landing facility.
Vistra Energy info from Marketbeat https://www.marketbeat.com/stocks/NYSE/VST/institutional-ownership/
Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street are the financial arms of the Climate Cartel, using ESG and DEI to pressure businesses for financial gain and “environmental” causes to influence politicians. Net Zero and climate panic are a tool to maintain high prices for the targeted industries and to expand influence over government at all levels.
Vista is trying to build a battery-storage facility in Oklahoma, but the people in the neighborhood are protesting its construction.
I imagine the fire in California just makes the people more insistent that this facility not be built.
So, who is on the hook for the cost of repairing these facilities? Does Vistra foot the bill?
“the financial arms of the Climate Cartel”
There are many companies, such as Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard, +++, that provide services to individuals and pension funds, often via mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that are based on an index such as the S & P 500, Total Stock Market, and specialty indexes such as energy. Each fund will be required to buy/sell the stock of a company when it enters/exits the index. If a person or pension invests in, say, Fidelity® Total Market Index Fund [FSKAX] then the company is required to make that purchase — and the investor now owns part of Vistra Corp (VST).
I am not a member of the Climate Cartel, but I do own a small slice of VST via an index fund.
Relax. Do you tell Larry Fink what to do? Did you instruct your investment house to change the board membership of an energy company? Did you direct the influence of politicians or favor the ripoff of taxpayers or electrical ratepayers? Did you authorize election interference, lawfare, or political protests against Vistra competitors?
I doubt it, or that you or I or any other investors is guilty or liable. But if you get a proxy or a vote for a given company’s officers, you might exercise it against a known crook who comes up for a board position. For self protection you might keep track of the funds or stocks that will be vulnerable to SEC and/or DOJ investigation — just as you would if a particular company’s CEO got caught with his fingers in the wrong pockets.
Most of the AT&T stockholders who stuck with it actually made out in the antimonopoly breakup a generation or so ago. You might want to stick it out if one of yours gets in trouble, or you might take part in an investor law suit if the board has taken some inappropriate action. You also might decide to dump a bad actor before they get taken out or broken up for fraud or worse.
Investor boycotts against a single company don’t usually solve anything, and Vistra might have legit assets that make it a worthwhile investment. But don’t be surprised if a mutual fund or ETF drops them for another company with a better outlook.
Most funds have stock in Tesla too.
I’m betting that under the Trump Administration, including Secretary of Defense Hegseth, the Air Force won’t be participating in any more lithium battery storage projects.
I saw that item, too.
All that kind of stuff is “out the window” now that Trump is in office.
Trump really doesn’t like windmills and solar and I’ll bet his opinion of huge battery storage is not favorable, either. Somebody should ask him what he thinks of the battery-storage fire in California.
Trump is just looking for his cut.
10% for the big guy 😉
Unlike Biden he doesn’t need the money.
TDS
That reminds me. Didn’t Obama spend something like $100,000,000 to convert a military base to solar?
I think the claim was it would save $1,000,000 a year?
Whatever happened to it?
Evidently, the panels are up and still providing around 30% of Vandenberg AF Base power. The owner of the solar farm, SunPower, though, has filed for bankruptcy. Don’t know who will inherit the farm and contract.
In mid-2023 there was a study of battery farm failure rates
In the US there had been 19 “failure events”, which were about 3% of the total number of US battery farms as of mid-2023. I believe failure events means fires
US Has Suffered Second Highest Number of Major Storage Fires
Town of Moss Landing, CA: Recently the third fire at the second largest US battery farm. There was also a fire in the past at the nearby Tesla battery farm. That’s four fires in one town in just over four years. With relatively new batteries.
Any engineer with sense would demand that all work at all battery farms gets stopped for a thorough failure analysis. No insurance company with sense would stay in the battery farm business. These farms are very expensive ticking firebombs. A 15 year old battery farm is very unlikely to be more reliable than a 5 year old farm. These farms get built in 1 to 2 years. A moratorium for a few years is not a big deal.
The fire fumes are hazardous so these farms should be isolated from population centers.
When you count the forest fires, battery farm fires, and 39 million population, CA must be the top CO2 emitter state.
I’m required to have auto insurance or I can’t drive my car. If battery farms had to have specified level of insurance, and no one would sell them any, then the whole problem would go away, none would be built.
Insurance renewal rates will now be high enough that a government moratorium on new grid scale battery storage shouldn’t be necessary. The interesting reaction will be how many of these fire hazards are “temporarily not being loaded”. Doing otherwise would seem to encourage lawsuits: Big, expensive, and frequent ones.
You are only required to have insurance to cover the damage you might do to others. There is no requirement to have insurance to cover fixing or replacing your own car.
Which makes me wonder why insurance companies charge different amounts for different cars when all the person has is liability insurance on the cars.
As you say, liability insurance does not pay for repairs to the insured’s car,it only pays for damages to the other party involved in the accident.
So, it shouldn’t matter what kind of car you drive, if you only have liability insurance, you should only have to pay a fixed price for any car insured this way.
I think the insurance companies are taking advantage of their customers by charging them different prices for their liability insurance.
Liability insurance should be one fixed price for all cars.
My understanding is that (a) some cars are more likely to be at-fault due to the way they’re driven (think sports cars), and (b) some vehicles are likely to do more damage when they are at-fault (SUV’s vs. compact sedans). Then there’s the drivers – again some drivers (male <25 especially) are more likely to be at fault. My motorcycle liability insurance is about $100/year, due to my age and the fact that a motorcycle would do so much less damage.
Just need to eliminate any product liability like they do for vaccines.
That was in “The Olden Days” (Pre-Trump).
Republicans:
Battery farm fires
Democrats:
Battery plant extreme temperature events
Rapid unscheduled disassemblies
RUD? Something like the old FUBAR?
Undocumented thermal migration?
“Battery climate change tipping point”
Democrats – Rapid energy output feature.
“750-MW of power storage capacity, or 3,000-MWh of electric delivery,”
well you kind of fucked that up. The storage capacity is 3000 MWh, the power is750 MW. But you are the expert.
Perhaps there storage facilities should also be rated in terms of kilotons of TNT.
Olympic swimming pools of oil.
I can’t get my head around this:
”has 750-MW of power storage capacity, or 3,000-MWh of electric delivery”
What does it mean? Is it the other way around? If so it could only provide power backup for a measly 4 hours. If so, why bother?
750 MW for 4 hours is 3000 MWh
But that will not happen
The charge will not be 100% and the discharge will not be to 0%
Let’s assume 90% charge down to 10% charge. That subtracts 20% from the 4 hours, which is rt then 3,2 hours
80% charge to 20% charge subtracts 40%
which would be 2.4 hours
The subtract 2% to 5% for DC to AC conversion losses. And more for transmission line losses.
A typical transmission line from a battery farm might experience power losses of around 0.2% to 0.5% per mile depending on the voltage level, conductor type, and line length; with longer distances generally leading to slightly higher losses per mile but still remaining relatively low due to the high voltage used in transmission lines.
Battery farms should not be built near where people live, where the electricity will be used.
“…why bother?” The duck curve on the CAISO grid leads to rather large ramping requirements in the afternoons as the sun is setting. Without the batteries the number of brown and black out would be huge if peaker plants weren’t used. Additionally, the batteries soak up the overgeneration of solar reducing curtailments. The stored solar generation is than provided to the grid in the afternoons.
Mark
If they want to deal with that duck curve a whole lot more of these disasters waiting to happen will need to be built. Wonder how that’s going to go?
It is exactly backwards.
You’d think an “Electricity Expert” would not suffer from that confusion.
Oops. Greg beat me to it.
“According to the Energy Information Administration, California had 7.302 GW of battery storage”.
They are usually units for power to measure storage capacity… I assume they actually mean GWh? If so, 7GWh is tiny.
California uses around 32GW of power on average, so 7GWh is enough to power the state for only 13 minutes.
As of October 2024, California has approximately 13.3 GW of battery storage installed. Assuming that is for 4 hours at a 100% charge to 0% charge (which is a fantasy) that is 53.2 GWh
According to data from the California Energy Commission, California uses approximately 760 GWh of electricity per day, based on a total annual consumption of around 278 TWh.
760/53.2 = about 1 hour and 45 minutes for California electricity from 100% batteries on an average day, with a 100% to 0% discharge that will never be allowed to happen
Someoe please check my math.
Richard ~ I think the principal rationale for these battery farms isn’t to provide long term storage, but to provide some buffering. That needs to be done for wind because the output tends to vary over even short time spans. And for wind, solar (or tidal) usage peaks don’t necessarily coincide with maximum output. A couple of thoughts:
Well don, you might be right about buffering at the current minimal level of battery penetration into the storage market. Ultimately, though, renewable advocates intend to depend on storage from batteries for times when the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine, quite a different use batteries are ill-equipped to handle.
Never happen. Battery storage for more than four (4) hours of the full output of a wind or solar array is forever, yes, forever off the chart too expensive. It’s not a matter of technology, it’s the limits of chemistry, physics and thermodynamics. An installed, commissioned, operating battery storage cost is $600/kWh. If the batteries were free the “battery farm”, for a few days of cloudy weather, would still cost $200/kWh for the enclosures, fire suppression, switchgear, over current protection and more (19x too expensive).. In a sane world pretending that wind and solar can power a modern society would be illegal, not subsidized.
I wonder why they aren’t using nickel-iron batteries (the Edison battery)? It’s the one battery chemistry that does not degrade with charge-discharge cycles. It is one of the worst for energy density by weight or volume, but that’s not a problem in a fixed installation. It requires no rare or exotic elements, although a little lithium may be added to improve the performance. It does not burn, and the only dangerous chemical is sodium hydroxide – spills can be cleaned up with a mild acid like vinegar.
There is one limitation: charge and discharge are slow, so you’d get only one charge and discharge cycle per day. But that means your backup batteries need enough energy capacity to actually be good for overnight backup.
“ I think the principal rationale for these battery farms isn’t to provide long term storage, but to provide some buffering. “
The battery in South Australia makes most of its income from frequency stabilisation and as a short-term supply so gas and diesel gen-sets can be bought on-line as wind and solar fluctuate.
I occasionally leave the AEMO dashboard running on a spare screen, and I have rarely seen it actually providing its tiny amount of electricity for more than 30 minutes or so.
Frequency stabilization is a growth industry and there are many ways to approach it.
The more wind and solar, the more frequency stabilisation is required.
Coal fired power stations used to provide that stabilisation.
Not sure why any insurance outfit would want to insure a battery storage facility. Seems to possess a significant risk of catastrophic fire failure. Risks vs benefits leans in favor of risk. The back-up capacity storage would provide electricity for how long? Seems quite expensive and frankly impractical, but that is the logic of the green energy lobby and the Democrats who think this approach is in some way going to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Judging by the events recently, CA is doing an excellent job pump CO2 and other chemical substances into the atmosphere. Let’s hope in the next four years this green energy misadventures can be curtailed and stopped.
Interesting report from Warren Buffett’s GenRe insurance company on battery farm safety and underwriting risks. They seem to know more than the people building the battery farms.
Big Battery Storage – A Highly Charged Risk
The risks at least according to the article you pointed to seems unreasonable when you examine what occurred in South Korea. There might be more to the story or perhaps a foregone conclusion given these batteries are certainly going to malfunction sooner or later. Then you look at the resources needed to extinguish these fires as what happened in Australia. Impressive leaving a gap should these resources be needed elsewhere. In my mind, just what is the actual life expectancy of these battery storage facilities if they don’t happen to have a catastrophic failure? IMHO, not a great ROI.
“Losses have been seen the world over. For example, in South Korea between 2017 and 2019 there were 23 major battery storage fires, with total damages upwards of USD 32 million. In the U.S., a serious fire in 2019 claimed the lives of two firefighters at a 20 MW facility that had been in operation since 2018. Europe has experienced two big lithium‑ion fires: one near Brussels in Belgium in 2017, and another in Liverpool, UK, in 2020.
In August 2021, a lithium‑ion battery module caught fire during a test at one of the world’s largest storage facilities – with a capacity of 300 MW/450 MWh – in Victoria, Australia. Around 150 firefighters and 30 vehicles were deployed to fight the fire, which took three days to extinguish.”
Story tip – good friends
Miliband approves huge solar farm being built by major Labour donor
Energy Secretary accused of ‘thrashing the countryside’ as he backs Dale Vince project
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/01/24/miliband-approves-solar-farm-built-major-labour-donor/
Kerrching
Well spotted
Net Zero is such a scam! It attracts all sorts of vultures.
I applied for a Biden DOE loan for my Home Carbon Dioxide Capture Project. Did not get it. Forgot to offer 10% for The Big Guy
My project was a case of permanently unopened beer cans in the garage filled with CO2 bubbles. I asked for a $10,000 loan but was willing to settle for $150. Joe Bribe’em did not appreciate real science.
The most simple and guaranteed solution is to use only base power generation, oil, gas, nuclear and batteries are no longer needed. The problem becomes moot.
Yes, battery storage is only needed for windmills and solar.
Windmills and Solar are not viable options for powering the world.
At some point all these windmills and solar and battery storage will go away. Trump’s election will make this process go faster.
Windmills and solar and their accessories are on the chopping block now. They are not fit for purpose and some people are realizing this sooner than others, but all will realize it at some point in time.
I say portable nuclear powered fans to spin the windmills and portable nuclear powered spotlights to shine on solar panels
R. Greene
Rube Goldberg Engineering
Our Motto:
Keeping it Simple
is For Losers.
Rename: Califirenia.
Cinderfornia.
Love how the media has reported the Moss Landing as a “overheating event”.
🤣🤣🤣
So the Dresden fire bombing was an overheating event? And the Halifax ammunition ship explosion was an extreme overheating event.
It’s not rocket science, don’t install them.
and switch off the ones already installed. N2N, Natural Gas to Nuclear with small scale modular leading the way.
“The Vistra plant has 750-MW of power storage capacity, or 3,000-MWh of electric delivery, providing backup power to solar-heavy Oakland-based Pacific Gas and Electric.” ??
It’s energy rather than power that is stored.
So the liklihood is that the Vistra plant has (had!) 3,000-MWh of electrical energy storage capacity AND 750-MW of power delivery?
“my car’s top speed is 100 feet”.
I saw that you one of several people commenting on the MW vs MWh problem with the article. It irritates the hell out of me when dealing with people who don’t know the difference between power and energy. Don’t get me started on variations of watt-hours per hour….
My other gripe is MSM reporters reporting on electricity storage mentioning either MW or MWh. Frequently their article will be headlined ‘storage’, yet only power is mentioned.
Some laughably refer to long-term electricity storage. My watch battery discharges constantly for a couple of years.
How to determine the optimum energy policies for your state
Start by observing California.
Then do the opposite.
Please tell us the cost of these batteries. The output is chicken shit, and equivalent to only about 5 hours of electricity output from a 600MW power facility. We need these perspectives of time and cost. What happens if one of these causes another California fire, with billions of losses? Land of fruits and nuts, and ignoramuses in political power.
This event occurs at an interesting time. The Federal Circuit of Appeals in DC just issued a decision requiring that an EIS be prepared before the US govt issues a rule allowing LNG to be transported by rail, in large quantities, because of the risk of serious fires from accidents. I wonder when someone is going to notice all these storage battery fires, and is going to demand that they not be built without a programmatic EIS (and maybe site-specific EISs) for them, because of the risk of serious fires.
Something to think about
Very nice Kennedy. Again this is not complicated, wind, solar and batteries don’t work, stop building them. Fossil fuel and nuclear do work, build them.
We’ll pay more for your reliable dispatchables-
Big Tech wants to plug data centers right into power plants. Utilities say it’s not fair
and leave the cheap fickles for all the doomsters. Deal?
No way can the AI Data Centers hook into the present Public Electrical Grid. Either the Public Grid is going to have to build more generating plants, or the AI Data Centers are going to have to build their own power plants.
Trump says the AI Data Centers should build their own power plants, and these early investors Trump feted the other day are saying the same thing. Trump’s declaring an Energy Emergency allows him to expedite the building of new power plants, and that may be one reason the three billionaire investors were so happy the other night when they made the investment announcement.
The current Public Grid cannot handle the drawdown from AI Data Centers. The Public Grid is barely able to function now, with the present electricity load, and the public should not have to pay the price for adding AI Data Centers to the Public Grid which will only drive up costs to people. The AI Data Centers should pay this price, and from all indications, they are willing to do so.
AI Data Centers should stay OFF the Public Electrical Grid. There’s not enough electricity to go around as things stand now, what with Net Zero fools substituting windmills and solar for reliable coal, and natural gas and bringing our Public Grids to the brink of failure, as a result.
And the local authorities said ‘there is no risk to health’. Yeah right…
On January 21, 2025, a fire involved four electric school buses in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. The Wilbraham Fire Department responded to the incident at approximately 1:30 a.m. at the bus storage facility located at 2043 Boston Road.
Upon arrival, firefighters found four buses fully engulfed in flames. Fortunately, no injuries were reported.
These energy storage facilities are literally bombs. Their purpose is to store large amounts of energy that are released in a controlled fashion as needed when the so-called clean renewables aren’t producing enough to meet current demands. But if something untoward occurs that causes all that stored energy to be released in an uncontrolled fashion, that’s when that “bomb” detonates, with all its contained energy being immediately released.