A major fire at a large battery storage plant in Moss Landing, California, has caused significant damage and forced the evacuation of 1,700 people. The blaze, which started Thursday, sent plumes of toxic smoke into the air, prompting the closure of a major highway. While the flames have diminished, crews are allowing the fire to burn out. The facility, owned by Vistra Energy, stores tens of thousands of lithium batteries used for renewable energy. The incident raises concerns about the safety of lithium batteries and their potential environmental impact.
Flames and smoke from a fire fill the sky at the Moss Landing Power Plant Thursday Jan. 16, 2025 in Moss Landing, Calif.
“There’s very little, if any, of a plume emitting from that building,” Mendoza said. Crews are not engaging with the fire and are waiting for it to burn out, he said. “There’s no way to sugar coat it. This is a disaster, is what it is,” Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church told KSBW-TV. But he said he did not expect the fire to spread beyond the concrete building it was enclosed in.
There were fires at the Vistra plant in 2021 and 2022 that were caused by a fire sprinkler system malfunction that resulted in some units overheating, according to The Mercury News. “We are not convinced that this incident could materially shift the national trend of growing grid scale battery deployment,” said Timothy Fox, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, a non-partisan energy research firm.
BATTERY FIRE CALIFORNIA EVACUATIONS ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT RENEWABLE ENERGY
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