Moss Landing battery fire: Newsom calls for investigation into massive blaze

Five days after a huge fire at one of the world’s largest battery storage plants in Moss Landing, Gov. Gavin Newsom has called for an investigation into the blaze, which has jolted California’s renewable energy industry.

“The governor believes there should be an investigation into this incident to determine cause and any steps that can be taken to make older facilities like Moss Landing safer,” said Daniel Villasenor, a spokesman for Newsom. “As the governor has said before, as this technology has evolved, California has done extensive work to advance battery safety and reliability.”

Villasenor said Newsom thinks Vistra, the Texas company that owns the burned battery plant, and the California Public Utilities Commission, a state agency, should each conduct investigations. The commission’s Safety and Enforcement Division is scheduled to meet with plant officials Wednesday.

Meanwhile local leaders on Tuesday asked the two companies that operate at the site to shut their battery storage facilities there down indefinitely until the cause of the fire can be discovered and steps can be taken to reduce the risk of another.

By a vote of 5-0, the Monterey County Board of Supervisors at an emergency meeting decided to ask Vistra, the company whose 750-megawatt facility burned, and PG&E, whose adjacent 182-megawatt facility did not, to cease operations until the causes of the fire at the renewable energy facility “have been determined and addressed.”

“This technology is ahead of government’s ability to regulate it and industry’s ability to control it,” said Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church. “This process we are now in, which is learning as we go, just doesn’t work. It jeopardizes communities.”

The vote came after a tense three-hour-long meeting at which dozens of residents of North Monterey County raised questions about health impacts to their families from the dramatic fire, possible lingering pollution in water and soil, how the facilities were given county permits to open, and how safety will be improved.

“We all had a metallic taste in our mouth, burning eyes, burning throat and yellow residue all over our things,” said Michelle Clary, a resident of Royal Oaks, four miles east of the plant. “If you can’t put it out, that technology needs to stop. You’ve got to be able to put it out.”

The fire began at 3 p.m. Thursday. Within a few hours, 100-foot tall flames were shooting out of the concrete building where Vistra operated 300 megawatts of battery storage as part of its facility on a former PG&E natural gas plant site that was built in the 1950s. The blaze sent a column of billowing toxic smoke up into the sky. Police evacuated 1,200 people until Friday night, and closed Highway 1 until Sunday.

Fire crews did not engage with the fire but rather waited for it to burn out on its own. Lithium battery fires are notoriously difficult to extinguish. They burn at high temperatures and can emit toxic gases that can cause respiratory problems, skin burns and eye irritation.

Officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set up air monitors Thursday night. At the meeting Tuesday, Rick Encarnacion, director of environmental health for Monterey County, said no monitors detected levels of particulate matter — or soot — or hydrogen fluoride, a toxic gas that can come from lithium battery fires, above state health guidelines.

Vistra officials echoed that assertion.

“We are continuing to monitor the site and can confirm there is no active flame,” said Peter Ziegler, vice president of Vistra. “A limited amount of smoldering is continuing. Air monitoring conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency and independent third party air quality experts continues to demonstrate the site and surrounding area is safe and does not pose a risk for the public.”

The fire was the fourth at the Moss Landing location since 2019. Two occurred at the Vistra site in 2021 and 2022. Investigations showed that they were caused by a malfunction in a fire sprinkler system, which released water and caused several of the LG battery units to overheat. The other happened at the adjacent PG&E site in 2022, when an improperly installed vent shield on one of the 256 Tesla units there allowed rainwater to get in and short out the batteries.

This fire was much larger, however. Vistra and fire officials say it destroyed nearly all of the 300-megawatt portion of the site. A megawatt is enough electricity to power 750 homes.

Neither Vistra or PG&E said Tuesday how long the two facilities would remain shut down.

Vistra’s Ziegler said company officials have not yet been able to begin their inspection because some of the batteries are still smoldering.

There was some confusion Tuesday about whether Vistra and PG&E had completed emergency response plans as required under a law signed by Newsom in 2023. State Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, said it did not appear PG&E had submitted a plan to Monterey County, as the law, SB 38, which he wrote, required.

Late Tuesday, PG&E spokeswoman Lynsey Paolo said the company had submitted an emergency response plan in July to the North County Fire Protection District of Monterey County. Asked to make a copy public, she said the company would not do that because the plan contained proprietary information.

Vistra submitted an emergency response plant to the county in September 2023, four months before the law took effect. County officials said Tuesday that plan did not contain a “worst case scenario” of a huge fire, but rather only plans for dealing with a small fire.

“The impacts of this fire have been profound — from the financial hardships faced by small businesses affected by the highway closure to the stress and disruption caused from the evacuation,” Laird said. “These challenges underscore the importance of not only addressing the immediate aftermath but also implementing long-term solutions to prevent similar incidents in the future.”