Four months after a massive fire ignited in Monterey County at one of the world’s largest lithium-ion battery storage facilities, Pacific Gas & Electric said it intends to reactivate an adjacent battery site by June to meet summer energy demands. The plan comes over the objections of county officials who requested that both facilities remain offline until the cause of the January fire in rural Moss Landing is determined.
Going Against County Officials
“I had hoped that PG&E would take a more transparent and collaborative approach in addressing the concerns of our surrounding communities, which are still grappling with the fallout of the largest BESS [battery energy storage system] fire in history,” Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church wrote on Facebook on May 8. Restarting operations before investigations are complete and before stronger emergency protocols are in place is disappointing and deeply troubling,” he said.
The PG&E facility is one of two battery energy storage systems at the Moss Landing power complex near Monterey Bay. The other is owned by Texas-based Vistra Corp. The batteries store excess energy generated during the day and release it into the power grid during times of high demand, including evening hours. Both facilities have been offline since Jan. 16, when a Vistra-owned building containing 99,000 LG battery modules caught fire, spewing toxic gases into the air and prompting the evacuation of some 1,500 people. The adjacent Elkhorn Battery Energy Storage Facility — which is owned by PG&E and maintained by both the utility company and Tesla — did not burn. But it automatically shut down when its safety equipment detected the fire in the Vistra building. The Elkhorn energy storage facility includes 256 stationary Tesla Megapacks — essentially shipping container-sized units filled with battery modules. The Megapacks, according to PG&E, stand on 33 concrete slaps at the Elkhorn facility.
Reactivation Plans Amidst Controversy
In a May 7 letter to Chris Lopez, chairman of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, PG&E vice presidents Dave Gabbard and Teresa Alvarado said “Tesla and PG&E have performed extensive inspection and clean-up” at the Elkhorn Facility and intend to restart it by June 1. After the fire, each of the Megapacks was disassembled and vacuum-cleaned, and environmental monitoring was conducted on and around the site, Gabbard and Alvarado wrote. “The Elkhorn Facility, as constructed, allows for efficient storage and use of power,” they wrote. “As summer approaches, that power is necessary to effectively manage the demands of the California power grid and to protect PG&E’s customers from power limitations and related impacts.”
A PG&E statement provided to The Times said: “We understand that the safety and well-being of our community is of utmost importance.” The battery facility, the statement reads, provides “cost savings for electric customers” and helps “support the state’s decarbonization goals.” In his May 8 Facebook post, Church, whose district includes Moss Landing, wrote that the Board of Supervisors on Jan. 22 sent a letter to PG&E and Vistra requesting that their facilities not return to operation until “the cause of the Vistra fire, as well as a previous fire at the PG&E battery storage facility, are determined and appropriately addressed.” That letter, he wrote, also requested that both companies develop “robust emergency response plans — based on a ‘catastrophic worst-case scenario’ involving full facility conflagration” for the county and other relevant agencies to review.
The Controversy Continues
Although emergency response plans are required by law, he added, existing state standards “are limited in scope and do not provide the level of detail or realism” that county officials needed to ensure public safety. “In previous discussions, PG&E indicated that a return to service would not occur until much later this year or beyond,” Church wrote. County officials have “expressed concern” about the return to service and have reached out to facility operators to ensure emergency plans “adequately provide for the safety of the surrounding communities and the environment,” Nick Pasculli, a Monterey County spokesman, said in a statement provided Thursday. “At this time, however, the County feels it is prudent to encourage PG&E to delay reactivation and continue to engage in additional open, transparent dialogue with County officials, first responders, and the residents we collectively serve,” the statement reads.
According to a Vistra website detailing the aftermath of the fire, an internal investigation is ongoing, and the cause of the blaze “remains unknown.” A California Public Utilities Commission investigation into the blaze also is ongoing, Terrie Prosper, a spokesperson for the regulatory agency, told The Times. Vistra’s battery energy storage system stands on the old site of the Moss Landing Power Plant, a gas-powered facility — originally built and operated by PG&E — whose twin smokestacks have towered over the region since 1950. Vistra acquired the plant in 2018 and demolished it to make way for the battery facilities, leaving the iconic smokestacks behind.
