A fire broke out at the Moss Landing energy storage facility in central California on Thursday. The battery power plant is the largest in the world according to the Vistra company which owns it.
The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office issued evacuation orders for nearby residents and closed parts of Highway 1 in response. County health officials asked other residents to shelter indoors with windows and doors closed and to turn off ventilation systems.
The company will investigate the cause of the fire once it is extinguished, Vistra spokeswoman Jenny Lyon said. Mercury news. Vistra did not immediately respond to an email from The edge. The expansion of the facility was completed in 2023, adding more than 110,000 battery modules needed for renewable energy storage. Energy storage facilities like this are essential so that power grids can conserve enough excess solar and wind energy so that it is available when the sun sets and winds diminish.
This is not the first battery fire in the area. A nearby Pacific Gas & Electric battery plant, equipped with Tesla batteries, caught fire in 2022. The previous year, Vistra had to temporarily close its battery plant in Moss Landing after a smoke detector and alarm system “The faulty heat extinguisher sprayed water onto its batteries,” Canary Media reported.
