On Thursday, Jan. 16—just as exhausted firefighters were finally getting a handle on the great Los Angeles firestorm—another fire broke out in Monterey County. That fire, however, was very different: It was confined to just a few acres on an industrial site. It didn’t ignite in heavy brush and trees, nor was it driven by hurricane-force winds like those that had cascaded down the canyons of the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains in LA.
The Monterey County fire didn’t kill anyone, nor did it destroy any homes. It was bad enough, however. In 48 hours, flames destroyed Vistra’s Moss Landing 300-megawatt battery energy storage system (BESS). Together with a PG&E battery storage facility nearby, the Moss Landing site held what had been until then, the world’s largest commercial electric battery energy storage site.
Built in 2018, Vistra’s 300-megawatt project was a key part of the network of “green energy” facilities vital to transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable solar and wind energy. The goal is to minimize catastrophic climate change that is already blasting our planet with the extremes of record heat and cold, severe droughts and deluges, rising sea levels and devastating wildfires like those in Los Angeles.
Damages from the fire extended well beyond Vistra’s Moss Landing site. Within a few hours of being notified, authorities evacuated 1,200 residents from a 12-square-mile area around the plant. Caltrans closed Highway 1 through Moss Landing for four days. The fire smoldered, discharging toxic gas. Residents in the area complain of respiratory problems. San Jose State University scientists have found evidence of heavy metals in Elkhorn Slough near the plant.
But the Moss Landing fire may have inflicted even more damage to the worthy goal of reducing our fossil-fuel dependence to combat climate change.
State Sen. John Laird has acknowledged the consequences of the disastrous Moss Landing fire (“Energy questions,” Feb. 6), but he also sets out a reasonable path for how to learn from the collective mistakes that led to that fire. Laird had already responded to a smaller fire in 2022 at the adjacent Elkhorn BESS owned by PG&E, when an array of Tesla batteries ignited as a result of the collapse of improperly installed vent shields. Laird’s Senate Bill 38 required upgraded safety plans and coordination with local authorities. Implementing these rigorous safety plans, together with improved structural design and newer battery technology, will significantly reduce the risk of BESS fires like those in Moss Landing.
Long before the Moss Landing fire, however, opposition had been smoldering in Morro Bay to Vistra’s proposal to build a “new, improved” BESS facility with lithium-ion batteries adjacent to the derelict Morro Bay power plant. In November 2024, Morro Bay voters strongly endorsed Measure A-24, essentially killing any chance of local approval of Vistra’s BESS proposal. Anticipating its passage, Vistra had already moved to exercise a “circuit breaker” in state law enabling it to get permits exclusively from the state Public Utilities Commission.
In the wake of the Moss Landing fire, residents throughout the Central Coast are lining up to fight the development of any new BESS in their communities. Assemblymember Dawn Addis (D-Morro Bay) authored new legislation designed to establish even tougher regulations and safety setbacks on BESS facilities. The bill would also return BESS regulation to local agencies, repealing the “circuit breaker” that allows Vistra to bypass the city.
Both Laird and Addis are making efforts to reconcile angry voters with the state’s plans for a “green energy” network. In spite of those efforts, however, Vistra’s Morro Bay BESS project is essentially dead in the water—or, more accurately, going down in flames. The SLO County Board of Supervisors is also piling on, with proposed ordinance changes to expand noticing standards from 300 feet to 1,000 feet for new battery storage projects.
There’s a smaller BESS facility in Nipomo, adjacent to PG&E’s Mesa substation. The 100-megawatt Caballero battery energy storage project was approved by the county Planning Commission in 2023.
There was no opposition to that project at that time—but there is now: Some of the opposition is led by Andy Caldwell of Santa Maria, host of a right-wing radio program who tried to unseat Salud Carbajal for Congress in 2020.
Local green energy advocates and elected officials must act quickly to respond to legitimate local concerns about the siting of new battery storage. Whether it’s Vistra or other BESS developers, we need more of the newer, safer battery technology and storage system architecture that responds to local concerns and meets high standards.
The 7-year-old Moss Landing facility was an “accident waiting to happen.” We’re learning from that accident, and we need to use that experience to upgrade older, riskier battery storage systems rapidly. We shouldn’t wait.
But we should strenuously reject any attempt to derail our state’s conversion to renewable, sustainable, green energy. The longer we delay our transition, the more we amplify misleading claims about “exploding” BESS facilities, the more likely we’ll see climate-related droughts, floods, hurricanes, and more firestorms like the conflagration in LA. Δ
John Ashbaugh is more worried about being seen driving his Tesla 3. He claims that he bought it before we all learned how crazy Elon Musk is. Send a response for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Feb 20 – Mar 2, 2025.