The world’s largest battery warehouse caught fire in California
17 January 14:46
On Thursday evening, a fire broke out in Monterey County, California, at a battery storage facility that is said to be the largest in the world. Local authorities issued an evacuation order, Komersant ukrainskyi reports with reference to Politico.
Vistra Energy, which owns the Moss Landing natural gas-fired thermal power plant and adjacent lithium-ion battery storage facility on the Monterey County coast, confirmed that a fire broke out in one of its batteries on Thursday afternoon and that it had evacuated personnel at the facility.
“The cause of the fire has not yet been determined, but an investigation will begin once the fire is out,”
– said spokeswoman Jenny Lyon.
The Monterey County Sheriff had earlier asked local residents to close their windows “out of an abundance of caution.” The California Highway Patrol also closed the highway around the plant.
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What does Elon Musk have to do with it?
Some American media outlets were quick to come out with headlines that Elon Musk’s Tesla was involved in the fire. They said that the fire was caused by a Tesla battery. The businessman was quick to deny these reports.
“…the news headlines are false. This fire has nothing to do with Tesla, and our Megapacks are working well.”
– musk responded to such reports.
According to reports, the Megapack batteries are located at another factory nearby.
Megapack is a powerful battery manufactured by Tesla. Each Megapack can store more than 3.9 megawatt-hours of energy, which is enough to power an average of 3,600 homes for an hour.
Vistra Energy
The fire occurred at the Vistra Energy facility, which is headquartered in Texas. The company completed the last phase of construction of the energy storage facility in 2023 as part of California’s efforts to strengthen its grid with clean energy. The facility stores 750 megawatts of energy, enough to power about 562,000 homes for four hours. California predicts that it will need 52,000 MW of energy storage by 2045, three times more than it has now, to meet its energy needs and achieve its zero-emissions goal.
Vistra’s Moss Landing battery facility has already suffered damage due to a faulty thermal sensor in 2021. A small fire also occurred in 2022 at a nearby battery plant owned by Pacific Gas & Electric and supplied by Tesla.
Safety concerns led to a ballot initiative last year further up the coast in Morro Bay aimed at blocking Vistra from obtaining local permits to build a battery facility there near the power plant. The initiative was defeated in November, but the project is instead going through an expedited state permitting process.