Morro Bay residents were assured battery storage is safe. Moss Landing fire said otherwise

[Attilatheblond]

1. Well north of Morro Bay, but the people there are fighting another such facility planned for their area

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/17/g-s1-43268/fire-battery-storage-plant-california-moss-landing]

The Moss Landing Power Plant, located about 77 miles (about 124 kilometers) south of San Francisco, is owned by Texas-based company Vistra Energy and contains tens of thousands of lithium batteries. The batteries are important for storing electricity from such renewable energy sources as solar energy, but if they go up in flames the blazes can be extremely difficult to put out.

"There's no way to sugar coat it. This is a disaster, is what it is," Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church told KSBW-TV. But he said he did not expect the fire to spread beyond the concrete building it was enclosed in.

The county Board of Supervisors planned an emergency meeting Friday morning to receive a briefing on the fire.

There were fires at the Vistra plant in 2021 and 2022 that were caused by a fire sprinkler system malfunction that resulted in some units overheating, according to The Mercury News.