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Fire rages at Vistra battery storage facility in Moss Landing

January 17, 2025

By KAREN VELIE

A fire is raging at the Vistra battery storage facility in Moss Landing leading to evacuations and school and road closures in the area.

Shortly after 3 p.m. on Thursday, the fire broke out at the 300-megawatt battery storage facility. Vistra evacuated employees and reported the fire. Because of the presence of lithium-ion batteries, firefighters are not engaging the blaze and instead plan to let it burn out.

Approximately 40% of the battery storage facility has burned. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

Assemblywoman Dawn Addis said the safety and wellbeing of the community is her number one priority.

“I am deeply concerned and have serious questions about the safety of this battery energy storage plant,” Addis said in a statement. “I will be looking for transparency and accountability for why this happened again at Moss Landing. I am exploring all options for preventing future battery energy storage fires from ever occurring again on the Central Coast.”

Vistra has plans to construct and operate a 600-megawatt battery storage facility in Morro Bay. However, mutiple residents have voiced concerns the facility will endanger the public while negatively impacting tourism and the fishing industry.

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Dear Dawn Addis, you said you are “exploring all options for preventing future battery energy storage fires from ever occurring again on the Central Coast.” Well then, the obvious and best option is to make sure the battery storage plant proposed by Vistra (you can’t make this up) in Morro Bay does not get approved by the people appointed by your friends in Sacramento. If you don’t take the lead in opposing this ridiculously insane project in the heart of Morro Bay, then who should? The same goes for Senator Laird. This is not a time for platitudes, but rather one for decisive action.


2

Greeeat, so we will have one twice as big right in the middle of Morro Bay, what could go wrong. But hey it’s all in the name of “green” energy so it’s ok. Unbelievable


4

“Assemblywoman Dawn Addis” is “exploring all options for preventing future battery energy storage fires…”? Doubtful. I doubt she could even identify the energizer bunny in a lineup? I know little about her, but anyone who follows every instruction given by Bruce Gibson can’t be much of a thinker.


4

Wonder who still thinks this is a good idea locally?


3

Wow! That was fast! …So can we pass on having this junk in our own backyard? So much for dangerous, impractical vanity projects…I hope everyone is getting the message. This jazz is “ green” only for the investors. Until now. Adios!


3

Maybe this will be a wake up call to the Coastal Commission, Surfriders, Sierra Club and other environmental agencies that these battery storage facilities are not as safe as they want people to believe.


1

I wonder what effect this will have on California’s strained power grid?


0

I’m all for making every effort to reduce emissions and continue to clean up the environment. However, after reasonable study as a layman, I conclude that most of the so-called “Green” energy technologies do more harm than good, when one factors in second-, third-, and fourth-order effects. The inputs needed to implement them outweigh the benefits. Windmills represent huge carbon expenditures to build and install, generally do not operate most of the time, and have a proven negative effect on raptor populations. Solar farms are immensely destructive to the desert environment and other places where they are foisted upon the locals. See the destruction of thousands of Joshua trees down South. Lithium production either by pit mining or brine extraction is destructive. Cobalt production in the Congo relies on child labor, with no environmental or occupational safety rules. Really, none of it actually pencils out. How are we going to dispose of the used panels, windmills, and batteries? Why are we not simply working on ways to use our own massive natural gas reserves and clean up the emissions with advanced carbon capture technologies? Not to mention that even if everything is electrified, we still need fossil fuels/petroleum products for just about everything else.


https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2023/01/18/the-paradox-of-lithium/


https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/phone-electric-vehicle-congo-cobalt-mine-b2277665.html


https://sustainableenergychoice.com/negative-impacts-of-solar-energy/


I could go on and on. Hopefully we can begin to have a rational discussion of this critically important topic.


1

Yeah…let’s build an even BIGGER storage facility in Morro Bay. Who doesn’t love a huge lithium ion bon fire, because that doesn’t impact climate change.


1