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Vistra withdraws battery storage application, to seek state approval

April 10, 2025

Morro Bay’s proposed battery storage facility

By KAREN VELIE

With many Morro Bay residents and some public officials opposed to a proposed battery storage facility near the coastline, Vistra Energy is withdrawing its application to the city with plans to seek state approval.

Vistra, a Texas-based energy company, has plans to construct and operate a 600-megawatt battery storage facility on approximately 24 acres of a roughly 70-acre site. However, a majority of residents have voiced concerns the facility will endanger the public while negatively impacting tourism and the fishing industry.

AB 205 allows battery storage facilities to garner approval through the California Energy Commission and override local governments.

On Oct. 28, 2024, Vistra asked the city to pause its municipal consideration while the company sought approval from the state through the opt-in certification process.

However AB 205, the new legislation which allows applicants to skip local approvals, requires approvals from both the California Energy Commission and the Coastal Commission. So, even if the California Energy Commission green-lights the project, it would still need approval from the California Coastal Commission, which has criticized the project.

In regards to constructing the proposed battery storage facility near the ocean in Morro Bay, the Coastal Commission found “significant development constraints,” including issues with habitat that supports special status species, the degradation of habitats, and the need for a prohibited sea wall.

Even so, the state is currently looking at removing some of the powers of the California Coastal Commission.

Meanwhile, locals have asked Vistra to consider donating its land to the city.

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So when Vista makes the right political brib….donations and gets state approval what will Morro Bay do?


0

If Vistra doesn’t get a waiver from the state, they’ll just relocate their facility to Texas or Illinois, although the liberals in Illinois may be just as squeamish about a plant in their backyards as the Morro Bay libs are. But Texas is already home to the nation’s most battery storage and Vistra’s largest facility near Irving. If they walk away they are only out $3 million, which, I hope the city has saved, because it will take at least that much to remove the old stacks that Vistra had agreed to take down.


-13

Nearly all the steel and other metals of the plant can be either salvaged or recycled. The concrete from the stacks could be used to shore up or strengthen the breakwaters. That would likely return much of your $3 million, and improve the bay.


1

Good ideas. Hope that happens.


0

… I’ve been waiting for this day. The people who stood for common sense prevailed.

Hopefully everybody gets a little wiser about not believing everything they are told. Becoming more vigilant in seeing hidden motives and agendas.

Morro Bay dodged the bullet for now.

Hopefully local and state politicians will come to realize that local working and retired people aren’t putting up with the danger or financial folly anymore. Sorry Moss Landing had to burn to drive the point home.


27

Unfortunately it’s more “common” to have a 6th grade reading level than not in this country…


-22

When the harbor seals and sea otters are dead, and the estuary has been chemically sterilized by various toxins and heavy metals, due to the millions of gallons of water used to fight a battery fire, that flowed freely into the bay…


…Don’t say we didn’t tell you so.


24