California's Battery Plant Fire Sparks Call for Investigation, New Regulations

Earlier this month a major fire erupted at a California battery plant. But several factors contributed to its rapid spread, the fire district's chief told the Los Angeles Times:
A fire suppression system that is part of every battery rack at the plant failed and led to a chain reaction of batteries catching on fire, he said at a news conference last week. Then, a broken camera system in the plant and superheated gases made it challenging for firefighters to intervene. Once the fire began spreading, firefighters were not able to use water, because doing so can trigger a violent chemical reaction in lithium-ion batteries, potentially causing more to ignite or explode.
The county's Board of Supervisors has now requested that the plant remain offline until an investigation is completed. A county supervisor told the newspaper 'What we're doing with this technology is way ahead of government regulations and ahead of the industry's ability to control it.'

And plans for a new battery storage site nearby are now being questioned, with an online petition to halt all new battery-storage facilities in the county drawing over 3,200 signatures.

The fire earlier this month was the fourth at Moss Landing since 2019, and the third at buildings owned by Texas-based Vistra Energy... Already, the fire has prompted calls for additional safety regulations around battery storage, and more local control over where storage sites are located...
California Assemblymember Dawn Addis (D-Morro Bay) has introduced Assembly Bill 303 — the Battery Energy Safety & Accountability Act — which would require local engagement in the permitting process for battery or energy storage facilities, and establish a buffer to keep such sites a set distance away from sensitive areas like schools, hospitals and natural habitats... Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fierce advocate of clean energy, agrees an investigation is needed to determine the fire's cause and supports taking steps to make Moss Landing and similar facilities safer, his spokesperson Daniel Villaseñor said in a statement. Addis and two other state legislators sent a letter to the California Public Utilities Commission Thursday requesting an investigation.

'The Moss Landing facility has represented a pivotal piece of our state's energy future, however this disastrous fire has undermined the public's trust in utility scale lithium-ion battery energy storage systems,' states the letter. 'If we are to ensure California moves its climate and energy goals forward, we must demonstrate a steadfast commitment to safety...'

initial testing from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ruled that the levels of toxic gases released by the batteries, including hydrogen fluoride, did not pose a threat to public health during the fire. [The EPA says their monitoring 'showed concentrations of particulate matter to be consistent with the air quality index throughout the Monterey Bay and San Francisco Bay regions, with no measurements exceeding the moderate air quality level... In addition to EPA's monitoring, Vistra Energy brought in a third-party environmental consultant with air monitoring expertise, right after the fire started']

Still, many residents remain on edge about potential long-term impacts on the nearby communities of Watsonville, Castroville, Salinas and the ecologically sensitive Elkhorn Slough estuary.

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