The fire at the Vistra Energy power plant, a lithium battery storage plant in Moss Landing, generated huge flames and significant amounts of smoke.

Lithium battery fires are notoriously difficult to extinguish – firefighters can’t use water to extinguish them so they’re usually allowed to burn out without intervention. Battery fires burn at high temperatures, though, and can emit toxic gases that can cause respiratory problems, skin burns and eye irritation.

The plume of smoke coming from the fire, which was first reported Thursday afternoon, drifted high enough that it was no longer a health hazard, according to public health officials. The plume was traveling toward Watsonville as it dispersed to more than 1,000 feet high.

If this event seemed scarily familiar to residents living in North Monterey County, there’s good reason. Battery fires have become a known hazard and are occurring far too often, despite the companies that own or operate the storage facilities pledges to do better.

Fires broke out at the Vistra plant in 2021 and 2022. In September of 2022, after a lithium battery fire at PG&E’s adjacent storage facility involving a massive 182.5 megawatt Tesla battery led to shelter in place orders for area residents, we wrote that while the move to energy storage should continue, the battery fires were a reminder that these blazes had become increasingly common and destructive – and safety measures, including fire drills, for residents around storage facilities needed to be put in place and widely disseminated. We added that for jittery residents, battery storage had been added to the list of fire dangers – “as if we don’t already have enough wildfire risks in our area.”

The latest battery fire comes about a month after Santa Cruz County officials received an application from a Massachusetts firm for a $200 million, 200-megawatt battery storage facility in the Pajaro Valley.

The Moss Landing storage facility is one of the largest battery storage plants in the world with tens of thousands of lithium batteries used to store electricity from solar power and other sources generated during the day for use at night. Battery storage plants are a key part of California’s efforts to shift most of its electricity generation to renewable sources, like solar and wind energy.

Battery storage has increased sevenfold in the past five years in California, from 1,474 megawatts in 2020 to 10,383 megawatts by mid-2024, according to the California Energy Commission. A megawatt is enough electricity to run 750 homes.

The plant is located on the site of the shuttered PG&E natural gas plant, visible for its huge smokestacks near Moss Landing Harbor. The first phase of construction of the battery storage facility was completed in 2020, and expanded to 750 megawatts in 2023. Texas-based Vistra sells the electricity stored there to PG&E, which also owns another battery storage plant on the north side of the site that has hundreds of Tesla battery packs and was the site of the September 2022 fire.

Fire Chief Joel Mendoza of the North County Fire Protection District said Vistra’s fire suppression system, which had worked in prior situations, wasn’t sufficient to deal with the latest fire.

State Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, wrote a law after recurring fires on the site, requiring battery plant operators to develop emergency response and evacuation plans. On Friday, Laird told our Bay Area News Group, “We really need battery storage. But we really need to have everyone safe. We are going to have a big debate about those conflicting goals.”

The takeaway is that all energy sources, including solar and wind power, carry costs and risks – but Vistra and PG&E need to convince the public and regulators they can monitor their facilities to stop these fires and keep people safe from toxic plumes.