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Massive Fire Burns at World’s Largest Lithium Battery Plant Near Monterey, CA

Massive Fire Burns at World’s Largest Lithium Battery Plant Near Monterey, CA

Moss Landing Power Plant was an important part of state’s Net Zero Utopia; there were plans to significantly expand its storage capacity (which just went up in smoke).

Fire conditions in California just got a lot worse.

While firefighters are still fighting to contain the Palisades and Eaton Fires in Los Angeles, a significant fire erupted at the largest lithium battery plant in the world, the Moss Landing Power Plant near Monterey, on Thursday. The fire was still burning as of Friday afternoon.

Between the intensity of the fire and the fumes, 1,500 residents from Moss Landing and the surrounding Elkhorn Slough areas were evacuated and a section of Highway 1 was closed.

The plant housed tens of thousands of lithium-ion batteries used for storing energy for the state’s highly sensitive electrical grid.

It is unclear what had started the fire, which began around 3 p.m. on Thursday and sent up clouds of black smoke. By 10 a.m. on Friday, the fire was down to less than 5 percent of its original size, said Fire Chief Joel Mendoza of the North County Fire Protection District.

The blaze was unrelated to the wildfires that have broken out around Los Angeles, which is hundreds of miles to the south.

On Thursday evening, the sheriff’s office in Monterey County issued evacuation orders for a roughly eight-square-mile area around the plant. Residents elsewhere in the region were urged to close their windows and doors, turn off ventilation systems and avoid outdoor exposure until further notice while officials monitored air quality.

As of Friday morning, the evacuation order had not been lifted. Chief Mendoza said preliminary results suggested that the fire had not released certain hazardous gases known to be a danger to the public, but the authorities needed to conduct further tests and wanted to err on the side of caution before letting people return home.

Legal Insurrection readers should be well aware of all the challenges associated with these fires, as we have covered this topic on numerous occasions: In ships, those used in electric bikes, and water-drenched battery fires that occur after hurricanes and floods.

There are many challenges associated with fighting lithium/lithium-ion battery fires. Lithium is water reactive, yet water is often the only fire-fighting option in large enough quantities to fight the blaze. The materials burn at very high temperatures and is prone to re-ignition, which is why it once took the firefighters in Texas 30,000 gallons of water and four hours to extinguish a similar blaze.

We recently covered the saga of a San Diego warehouse where lithium batteries were stored.  The building smoldered for weeks, making nearby residents nervous.

Returning to the incident in Monterey, the fire flared up again (as it did in the San Diego case), after initial firefighting efforts looked successful.

Monterey County officials held a second press conference Friday afternoon after the latest flare-up at around 1:45 p.m. produced another round of flames and black smoke shooting into the sky.

Assemblymember Dawn Addis and Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church, who spoke at the earlier press conference, addressed the media after the flare-up and voicing safety concerns for their constituents.

“There’s been three incidents here. There’s been the PG&E incident. It’s really time to put a stop to it and take a breath and make sure that we can assure the public they’re safe,” said Addis. “This incident does look and feel very different. It’s a different configuration, the fire is different.”

The large plant, which stores 750 megawatts of energy, is part of California’s ongoing efforts to go green and supply electricity from renewable sources.

Vistra sells the electricity stored there to the Pacific Gas and Electric utility company. PG&E also operates a separate 182-megawatt battery storage plant on site that has 256 Tesla “Megapack” battery packs — but that did not appear to be impacted by the fire.

A megawatt is enough electricity to run 750 homes, according to the Mercury News.

A Vistra spokesperson said all its personnel were evacuated safely.

“The cause of the fire has not yet been determined, but an investigation will begin once the fire is extinguished,” the company told KSBW-TV.

In her analysis of the impacts of this fire, Hot Air’s Beege Welborn notes that this plant was an important part of maintaining the state’s sensitive electrical grid. Before this disaster, plans were underway to significantly expand its storage capacity.

The plant had been approved for another expansion to 1.5GW, so basically, a doubling of where it burns…oh. Sorry. Stands size-wise right now.

Wonder if the neighbors are rethinking voting for their local commissioners about any of this?

I think those plans have gone up in smoke.

I don’t think the destructive potential of lithium battery fires was mentioned by green energy enthusiasts when California’s senseless “Net Zero” plans were put in place.

Subsequently, this emergency has become another painful lesson of what can happen when debate involving important issues related to science and technology is stifled and suppressed.

Developments like this may also explain why California has scrapped its EV mandate for trucks.

It looks like a couple of more coins are going in this jar today:

Ladies and Gentlemen: I give you Net Zero Utopia:

DONATE

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.

Comments

“World’s largest lithium battery plant.”

Well, it’s a former lithium battery plant now.

California’s been burning through it supply of lithium batteries so fast I predict a lithium battery shortage in the near future.

Leslie, you need a bigger jar. I suggest a gallon size.

Isn’t it great to say, “Told ya”?
.

Green energy is not green. It’s a scam. One ton of refined lithium requires hydrochloric acid, sulphuric acid in distillation ponds using 250,000 gallons of water. This results in deadly ground water contamination. Thirty tons of raw ore must mined first. The mining process is not ‘green.’ Massive machines to dig it out of strip mines, and transport it for refinement run on diesel fuel consuming millions of gallons per year, spewing CO2 as byproduct. Hydraulic oil, grease, motor oil by the millions of gallons keep these machines operating 24/7/365. Then there are all the support vehicles to keep these massive machines working safely.

Plus, lithium batteries have a limited life cycle, and must be disposed in landfills. Lithium cannot be recycled. Green energy is not green. It’s a scam, and everyone involed in promoting it should be in prison.

    jb4 in reply to LB1901. | January 18, 2025 at 4:17 pm

    IMO it is more than a scam, but also a monry-laundering scheme, with public money going to green entities, advocates, academics, etc and some of it ending up being donated back to the Democratic Party.

    henrybowman in reply to LB1901. | January 18, 2025 at 5:02 pm

    “The mining process is not ‘green.’”
    But it’s OK, because it happens Somewhere Else where you don’t have to look at it.

    Paula in reply to LB1901. | January 18, 2025 at 7:43 pm

    If they could transition all the massive machines that do the mining to run on lithium batteries, all the lithium that they mined could be used to mine more lithium. And then everybody else in the world could go back to using gasoline engines.

      diver64 in reply to Paula. | January 19, 2025 at 6:09 am

      If you could use lithium batteries to power only earth moving equipment at surface mines not only for lithium but for coal, copper etc then you might have something that would save quite a bit of fuel. Unfortunately, the batteries have to be recharged and where would that power come from not to mention no batteries developed can move a 200,000 lb excavator or a 500,000 lb Cat Mining Truck common in strip mines.

ok China restrictions export
of Lithium batteries and material
to make them.
1000’s of Chinese stream thru
our open boarder
and this factory catches fire ..
hmmmmm

Rolling blackouts and toxic smoke. Green new deal gone bust.

ThePrimordialOrderedPair | January 18, 2025 at 3:24 pm

The blaze was unrelated to the wildfires that have broken out around Los Angeles, which is hundreds of miles to the south.

Oh … they’re certainly related.

There are many lithium battery chemistries, which does this plant use? My first battery bank was lithium ion, I sold it and switched to a safer LiFePo4. I have had cells fail due to BMS failure, they swell, sometimes vent, but have never caught on fire.

Where autos are concerned and cells are submerged, electrolysis produces hydrogen & oxygen, That is what explodes.

How daare you!?!

They say history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
I guess in you squint hard enough, “California” sort of rhymes with “Gomorrah.”

I’ve used a lot of lithium in grad school and later. When lithium catches fire, it’s nearly impossible to put it out, and it readily restarts. So you only run lithium reactions in a hood where it can burn out safely if it catches fire.

My friend was running a large lithium reaction (safely in a hood) that caught fire. Half a dozen of us sat around with CO2 fire extinguishers for nearly an hour, putting out the fire over and over. That’s why the fire dept rarely tries to put out an electric car. You just let it burn out, and try to keep the fire from spreading.

This plant in Monterey contained thousands of large storage Li batteries. I suspect that the fire dept will put the fire out many times over the next couple of weeks. There won’t be much left of the parts of the plant that stored the batteries.

The funny part; that fire has put more toxic chemicals into the Kali environment than all it’s ICE mobiles in the last five years.

Chernobyl 2.

BigRosieGreenbaum | January 18, 2025 at 10:57 pm

So Trump wins and they decide to trash Cali. Love how Newsom puts out a tweet that CA leads in green energy clean environment, etc. as all of these fires rage. He’s doing a really good job of polluting the atmosphere. Maybe Biden can give him a medal tomorrow

There is room for more clarity in the article and comments.

1) The unit of energy storage is the joule, not the watt. A watt is a rate of transmission. Batteries store joules, and wires transmit watts. No matter how many times this detail is written incorrectly, it is wrong every time.

2) The issue of non-emissions trucks in California (and thus Oregon and Washington) is much more serious and pernicious than it seems. The actual law went into effect on Jan. 1, 2025, but full compliance is not required until 2035. The serious and pernicious part is that permission to sell non-compliant trucks is dependent on the sale of compliant trucks. But there are no compliant trucks to sell, so no diesel trucks can be sold on the west coast as of 3 weeks ago.

Not sure the origins of the batteries, hardware or software used at the Moss Landing plant, but chyna will always be suspect. Either in physical infiltration ops, or by designing backdoors/Trojan horses into our infrastructure that they can easily exploit. That way, they can perpetrate incidents like this. Be sure to check the origins of your artichokes from now on, since that area is part of the artichoke capitol of the world.