By Julian Spector | Canary Media
The fire that ripped through what was once the world’s largest standalone grid battery on January 16 left clean energy fans and foes alike wondering how it happened and what’s preventing another disaster.
Energy company Vistra built the Moss Landing energy storage facility, on the California coast south of Silicon Valley, as a shining example of the clean grid of the future. The facility stored solar power by day and delivered it in the pivotal evening hours when California’s households need the most energy — an emissions-free alternative to burning fossil gas for energy.
The mid-January fire all but eradicated a building that housed 300 megawatts of battery capacity. Investigators are just beginning to sift through the smoldering remains to ascertain the cause of the fire.
On Wednesday, three state legislators representing the coastal area affected by the fire asked the state’s utility regulators “for a fully transparent and independent investigation, updated safety enforcement, prevention enhancements, and for the Vistra BESS to remain offline until safety is guaranteed.”
In the meantime, concerned residents staring down battery plants in other parts of the country can take some solace in the fact that Vistra’s Moss Landing facility was one of a kind, conceived and designed before modern safety standards were adopted for large grid batteries. Battery safety standards have been updated multiple times since it was built.
“The technology and the installation used in this outdated project, are exactly why the battery energy storage industry has made so many changes to the way these facilities are constructed. You will simply never see a battery energy storage project proposed to be built indoors like this one was. today’s projects feature safety, equipment and fire, responsive technology at each, and every container and today’s engineers would cringe at the idea of building a battery energy storage facility of this size indoors. That alone this is a difference between just a single battery container having an issue versus an entire project. The international fire code has been updated several times since this project was built precisely to make sure that nothing like this could possibly happen. Communities considering the latest battery storage proposals can rest assured that nothing like what happened at this old California project could possibly happen with the latest technology and approach to battery projects.” –Court Rich, Rose Law Group co-founder and director of the firm’s renewable energy & utility infrastructure department