Crews have begun work on the first step of a long process in cleaning up the wreckage of the Moss Landing battery storage plant after a huge fire last month drew national attention and raised questions about the safety of a new technology needed to continue California’s expansion of renewable energy.
On Saturday and Sunday, workers began disconnecting hundreds of battery racks in the section of the plant that burned on Jan. 16.
“The point is to reduce the fire risk by disconnecting these batteries from each other,” said Chief Joel Mendoza of the North County Fire Protection District of Monterey County.
“They made really good progress yesterday,” he added. “They aren’t done by any means. There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done.”
Vistra Energy, the Texas company that owns the facility, one of the largest in the world, said it expects the process to take about two weeks.
Afterward, it plans to bring in demolition contractors in the weeks ahead to tear down unstable walls that were damaged in the fires so workers can disconnect the rest of the batteries that did not burn in the fire.
The fire, which caused the evacuation of 1,200 people and the closure of Highway 1 for three days, was the largest battery storage plant fire in the United States. It occurred in the Phase 1 section of the Vistra plant, a former natural gas-burning power plant that originally was constructed in 1950 by PG&E next to Monterey Bay where its massive 500-foot-tall smokestacks, which are no longer in use, can be seen for miles.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, Mendoza said.
There were about 100,000 lithium-ion batteries in the section of the facility that burned, said Eric Sandusky, the federal on-scene coordinator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Of those, about 55% burned, he said. Because the old PG&E concrete building where the batteries were stacked was heavily damaged in the fire, crews can only get to about one-third of the burned batteries now, he said.
When demolition crews begin to remove the walls and collapsed ceiling, along with twisted, burned beams and rebar, workers will be able to disconnect the remaining batteries, he added. But that demolition job will take time.
Some of the walls that must come down are 75 feet high or more, Sandusky noted. And the batteries remain volatile.
“It’s a very complicated process,” he said. “We don’t want to drop anything or crush any batteries. It could take some time.”
Glenn Church, a Monterey County supervisor whose district includes Moss Landing, said it could take a month for the county to issue the demolition permit.
“Some of these walls have been compromised,” Church said. “You just can’t bulldoze them and put them in a dump truck and haul it off. This is hazardous material. Millions of pounds of it. You have unburned batteries. If you stir them up, you risk another fire. It’s almost certainly true there are going to be more fires there. Hopefully if the other batteries are delinked it will be limited to the burned areas and they will be small fires.”
Mendoza agreed.
“At this point anything is a possibility,” he said. “Could there be another big fire? Yes. But all the work that’s happening now is reducing that. Our hope is if there is one, it is small.”
There was a small flare-up last Tuesday. Smoke rose from a pile of rubble in the plant. Flames were seen, but it burned itself out by the next morning. Fire officials urged local residents to close windows. Mendoza said changes in the weather, rain or shifting rubble can cause damaged batteries to flare up, although temperatures at the site have been steadily falling, he said.
The biggest question in the cleanup is yet to be answered: What to do with the burned batteries, and the unburned ones in the damaged part of the plant — all of which contain cobalt, manganese, nickel and other toxic metals and chemicals.
Sandusky said the burned batteries, and the unburned ones, will be carted away. There are only two landfills in California permitted for high-level hazardous waste: The Kettleman Hills facility in Kings County and the Buttonwillow Landfill in Kern County.
“The goal is to recycle as much as possible, if not all of the battery material,” Sandusky said. “There are a few recycling facilities out of state. We aren’t 100% on disposal yet. But the goal is to recycle everything.”
Church said he expected the demolition, cleanup and removal will take the rest of the year. Sandusky said that certainly is a possibility.
California has seen a massive increase in the growth of battery storage plants in recent years, going from 17 in 2019 to 187 today. Many more are planned. The plants are needed to store electricity generated by large solar and wind farms to release it back on the power grid at night when the sun isn’t shining, or the wind isn’t blowing. California lawmakers have set a goal of California generating 100% of its electricity from renewable and carbon-free sources by 2045 to meet the state’s climate change and air pollution goals.
“In San Diego there was a fire last May at the Otay Mesa battery storage facility,” Church said. “It’s nine months later and they are still cleaning it up. That gives you some idea of how big a job we have here.”