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Fire at Huge California Battery Storage Plant Forces Evacuations
A fire at the Vistra battery storage plant in California, one of the largest in the world, has prompted evacuations for hundreds of people, and part of a highway was closed early on Friday.
The battery storage plant in Moss Landing in northern Monterey County is some 77 miles south of San Francisco. The owner of the plant is Texas-based company Vistra Energy, whose shares fell in market pre-trade on Friday following the news of the fire.
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The plant contains tens of thousands of lithium batteries, which could be difficult to put out once they catch fire.
“There’s no way to sugar coat it. This is a disaster, is what it is,” Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church told KSBW-TV.
However, the fire is not expected to spread beyond the concrete building in which it erupted, according to the county supervisor.
All personnel at the battery storage plant were safely evacuated, Jenny Lyon, company spokesperson for Vistra Energy told The Mercury News via email.
The cause of the fire has not been established yet, Lyon said. An investigation will be launched once the fire is put out, the spokesperson said.
This is not the first fire at the facility. The plant saw fires broke out in September 2021 and February 2022, according to The Mercury News.
These two fires were caused by a malfunction in a fire sprinkler system, which released water and resulted in several units overheating, according to the investigations into the previous incidents.
In recent months, battery storage installations have been soaring in the United States thanks to incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which offered, for the first time, tax credits for standalone storage capacity.
Total costs of batteries and storage systems have also dropped significantly over the past decade to incentivize more installations across America.
In addition, collocating battery storage with solar generating systems has become a more popular choice among clean energy developers in the United States.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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Charles Kennedy
Charles is a writer for Oilprice.com
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