A enterprise park in South San Jose. Jack London Sq. in Oakland. The San Diego waterfront. Subsequent door to a highschool in Santa Barbara County.
Throughout California, massive battery storage crops are being deliberate and constructed in dozens of areas at a tempo sooner than wherever else in the USA. They’re a important a part of the state’s plans to develop renewable power, by storing electrical energy that photo voltaic farms and wind generators generate to make use of later when the solar isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.
However now, after an enormous fireplace final month at one of many largest battery storage crops on the earth — Moss Touchdown in Monterey County — brought about the evacuation of 1,200 individuals, closed Freeway 1 for 3 days, and launched poisonous heavy metals over the encircling panorama, some leaders are urging new limits to maintain the fast-growing expertise away from populated areas.
There are actually 187 battery storage crops in California — up from simply 17 in 2019, in keeping with the California Power Fee. Battery storage has elevated 1,340% prior to now six years in California, from 928 megawatts in 2019 to 13,391 megawatts at this time. A megawatt is sufficient electrical energy to run 750 houses.
“We need these facilities,” stated Assemblywoman Daybreak Addis, a Democrat from Morro Bay, the place voters in November rejected an oceanfront battery storage plant. “But we need to build trust when it comes to our clean energy future. We want to be careful about siting and make sure we aren’t putting school children, local business owners and residents at risk.”
Addis, whose district consists of Moss Touchdown, has launched a invoice within the state Legislature that will ban new battery storage crops inside 3,200 ft of houses, faculties, companies and hospitals. Below her invoice, AB 303, new ones additionally can be prohibited within the state’s coastal zone, on earthquake faults, prime farmland, wetlands, hazardous waste websites, and in very excessive fireplace hazard severity zones on Cal Fireplace maps.
Addis is receiving pushback from the renewable power business, labor unions and another Democrats.
“We share the goal of wanting an incident like Moss Landing never to happen again,” stated Alex Jackson, California director of the American Clear Energy Affiliation, an business group. “We just disagree on the approach. This bill is focused on making it more difficult to site new facilities. That’s not where we should be focused.”
Jackson and different business leaders say the Moss Touchdown plant is exclusive. The battery storage plant was inbuilt 2019 when the expertise was in its infancy, constructed in an enormous concrete warehouse that housed a former Nineteen Fifties-era PG&E oil and gas-burning energy plant. The lithium-ion batteries had been stacked, and made from older chemistry utilizing nickel, manganese and cobalt, which may trigger runaway fires when ignited.
Newer crops, he famous, use lithium-iron-phosphate batteries, that are much less vulnerable to fires. The items are sometimes organized outdoors and housed in particular person steel containers, every roughly the dimensions of an 18-wheel trailer, so if a hearth begins, the probabilities of it spreading are very low.
Jackson stated within the wake of the Moss Touchdown fireplace, the state ought to assessment the older battery crops as a substitute of blocking new ones which can be wanted to satisfy growing electrical energy calls for as extra individuals drive electrical autos and synthetic intelligence requires extra knowledge facilities.
“We don’t have to choose between clean energy and community safety,” he stated. “The technology is proven. It’s safe. The appropriate response is to take a look at some of those legacy facilities that are not representative of state-of-the-art.”
Smoke and flames are seen from Castroville as a hearth on the Vistra battery storage plant burns in Moss Touchdown, Calif., on Friday, Jan. 17, 2025. (Doug Duran/Bay Space Information Group)
One problem is the lightning-fast tempo at which battery storage is spreading all through the state. No state company retains a public checklist exhibiting what number of extra are deliberate, the place, and when they’re anticipated to be constructed.
They embody the 75-megawatt Hummingbird challenge at 6321 San Ignacio Ave. in South San Jose, close to Highways 85 and 101. Authorised by San Jose officers, it’s being constructed by esVolta, a Newport Seaside firm, to retailer electrical energy for PG&E. It’s scheduled to open subsequent month.
One other is deliberate close to Jack London Sq. in Oakland. Vistra Power, the Texas firm that owns the Moss Touchdown plant, additionally owns an growing older Dynegy energy plant at 50 Martin Luther King Jr. Manner. The corporate has been planning for a number of years to construct a 43-megawatt battery plant on the location by Might 2027.
The biggest underneath development within the state is the 275-megawatt Kola Power Heart eight miles east of Livermore, on Patterson Move Street. It’s scheduled to open this summer season.
To the south, the Painter Power Storage Mission in Santa Barbara County is being constructed throughout the road from Carpinteria Excessive Faculty. In San Diego, there are a number of crops being deliberate and constructed inland, and one, known as the Peregrine Power Storage Plant, is underneath development one mile south of Petco Park.
Native officers close to Moss Touchdown say extra limits on new crops are wanted.
“Moss Landing was approved because we were promised it was going to be safe,” stated Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church. “That promise couldn’t be fulfilled. If people want to be concerned about health and safety in their neighborhoods, what’s wrong with that?”
The hearth has put environmental teams, who’ve supported battery expertise, and their legislative champions, in a troublesome spot.
State Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, is the previous secretary of pure assets underneath Gov. Jerry Brown. He stated he has severe considerations with the Addis invoice. New expertise is healthier than Moss Touchdown’s, he stated, and the state ought to deal with older crops fairly than limiting new ones.
“We have three goals here,” Laird stated. “To keep the lights on, to move off fossil fuels, and to be safe in doing it. We just can’t sacrifice one for the other. We have to meet all three.”
State assemblyperson Daybreak Addis talks in regards to the fireplace on the Vistra battery storage facility in Moss Touchdown throughout a press convention in Castroville, Calif., on Friday, Jan. 17, 2025. (Doug Duran/Bay Space Information Group)
