Lithium-Ion Lessons

I bet you didn’t see or hear on your favorite news platform, whether it’s NPR, MSNBC, CNN, FNC, Axios, Facebook 🙄, the big three networks, or some dying newspaper platforms, that one of the largest lithium-ion electricity storage plants in the world caught fire and burned uncontrollably at Vistra’s Moss Landing, California site.

I have often visited Moss Landing Harbor, where honking, slobbering, rude, and amusing sea lions took over the public fishing pier (Figure 1). This local natural attraction features a profuse abundance of wildlife species and activity. It is a kayaking destination. The fiery Vistra plant, spewing a plume of toxic fumes, is within an easy walk of the sea lions and the Elkhorn Slough wildlife wonderland (Figure 2). The fire is even noted on Google Maps.

Figure 1 Honking, Slobbering Sea Lions Take Over Fishing Pier

Figure 2 Moss Landing Harbor

Toxic Plume Fallout

Schools were closed, and 1,500 people were evacuated on Friday while the fire burned. Monterey County health officials advised residents to stay indoors with windows and doors closed and to turn off ventilation systems—like donning a sweatshirt to keep dry in a rainstorm.

You can see the exhaust stacks remaining in Figure 2. The site used to be a one-GW, combined-cycle natural gas power plant. I’ll bet many people wish the safe and efficient combined cycle plant were still churning out electrons at a low cost. A Monterey County official is quoted as the batteries burned, “This is really a lot more than just a fire, it’s really a wake-up call for this industry. If we’re going to be moving ahead with sustainable energy we need to have safe battery systems in place.”

Self-Oxidizing Fuel

Lithium-ion batteries are unsafe because they are self-oxidizing and burn so hot that a firehose cannot extinguish them. The burning batteries at Moss Landing would need to be dumped into the harbor or the Pacific Ocean to extinguish the fire. As I shared a couple of years ago, they burn violently like a giant blowtorch. New York firefighters hate them.

Figure 3 Lithium-Ion Fire

The Wall Street Journal reported that a whopping 40% of the 3 GWh storage facility was destroyed. “The company [Vistra] will be investigating why a water-based mitigation system at the plant “didn’t work as designed,” said Brad Watson, Vistra’s senior director of community affairs. What do you not understand, dude? Sprinkling systems will not put out a Li-ion battery fire!

Toxins Aren’t the Only Thing Burning

As they burn, Li-ion batteries release carbon monoxide (flammable), hydrogen (explosively flammable), hydrogen fluoride (an extremely dangerous gas), and heavy metals and compounds that can scar lungs.

As an engineer who takes safety and sustainability seriously, I must say I’m hacked off. This is outrageous. I don’t see any calls to cancel the industry like nuclear power was stopped dead in its tracks after the Three Mile Island and Fukushima accidents in which no one was injured or killed.

Smoldering Hull Remains

Bloomberg seems to have been first on the scene with photos that resemble a miniature version of the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion forty years ago. Figure 4 features Bloomberg photos of the fire and aftermath.

Figure 4 Moss Landing 300 MW Battery Fire[1]

The Bloomberg article includes two learning opportunities. It quotes, “Local officials said a fire suppressant system failed.” Any fire-suppression system that does not include submersion in water of the Li-ion battery will fail. The second quote, “The facility was evacuated, and the cause will be investigated once the fire is extinguished,” is inaccurate. The fire was not extinguished. It burned until there was nothing left to burn.

The Bloomberg article notes this is the FOURTH fire at the facility and that it would be weeks before officials can enter the facility to investigate. A Morningstar analyst is quoted as saying, “Depending on what we find out from investigators, this could be a setback not just for Vistra but for the entire utility-scale battery industry,”

At this point, I must ask, what’s the levelized cost of solar plus batteries again?

Meanwhile, in Southern California, because of their toxic emissions, burning Li-ion batteries as part of electric vehicles and home storage are delaying owners’ return to their properties. Bloomberg reports, “We’ve heard from firefighters that those lithium batteries burned fires near homes – like those with power walls – for much longer.”

Liars Figure?

American Clean Power notes that rapid toxic battery deployments in Texas (5 GW in one year) are reducing costs for ratepayers to the tune of $750 million. Meanwhile, in May 2024, Canary Media noted California surpassed 10 GW of storage, about one-fifth of the peak. Make that 9.7 GW after the Moss Landing inferno. However, California electricity prices have soared at an annual compounded rate of over 12% from 2019 to 2013.

A report released this month by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office describes a reason for soaring costs: “Renewable sources of electricity often require additional investments in other infrastructure [toxic batteries] for transmission and reliability, which can be costly.” The report goes on to say natural gas generators are also needed.

Apparently, California needs to borrow the laws of economics Texas uses because there, batteries are reducing consumer costs.

[1] Photos courtesy of Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-17/california-battery-storage-plant-fire-prompts-evacuation