A hearth broke out on the Moss Touchdown Power Storage Facility in Central California Thursday. The battery energy plant is the largest in the world in keeping with the corporate, Vistra, that owns it.
The Monterey County Sheriff’s Workplace issued evacuation orders for close by residents and closed components of Freeway 1 in response. County Health officials have requested different residents to shelter indoors with home windows and doorways closed and to modify off air flow methods.
The corporate will examine the reason for the hearth as soon as it’s out, Vistra spokesperson Jenny Lyon told The Mercury News. Vistra didn’t instantly reply to an electronic mail from The Verge. It accomplished an enlargement of the power in 2023, including greater than 110,000 battery modules wanted to retailer renewable power. Power storage services like this one are essential for power grids to have the ability to hold sufficient extra photo voltaic and wind power so it’s out there when the solar goes down and winds wane.
This isn’t the primary battery hearth within the space. A close-by Pacific Fuel & Electrical battery plant stocked with Tesla batteries caught hearth back in 2022. The yr prior, Vistra needed to briefly shut down its battery plant at Moss Touchdown after a malfunctioning smoke detector and heat-suppression system sprayed water on its batteries, Canary Media reported.
