A photo of news coverage of the Moss Landing File shared on Facebook by Kathy Pomeroy

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the nature of the Vistra presentation (now delayed) to the Tulare County Board of Supervisors.

The Tulare County Board of Supervisors was scheduled to hear a presentation on Jan. 28 by Vistra Energy regarding its planned 50-megawatt solar project and 50-megawatt battery energy storage system facility near the town of Terra Bella.

However the presentation was postponed, says county official Mike Washam, associate director of the Tulare County Resource Management Agency. There is to be no public hearing of the project, nor any expected action by the supervisors.

The original project application was approved on Sept. 24, 2019, on a 378-acre site northeast of Terra Bella in the southern part of the county.

An initial study and mitigated negative declaration was prepared in accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and state CEQA guidelines. Additionally, a mitigation monitoring and reporting program (MMRP) was adopted to monitor and enforce the implementation of environmental mitigation measures.

The presentation would have come only days after a well-publicized fire at Moss Landing on the Central Coast, where Vistra has a 300-megawatt battery storage facility. The fire earlier this month destroyed the battery storage plant and sent toxic fumes into the air, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of local residents.

Washam expects the presentation agenda item will come back to the supervisors, but no date has been set.

Vistra has promised this technology was safe, but the destructive fire that couldn’t be put out with water seemed to question that and has led to proposals for new, tougher state legislation. No exact cause for the fire has been released.

 

Press reports say the Moss Landing storage facility is a part of a natural gas-powered electricity plant operated by Vistra Energy, a Texas company. The facility also has a battery storage station owned by PG&E. The Moss Landing battery project was first launched in 2018.

Reports say”Evacuation orders for approximately 1,200 residents near the plant were lifted last Friday night, although some road closures remain in place.”

Regards the technology, storage advocates say the Moss Landing facility was an older design (although described as the world’s largest) and that newer technology and safeguards should make proposed projects safer.

Reports say that in this older plant Vistra used batteries manufactured by Korea’s LG — not Tesla batteries. The LG batteries used nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) chemistry, developed for electric vehicles because it packs a lot of power. Critics say these batteries can heat up beyond control. These batteries are no longer used in recent years.

Location issue

A planned Vistra 600-megawatt battery storage project in Morro Bay came under widespread criticism before and after the Jan 16 Moss Landing fire, and that project may now be dead due to the uproar over the self induced fire. This project is relatively near the city commercial district and local high school. Both Moss Landing and Morro Bay are next to older power plants, with the Morro Bay plant mothballed but with extensive substation connection lines nearby.

One industry source not connected with Vistra says “a justifiably wary public can rest assured that this particular facility has little in common with the rest of the United States’ rapidly growing grid battery fleet.”

Despite questions, battery storage is credited with helping to keep the lights on in California due to the increasing amount of solar energy being produced in the daylight hours. 

The California Energy Commission says from 2018 to 2024, battery storage capacity in California increased from 500 megawatts to more than 13,300 megawatts, with an additional 3,000 megawatts planned to come online by the end of 2024. The state projects 52,000 megawatts of battery storage will be needed by 2045.

Many of the Valley battery plants are located away from population centers in ag regions like farmland west of Terra Bella.