Moss Landing battery plant 98% fully charged
MOSS LANDING, Calif. (KION) UPDATE JUNE 13, 2022, at 7:57 p.m.-- Vistra says their Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility has successfully restarted in time for the summer season.
The facility's 400-megawatt capacity is more than 98% restored and can release power to the California grid.
"The remaining 7 MW will be restored later this summer once replacement batteries and electrical components are received," said Vistra.
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Moss Landing battery plant offline after second overheating incident
The Energy Storage Facility run by Vistra Energy in Moss Landing is offline indefinitely — after a second overheating incident in five months.
On February 13, crews with North County Fire Protection District responded to the plant after the early detection system was activated in the Phase II building. Vistra said the suppression systems contained the event, but the 100-megawatt plant is offline due to an abundance of caution.
"There wasn't any fire, but they did find that the battery building itself was charged with smoke and the suppression system had armed and was actually spraying water," said Fire Chief Joel Mendoza.
Vistra Energy released this statement, saying in part:
An investigation is underway to determine what caused the safety system to activate. While this is in its very early stages, what we know is the water-based suppression system released water that contacted some batteries. There is early evidence that water hoses leaked and that some batteries shorted, creating smoke in the building, similar to what we observed with the September incident at our 300-MW Phase I facility next door.
Vistra Corp.
That September 2021 incident happened in the 300-megawatt Phase I building. Vistra said that the investigation revealed the suppression system armed in response to smoke, which they believe was caused by an "air handling unit" separate from the battery system.
Vistra said they completed the first investigation and began bringing the Phase I facility back online on Jan. 21, after testing and installing systems to monitor for leaks in their suppression system — but just three weeks later, it happened again.
"The changes were made to Phase I, and they were just getting ready to make the changes on Phase II... They were about a week out before this happened," said Mendoza.
Chief Mendoza said there are gas monitors to detect if any harmful gasses are released during incidents like this.
"I don't have any concerns that anything was released. Is the potential there? Yeah, absolutely. This is by far the biggest battery project in the world. So the potential is there. However, I do think that they've engineered it correctly. And you know, there's some minor tweaks that need to happen in order to make it work perfectly," said Mendoza.
While the Phase I plant was not affected by this February incident, Vistra said they are stopping their plans to slowly bring the facility back online during this new investigation.
Vistra says the plant is the largest energy storage system in the world. But now, the facility, which opened in August of last year and has the ability to power 225,000 homes for four hours — is offline indefinitely.
