Authorities have issued shelter-in-place orders for the surrounding area — a seaside community that gives way to strawberry fields and other farmland farther inland. For locals, who are drawn to the area’s frolicking sea otters and cavorting whales, fires at Moss Landing have become a surprisingly regular occurrence.
“It seemed like once a year there’d be some smoldering going on,” said David Robinson, who witnessed the latest plume from his boat in the nearby harbor. “Then of course the big fire last year pretty much shut everything down. … Now it’s like, man, when is this going to end?”
The January 2025 conflagration stoked concern nationwide about the safety of batteries. Developers looking to build batteries elsewhere commonly have to address fears that these installations will bring a Moss Landing–style fate to their neighbors.
That said, Moss Landing’s fire vulnerabilities are rooted in designs that have fallen out of use by battery developers. Vistra used a less-stable battery chemistry than today’s installations, and it was designed in a way that is not up to current safety standards.
Whereas Vistra opted to reuse the former turbine structure, which it owned, storage developers today build large batteries using modular containers that are carefully spaced out in a field. They are designed to fail safely, so that if one container catches fire, it cannot propagate to the rest of the facility.
Battery chemistries have evolved, too. Moss Landing used the potent nickel-manganese-cobalt lithium-ion recipe that was handed down from the electric vehicle industry. Since then, the stationary grid-storage industry has become a large enough buyer that manufacturers have built dedicated factory lines for cells optimized for that use. The industry has by and large switched to lithium ferrous phosphate, a safer chemistry that gives up some of the energy density valued for automotive batteries.
Energy storage is the fastest-growing source for on-demand electricity capacity in the country. Battery growth is particularly rapid in California and Texas, where the technology helps bank low-cost solar energy during sunny hours for use once the evening comes around. This combustion-free electricity pushes down power prices, and has helped avoid shortages during record heat waves.
The latest fire does not reveal anything new about the safety of modern battery installations — but it rekindles old problems that the industry will have to continue answering for.
