Last week, PG&E informed Monterey County that it wants to reactivate its Elkhorn Battery Energy Storage Facility by June 1, but the county said that it is too soon.
The PG&E facility sits adjacent to the Vistra Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility. The Vistra facility caught fire Jan. 16 and sent a plume of smoke into the atmosphere, leading to the evacuation of up to 1,500 people.
It was the fourth fire or smoke event at the joint facility in four years. In 2022, a fire occurred at PG&E’s Elkhorn Facility, which contained 256 Tesla megapack batteries.
On Jan. 22, the week following the Vistra fire, the board issued a letter to both Vistra and PG&E requesting that both facilities be taken offline and not be ‘reconnected’ to the grid until the cause of the Vistra fire, as well as a previous fire at the PG&E facility are determined and appropriately addressed.
“In addition, the board of supervisors request that vista and PG&E expediently develop emergency response plans for review by the county and other affected agencies based on a ‘catastrophic, worst-case scenario’ defined as a ‘full conflagration’ of the facilities,” the letter said.
Emergency action plan still being reviewed
In a Friday statement the county said the emergency action plan has not been finalized and remains under review.
“At this time, the county feels it is prudent to encourage PG&E to delay reactivation and continue to engage in additional open, transparent, dialogue with county officials, first responders, and the residents we collectively serve,” the statement said.
In their May 7 letter to the board of supervisors requesting to go back online, PG&E said that Tesla determined the 2022 fire was caused by water leaking into one of the megapacks, and they have since remedied that by installing software that automatically removes energy from batteries when alarms are detected.
The letter said PG&E has updated its Emergency Action Plan and Pre-Fire Plan and has taken other actions including conducting emergency response training, creating an air dispersion model, installing a continuous air monitoring system and creating a FEMA-certified Incident Management Team.
County spokesperson Maia Carroll said Monday that the county has received updated emergency action plans from both Vistra and PG&E, but they have only begun to evaluate them.