World's Largest Lithium Ion Plant Catches Fire in California

This is so much worse than an e-bike fire.

Scorched Ion

Hundreds of miles north of a scorched Los Angeles, a massive lithium-ion battery facility has caught fire — and it wasn't the first time the plant has had issues.

As Monterey's KSBW reports, the Moss Landing plant — which is owned by a Texas company called Vistra Energy and billed as the largest lithium-ion storage facility in the world — caught fire earlier in the week, leading to both the plant itself and the surrounding area being evacuated.

Lithium-ion battery fires are, as anyone who lives in an e-bike-riddled city knows by now, notoriously difficult to put out. The dense energy storage units, which power everything from cell phones to electric vehicles, can go up in flames in a phenomenon known as "thermal runaway," which is a chain reaction in which one battery cell overheating can trigger others near it to do the same. As such, the fires essentially re-ignite themselves, and firefighters have learned to let these fires partially die down on their own rather than using copious amounts of water that often won't put a dent in these blazes.

Because of the outrageous amount of water it would have taken to douse the blaze at Moss Landing, firefighters initially stood down from the inferno, which died down before reigniting in the aftermath of the first blaze — an epic local disaster, and the latest sign that the transition to green energy isn't always free of grave industrial catastrophes.

Where There's Smoke

Vistra told KSBW that the cause of the fire is not yet known, and won't be until it can conduct an investigation post-blaze. As the local broadcaster noted in subsequent reporting, however, the plant has been plagued by malfunctions for years.

Just a year after it opened in 2020, local firefighters were called to the plant after a battery overheating incident caused the facility to fill up with smoke. Ultimately, Vistra announced in January 2022 that an issue with its liquid cooling hoses led to some smoke inside the facility. Less than a month after that investigation was completed, another meltdown at Moss Landing led to firefighters being again called out to the plant, KSBW reports.

While the plant has been able to come back online relatively shortly after those incidents, it's unlikely Vistra will be back in business anytime soon given that roughly 75 percent of the facility has been burned.

Described by local officials as both a "worst-case scenario" and a "wake-up call," there have thankfully been no injuries or deaths attributed to the Moss Landing plant fire — but long-term damage from the toxic fumes emitted by the flames could be waiting for locals down the line.

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