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Politico
3 days ago
- Business
- Politico
Gridlock on the Western grid
With help from Noah Baustin, Alex Nieves and Saqib Rahim POWER PLAYS: California wants to lead the West into a unified electricity market. The problem? California. Lawmakers have just over a month to salvage legislation that could reshape the Western power grid. Forming an independent West-wide grid operator to manage electricity trading a day ahead of time, as Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic lawmakers are proposing, would expand on the real-time trading market already run by California's grid operator. The promised benefits include more easily exporting the state's surplus solar during the daytime and tapping the Pacific Northwest's steady hydropower during the evening, when solar goes down and power demand spikes. The catch: California wants to drive the transition, and the rest of the West won't get in the car unless it lets go of the wheel. Former Public Utilities Commission President Loretta Lynch, one of the foremost opponents, warned lawmakers this spring that the new regional grid would 'give up control of the pilot seat' and expose Californians to higher costs and out-of-state fossil fuels. Ratepayer advocates and some environmental groups have echoed the concerns — pushing for tighter legal safeguards in case legal challengers or the Trump administration try to use a new regional grid to undercut California's leading renewable energy laws. (Meanwhile, East Coast Democrats have been bashing their own regional grid operator for rising power costs.) Backers, both inside and outside California, say the fears are overblown. They're also running out of time. A rival regional market based in Arkansas is gaining traction, winning commitments from Arizona and Washington utilities that once considered teaming with California. They cited a more palatable governance structure even if costs might be lower in California. (Still up for grabs: energy providers in states like Colorado, New Mexico and Idaho.) 'If we don't do this, then we could lose all of our neighbors to the market out of Arkansas,' said Sen. Josh Becker, author of the bill, SB 540, that would pave the way for California to set up the regional grid. 'It can't look like, and it can't actually be, a California-dominated market.' But amendments Becker took in May to get through the Senate Appropriations Committee — which added a California oversight council made up of lawmakers with power to pull out of the new market — have spooked backers. Environmental groups that once co-sponsored the bill have pulled their support, warning that the new structure is too California-centric to attract other states. Utilities central to California's plan, including Pacific Gas & Electric and PacifiCorp, told lawmakers that the new bill could drive trading partners to sign on to the rival market instead, which would drive up the cost of getting energy in moments of grid stress. Becker said he's gotten an earful across state lines. At last month's National Caucus of Environmental Legislators meeting, Oregon lawmakers pulled him aside during dinner to press for an update. 'They really want this to happen,' he said. He's also heard from curious (but largely agnostic) Utah and Washington legislators, he said. The effort still has momentum. The bill passed the Senate unanimously in June, with strong backing from Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire. This month, both Newsom and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas publicly pledged to stand up the regional grid, with Newsom calling it 'our best shot at lowering energy costs' in a year dominated by affordability concerns. They stopped short of endorsing the current version of SB 540, however. Becker said the bill is 'untenable' as written but that he expects to amend the bill once lawmakers return from summer recess on Aug. 18. Even if it passes, the deal isn't done. Kathleen Staks, executive director of Western Freedom, an organization representing large industrial and commercial power customers who want a regional grid, and a key leader of the West-Wide Governance Pathways Initiative, said her main focus right now was keeping the coalition together — a broad group that includes utilities who've already committed to California's regional grid like PacifiCorp, companies like Amazon and Rivian, and former skeptics like labor unions, who were worried about ceding control over California's energy but were mollified by backers promising that wouldn't happen. 'When you're talking about that kind of an investment, you need some certainty — and creating that certainty from California is really critical,' Staks said. 'Being able to build trust that has been lost, and maybe in some places was never even there, is going to be what we have to work on next.' — CvK Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here! CUTTING THE LINE: California is on its way to establishing 30 experimental gas-free communities. On Thursday, scores of people eagerly urged the California Public Utilities Commission not to choose their town. 'I really like my gas appliances. I don't want to get rid of them,' said one Costa Mesa caller during the agency's public forum on designating 'neighborhood decarbonization zones.' A similar sentiment was shared by many commenters, perhaps a sign that a Southern California Gas Co. email blast encouraging customers to weigh in at the forum hit home. But the opposition was far from unanimous. A City of Santa Barbara staffer called in expressing the municipality's interest in participating in the program. The controversy stems from the 2024 passage of SB 1221, which instructed the CPUC to set up pilot project zones in which utilities would be relieved of their obligation to provide natural gas in the area to help customers instead transition to zero-emission alternatives. In July, California's utilities submitted maps showing where they planned to replace pipelines in coming years. But Denise Grab, energy law and policy project director for the UCLA Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, worries that the maps highlight such a wide swath of locations that it could overwhelm the CPUC, slowing the program's progress. 'When everything is a priority (neighborhood decarbonization zone), nothing is a priority,' Grab wrote in a post on Legal Planet. Pacific Gas & Electric, SoCalGas and San Diego Gas & Electric didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. The agency has until Jan. 1, 2026, to choose its priority neighborhoods, and another six months to set up the pilot programs. Energy customers in the chosen zones will get a chance to vote on whether they want to participate, and a community will need at least 67 percent of customers' ayes to set up a pilot. — NB RETURN OF THE SUN: The California Supreme Court gave rooftop solar advocates a small win Thursday. The state's highest court ruled that a lower court had deferred too much to state utility regulators when it upheld the California Public Utilities Commission' 2022 decision to slash incentives to new rooftop solar customers. The case now goes back to the court of appeals, where a judge will have to consider the arguments for and against with fresh eyes. The decision means the fight over the payments rooftop solar customers get from selling energy back to the grid through a process called 'net metering' will continue on. But it also has broader implications for the CPUC, which is now on the back foot in other legal disputes over its various decisions. 'This is the highest court in the state saying, 'Look, you have to follow the law closely,'' said Roger Lin, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the plaintiffs alongside the Environmental Working Group and the Protect Our Communities Foundation. Terrie Prosper, a CPUC spokesperson, said the agency appreciates 'the Court's careful attention to the appropriate standard of deference for reviewing CPUC decisions.' 'We are pleased that the CPUC's decision will remain in effect as an important part of controlling electricity bills,' she said. — CvK SMOG SETTLEMENT: U.S. EPA officials have agreed to issue a decision by next month on whether the Central Valley is out of compliance with federal standards for smog-forming ozone. The agency agreed in a proposed lawsuit settlement released Thursday to issue a final rule by Sept. 15 on whether the San Joaquin Valley meets the 1997 federal ozone standard of 80 parts per billion, Sean Reilly reports for POLITICO's E&E News. If a judge approves the deal between EPA and groups, including the Committee for a Better Arvin and the Sierra Club, federal officials would also face a January deadline to decide on a 'contingency measure' to cut vehicle tailpipe pollution in the region. The Central Valley and Southern California consistently rank among the smoggiest regions in the U.S, and are both in 'extreme' nonattainment for ozone, the lowest ranking on EPA's scale. Ozone is the main component of smog, which increases the risk of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. — AN, SR DISASTER DRAMA: The insurance industry is pushing back on Sen. Adam Schiff's attempt to create a federal backstop to stabilize state insurance markets. Congressional Democrats are proposing a federal reinsurance program that would cap the amount insurers pay in claims after large disasters. The program, funded by premiums, would pay out the remainder of the claim after the cap is reached. The American Property Casualty Insurance Association and National Association of Mutual Insurance Cos. warn that the proposal would create incentives for people to live in high-risk areas and artificially suppress rates, as Saqib Rahim reports for POLITICO's E&E News. Schiff's bill is an attempt to lower the cost of reinsurance, essentially insurance for insurance companies, which providers buy to pay a portion of claims after a catastrophic event — like the Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year. Schiff introduced a similar bill in 2024 while serving in the House. That effort died in committee. — AN, SR — New research finds that ropeless fishing gear can avoid whale entanglements while also preserving yield for commercial Dungeness crab fishermen. — A new giant solar-plus-storage power plant in the Mojave Desert will power seven percent of the city of Los Angeles. — Venture capital funding for solar companies fell significantly in the first half of this year — but project acquisitions and mergers picked up.
Los Angeles Times
25-07-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
Months after the Jan. 7 fires, L.A.'s evacuation plans remain untested
Just before sunrise on Nov. 8, 2018, a power line fell from a wind-worn Pacific Gas & Electric transmission tower and whipped into the structure nestled in the Sierra foothills. An electric arc sent molten metal into the dry vegetation below. It ignited. Five minutes later, a PG&E employee spotted the fire while driving on a nearby highway and reported it. Within two hours of the sighting, the town of Paradise, seven miles away, sent its first evacuation order, but it was already too late. Within two minutes, flames were reported at the town's edge. Landing embers quickly ignited dozens of spot fires in town. With only four major roads out of town, the streets quickly gridlocked. Paradise burned. Sixty-four people died in Paradise during the agonizing seven-hour evacuation. Six of them were found in or next to their cars as they tried to evacuate. Marc Levine, a state legislator at the time, listened over radio to the horrific scenes of people, stuck in traffic, abandoning their cars to flee on foot. 'It made me think of the people falling from the World Trade Centers on 9/11,' he said. 'They were going to be incinerated or they were going to jump. … They knew they would die either way.' So, Levine wrote legislation requiring California cities and counties to analyze whether their roads could support a quick evacuation during emergencies such as fires, floods and tsunamis. Assembly Bill 747 passed in 2019. Yet, to date, the city of Los Angeles has failed to publicly report such an analysis, while fire safety advocates say L.A. County's evacuation analysis fails to meet the law's requirements. The Times reached out to nearly a dozen city, county and state agencies involved with evacuation planning. All either did not respond to requests for comment, could not to point to an evacuation analysis in line with the state's guidelines for AB 747 or indicated the responsibility for doing the work lie with other agencies. 'The fact that local government leaders would not do as much as they can to protect human life and safety is just shocking to me,' Levine said. In January, the streets of Pacific Palisades mirrored the scene that distressed Levine in 2018. Traffic was at a standstill on Sunset Boulevard and Palisades Drive — two of the only routes out of the burning landscape. When a spot fire exploded next to the route, police ran down the street, shouting at evacuees to run for their lives. Every year, dozens of evacuations are ordered in California, organized and completed without any casualties — or even a news story. In these cases, public safety officials have all the lead time that they need to organize a safe and orderly evacuation before a fire reaches a community. But it's the much more dire evacuation scenarios — when the lead time is shorter than the time it takes to evacuate, like in the Palisades — where emergency planning is both most important and often ignored. 'There's no incentive to ever present an evacuation plan that isn't very positive,' said Thomas Cova, a professor at the University of Utah who studies wildfire evacuation analysis. 'Why would an emergency planner — say some young upstart in an emergency operation center — ever want to present a plan to their colleagues that involves some people burning?' The chaos of these worst-case scenario evacuations often look nothing like the orderly phased evacuations cities often focus on. Unlike in 'blue sky' evacuations, smoke can hinder visibility and cause crashes. Often whole towns must leave at once. Power outages can prevent public safety officials from communicating with residents. It's why Marylee Guinon — president of the State Alliance for Firesafe Road Regulations, an advocacy group aimed at protecting and expanding the state's community fire safety requirements — suspects AB 747 is facing pushback from local governments. 'They don't want data that would tell them that it's going to be a nine-hour evacuation,' she said. All the while, the risk of fast-moving fires is growing. In a 2024 study, researchers from the University of Colorado in Boulder analyzed more than 60,000 fires documented by NASA satellites in the first two decades of the 21st century. By 2020, fires in California were growing, on average, four times faster than they were in 2001. AB 747 requires local governments to include their evacuation analyses in the safety element of their general plan — the long-term blueprint for future development of a city or county. The city of L.A.'s current safety element provides no such analysis. Instead, it simply lists evacuation planning as 'ongoing.' In a statement to The Times, the city's Planning Department, responsible for writing and revising the general plan, said details of evacuation routes are not made publicly available since 'large urban cities such as the City of Los Angeles are high profile targets for terrorist attacks.' The city did not immediately clarify what legal authority it has to keep the analysis private as California law generally requires safety elements to be public. 'It is a mystery how hiding evacuation route capacity and viability can save lives when community members are fleeing a natural disaster,' Levine said in an email to The Times. 'It is a dubious claim that terrorists could possibly be well positioned to take advantage of such a catastrophic situation.' Meanwhile, the county said it complied through an analysis it included in its 2025 safety element. However, fire safety advocates criticized the county's analysis as simplistic and failing to adequately determine whether quick and safe evacuations are feasible. The Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation, which provides guidance on state planning laws, recommended that local governments use traffic software to simulate different evacuations to estimate how long they might take. Instead, the county grabbed a list of all roads in unincorporated areas within its borders and listed them as 'evacuation routes' so long as they were paved, public and not a dead end. The intent of the law is 'not 'just list the roads you have,'' Levine said. 'So I'm super disappointed that L.A. County is dismissive in this way. You would expect, particularly post this year's fires, Palisades and Eaton, they would take this far more seriously.' When pressed on their deviations from the state's guidance, both the city and county planning departments passed the buck to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which indicated in assessments that the two departments' safety elements were compliant. Cal Fire, however, said that its assessments were nonbinding and that complying with the law falls on the city and county. Yet, none of the local or state agencies directly responded to an inquiry from The Times asking them to explain the discrepancy between the guidance and the safety elements. The city and county both have detailed evacuation plans that coordinate how public safety officials in the emergency operations, police and fire departments would orchestrate a mass exodus. However, the analysis of roadway networks to estimate how long those evacuations — even if perfectly orchestrated — may take, is different. 'Historically, fire agencies put forth evacuation plans that are operationally driven,' said retired fire Battalion Chief Doug Flaherty. 'They talk about communications. They talk about unified command. … What is missing is an actual detailed, road-by-roadway capacity analysis of the time that it's going to take for people to safely evacuate the area.' For Guinon, the lack of follow-through from cities and counties across the state is indicative of a common trend in wildfire legislation. 'Virtually every piece of legislation that I dig into, I find out it was the result of a tragic catastrophe,' she said. 'This legislation comes out with really, really clear intent over and over, and then it gets forgotten.' Despite the complexity of simulating cars on a computerized network of roads to understand evacuation times, the scientific prowess exists — and the software to do it is widely accessible. When Flaherty, a Tahoe Basin resident, became frustrated with his area's lack of movement on the issue, he commissioned an evacuation study through his nonprofit, The retired fire battalion chief, with 50 years of emergency response planning experience under his belt, partnered with Leo Zlimen, fresh out of UC Berkeley and co-founder of the emergency management software startup Ladris. 'We fell into this wildfire space because everywhere we looked, people were [asking] 'draw a circle on the map and tell me how long it takes to get those people out,'' Zlimen said. 'And it turns out, that's actually a really complicated problem.' Ladris' software simulates realistic fire evacuations. It starts by taking a map of roads in a community and plopping little purple dots at virtually every home. Each one represents a vehicle. A fire starts on the map. It spreads. The purple dots get orders to flee, and the evacuation starts. The computer can play out a multihour evacuation in mere seconds, and it can account for an excruciating amount of detail. A roadblock, representing a falling tree or car crash, can stop purple dots from using a portion of the road. Some purple dots, not realizing how dire the situation is, wait an extra few minutes — or hours — to evacuate. The dots even wait their turn at stop signs, crosswalks and traffic lights. Ladris' program almost looks like a video game. Officials can test evacuation scenarios far in advance or in real time during an emergency. The company is also working to use artificial intelligence to help quickly configure scenarios so users can almost literally 'draw a circle on the map' and get an evacuation time. Flaherty said his detailed Tahoe Basin study, a comprehensive analysis based on Ladris' simulations, had a price tag just shy of $100,000 — roughly equivalent to the cost of installing one traffic light in town. 'In the scheme of things, it's very cost effective and reasonably priced,' he said. Another piece of software from Old Dominion University — simpler than Ladris' — is available to the public for free. It takes less than half an hour to set up a simulation in the program, called FLEET (for 'Fast Local Emergency Evacuation Times'). Consequently, it's been used not only by local governments making fire evacuation plans, but also by Scouting America troops interested in flood hazards and event planners wondering how bad the postgame traffic may be. Among those using FLEET simulations for evacuation planning: the town of Paradise. After the Camp fire, Paradise became an inadvertent experiment in how towns can better prepare for evacuations. After the disaster, it won a $199-million federal grant for infrastructure projects designed to rebuild Paradise into a more fire-safe town. Before the fire, the town's entire yearly budget was around $12 million. After the Camp fire, Paradise hired a traffic consulting firm that used FLEET. It found an evacuation would take over five hours under perfect conditions while utilizing all traffic lanes. It then used the modeling to understand what could be done to alter traffic flow to reduce that time. For Paradise — as is the case for many towns — a big problem is traffic bottlenecks: To evacuate, virtually the entire town has to use one of four main roads. The seemingly most straight-forward solution? Build more roads. However, these projects get complicated fast, said Marc Mattox, Paradise's public works director and town engineer. Often the roads that a municipality needs to improve evacuation would have to go through private property — a nonstarter for residents in the proposed path. Or, it's simply too costly. Although Paradise has received funds to widen two evacuation routes and connect three dead ends with the rest of town, a new evacuation route out of town would be prohibitively expensive. Mattox estimated such a route, navigating Paradise's steep ridges and canyons, would cost in excess of half a billion dollars. So, Paradise has also invested in a much cheaper, yet still effective tool to speed up evacuations: clear communication. Paradise installed signs all over town that proclaim when residents enter and exit different evacuation zones. The town is also looking into using a different color sign for private or dead-end roads that warn drivers to avoid them, as well as digital signs above key roadways that can display real-time evacuation information. In Southern California, Malibu — which completed an evacuation analysis after it suffered the Woolsey fire the same day as the Camp fire — has similar plans. Malibu is adding reflective markers to roadways to reduce the chances of crashes amid thick smoke. For neighborhoods with few evacuation routes and individuals with limited mobility, the city encourages evacuating whenever the National Weather Service warns of dangerous fire weather — well before a possible ignition. Los Angeles is much bigger than Malibu and Paradise — L.A. has a population of 3.9 million; Paradise's is just over 9,100. But evacuation experts said it's no excuse for letting California's rural towns take the lead on evacuation planning. Asked whether the sprawling labyrinth of L.A. roads would make doing these analyses more difficult, Zlimen smiled. 'Not really — no,' he said, noting Ladris has completed analyses in the San Francisco Bay Area. 'It's totally possible.' Guinon hopes the results of evacuation analyses can also help — or force — cities to make more responsible residential development plans in the first place. 'It's not rocket science,' she said. 'Let's just take on protection of our existing communities and let the chips fall where they may with new development: If it's unsafe, don't build it.'
San Francisco Chronicle
19-06-2025
- Climate
- San Francisco Chronicle
Here's how many people in the Bay Area could be affected by PG&E's potential power outages
Pacific Gas & Electric customers in Alameda, Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties could see scheduled power shutoffs Thursday through this weekend in anticipation of gusty weather. PG&E announced Wednesday that 647 customers in Alameda County, 276 customers in Contra Costa County and 48 customers in Santa Clara County could be affected by 'public safety power shutoffs.' The proactive power outages will be determined based on weather conditions in each location, PG&E said, with forecasts predicting windy weather and dry vegetation raising concerns about fire risk. On Thursday, a deepening upper-level low over the Pacific Northwest will induce a stronger onshore flow into the Bay Area, dragging cooler air inland and whipping up gusts across the region. Temperatures are expected to be cooler Thursday through the weekend. Inland temperatures by Friday and Saturday are expected to be 10 to 15 degrees below average, with even parts of the Central Valley struggling to reach the 80s. 'PG&E initiates PSPS when the fire-weather forecast is severe enough that people's safety, lives, homes and businesses may be in danger of wildfires,' PG&E said in a statement. 'Our overarching goal is to stop catastrophic wildfires by proactively turning off power in targeted areas when extreme weather threatens our electric grid.' On Wednesday, a grass fire in Antioch broke out in the evening, prompting evacuations that were later lifted by 10 p.m. The blaze, known as the Somersville Fire, injured one person. PG&E will have centers in Alameda and Contra Costa counties — at Costco in Livermore and Balfour-Guthrie Park in Southern Brentwood — for affected customers, where there will be power and air conditioning, the utility said.
CNBC
10-06-2025
- Automotive
- CNBC
36. Zum
Founders: Ritu Narayan (CEO), Vivek Garg, Abhishek GargLaunched: 2015Headquarters: Redwood City, CaliforniaFunding: $340.6 million (PitchBook)Valuation: $1.3 billion (PitchBook)Key Technologies: Artificial intelligence, cloud computing, machine learningIndustry: TransportationPrevious appearances on Disruptor 50 list: 2 (No. 31 in 2024) Parents can say goodbye to the days of their child missing the school bus. Through an EV school bus meets Uber-ride convenience hybrid transportation business model, Zum is using technology to disrupt a student transportation market estimated to be worth as much as $50 billion. With the use of AI and cloud computing, Zum has created a mobile application with live bus maps that allow parents to know when the school bus is coming, when their child has arrived at school and when their child is coming home. This application also serves as a means of communication between parents and drivers regarding route changes, student ride cancellations and snow days. On top of these safety and convenience measures, Zum's EV buses have helped offset 8.4 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually. Yet, what makes Zum's EV model even more appealing to schools is its ability to save money that can be put back toward the classroom, as EVs cut energy costs by 80% and maintenance costs by 60%, according to Zum's data. Last August, Zum launched the first-ever all-electric school bus fleet in the country with the Oakland Unified School District. Through a partnership with Pacific Gas & Electric, Zum's district-wide fleet utilizes V2G (vehicle to grid) bidirectional charging, which allows buses to return energy to electrical grids. While the initial cost of an EV school bus is roughly two to three times the cost of their diesel counterparts, the V2G model enables electric fleets to be more cost-effective for schools in the long run. School districts can expect to gain over $100,000 in lifetime fuel and maintenance savings with an electric bus, according to the Electric School Bus Initiative. Since Zum's launch in 2015, the company has worked with 4,000 schools across 14 states. Narayan's initial vision for Zum reflected that of a fleet of private drivers transporting kids to and from school. Yet, when she went to pitch Zum to schools in the Bay Area, Narayan was met with schools offering to utilize Zum in the form of a privatized school bus fleet. Adjusting her business model to compete against companies like First Student and Student Transportation of America that serve a customer base of more than 25 million U.S. students, Narayan is continuing to chip away at the market opportunity. While the government has been a tailwind in recent years, it may now be an impediment to growth. Zum secured a conditional commitment for a $700 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy in early January, a program that has been targeted by the Trump administration, especially loans finalized in the waning days of the Biden administration. It also received $58 million from the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean School Bus Program. The Trump administration's budget cuts in renewable energy and attempts to freeze EV charging funds introduce new hurdles.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
PG&E plans to reopen lithium battery plant near Monterey County site burned in toxic fire
Four months after a massive fire ignited in Monterey County at one of the world's largest lithium-ion battery storage facilities, Pacific Gas & Electric said it intends to reactivate an adjacent battery site by June to meet summer energy demands. The plan comes over the objections of county officials who requested that both facilities remain offline until the cause of the January fire in rural Moss Landing is determined. "I had hoped that PG&E would take a more transparent and collaborative approach in addressing the concerns of our surrounding communities, which are still grappling with the fallout of the largest BESS [battery energy storage system] fire in history," Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church wrote on Facebook on May 8. "Restarting operations before investigations are complete and before stronger emergency protocols are in place is disappointing and deeply troubling," he said. The PG&E facility is one of two battery energy storage systems at the Moss Landing power complex near Monterey Bay. The other is owned by Texas-based Vistra Corp. The batteries store excess energy generated during the day and release it into the power grid during times of high demand, including evening hours. Both facilities have been offline since Jan. 16, when a Vistra-owned building containing 99,000 LG battery modules caught fire, spewing toxic gases into the air and prompting the evacuation of some 1,500 people. The adjacent Elkhorn Battery Energy Storage Facility — which is owned by PG&E and maintained by both the utility company and Tesla — did not burn. But it automatically shut down when its safety equipment detected the fire in the Vistra building. The Elkhorn energy storage facility includes 256 stationary Tesla Megapacks — essentially shipping container-sized units filled with battery modules. The Megapacks, according to PG&E, stand on 33 concrete slaps at the Elkhorn facility. In a May 7 letter to Chris Lopez, chairman of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, PG&E vice presidents Dave Gabbard and Teresa Alvarado said "Tesla and PG&E have performed extensive inspection and clean-up" at the Elkhorn Facility and intend to restart it by June 1. After the fire, each of the Megapacks was disassembled and vacuum-cleaned, and environmental monitoring was conducted on and around the site, Gabbard and Alvarado wrote. "The Elkhorn Facility, as constructed, allows for efficient storage and use of power," they wrote. "As summer approaches, that power is necessary to effectively manage the demands of the California power grid and to protect PG&E's customers from power limitations and related impacts." A PG&E statement provided to The Times said: "We understand that the safety and well-being of our community is of utmost importance." The battery facility, the statement reads, provides "cost savings for electric customers" and helps "support the state's decarbonization goals." In his May 8 Facebook post, Church, whose district includes Moss Landing, wrote that the Board of Supervisors on Jan. 22 sent a letter to PG&E and Vistra requesting that their facilities not return to operation until 'the cause of the Vistra fire, as well as a previous fire at the PG&E battery storage facility, are determined and appropriately addressed.' Read more: 'Horrifying' fire at California lithium battery plant sparks calls for new clean energy rules That letter, he wrote, also requested that both companies develop "robust emergency response plans — based on a 'catastrophic worst-case scenario' involving full facility conflagration" for the county and other relevant agencies to review. Although emergency response plans are required by law, he added, existing state standards "are limited in scope and do not provide the level of detail or realism" that county officials needed to ensure public safety. "In previous discussions, PG&E indicated that a return to service would not occur until much later this year or beyond," Church wrote. County officials have "expressed concern" about the return to service and have reached out to facility operators to ensure emergency plans "adequately provide for the safety of the surrounding communities and the environment," Nick Pasculli, a Monterey County spokesman, said in a statement provided Thursday. "At this time, however, 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 reads. According to a Vistra website detailing the aftermath of the fire, an internal investigation is ongoing, and the cause of the blaze "remains unknown." A California Public Utilities Commission investigation into the blaze also is ongoing, Terrie Prosper, a spokesperson for the regulatory agency, told The Times. Vistra's battery energy storage system stands on the old site of the Moss Landing Power Plant, a gas-powered facility — originally built and operated by PG&E — whose twin smokestacks have towered over the region since 1950. Vistra acquired the plant in 2018 and demolished it to make way for the battery facilities, leaving the iconic smokestacks behind. In a February statement, PG&E noted that the Vistra facilities are 'located adjacent to — but walled off and separate from — PG&E's Moss Landing electric substation." In September 2022, a fire ignited in a single Tesla Megapack at PG&E's Elkhorn facility, five months after the battery energy storage system came online. The blaze, monitored by first responders, was allowed to burn itself out and had visible flames for about six hours, according to an investigation report by Energy Safety Response Group, an independent consulting firm. PG&E, in its letter this month to the county, said the cause of that fire was water that had entered the Megapack "due to the improper installation of deflagration vent shield panels." Tesla made fixes to all 256 Megapacks after the blaze, the utility company wrote. The longer, more destructive Vistra fire this year cast a pall over the clean energy industry in California, which in recent years has become more reliant upon renewable energy, electric vehicles and other battery-powered devices as state officials push to dramatically reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. The Vistra blaze prompted calls for additional safety regulations around battery storage, as well as more local control over where storage sites are located. Firefighters allowed the Vistra blaze to burn itself out, citing the dangers of dousing lithium-ion battery fires with water, which can cause dangerous chemical reactions. The fire, contained to a single building, smoldered for several days in mid-January. Read more: 'Extremely disturbing': High levels of heavy metals at Monterey estuary after lithium battery site fire In late January, scientists at San José State University recorded a dramatic increase in nickel, manganese and cobalt — materials used in lithium-ion batteries — in soil samples at the Elkhorn Slough Reserve, a nearby estuary that is home to several endangered species. The damaged Vistra building — filled with both burned and unaffected lithium-ion batteries — remained volatile. On Feb. 18, the fire reignited and burned for several hours. Vistra wrote on its website that "additional instances of smoke and flare-ups are a possibility given the nature of this situation and the damage to the batteries." "Since the January 16 fire, Vistra has brought in a private professional fire brigade that is onsite 24/7 to monitor the Moss 300 building," the company wrote. Read more: Residents sue energy companies after massive toxic battery fire at Moss Landing That structure, a former turbine building, contained a 300-megawatt system made up of about 4,500 cabinets, with each containing 22 individual battery modules, Meranda Cohn, a Vistra spokesperson, told The Times in an email. Of the 99,000 individual battery modules in the building, she said, about 54,450 burned. "Demolition on the Moss 300 building will begin once all batteries have been safely removed and discharged, and all debris (concrete, steel, piping) has been removed from the site," Cohn wrote. In February, four residents who live near the facility sued Vistra, PG&E and LG Energy Solution, accusing the companies of failing to maintain adequate fire safety systems. They alleged that they were exposed to toxic smoke emissions that caused nosebleeds, headaches, respiratory problems and other health issues. Environmental advocate Erin Brockovich is working with law firm Singleton Schreiber on the suit. Times staff writer Clara Harter contributed to this report. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
