HWBRIEF
The Monterey County site was the world's most powerful grid battery when it opened in 2020, and workers had already removed most of its modules before Friday's fire.
A fire broke out Friday morning at Vistra's Moss Landing battery plant in Monterey County, the second significant blaze at the site in roughly 18 months. This one started during a controlled teardown of modules already wrecked in the January 2025 fire.
When the plant came online in 2020, it was the world's largest grid-scale battery at 300 megawatts and 1,200 megawatt-hours, large enough to power a meaningful share of greater Silicon Valley. Its batteries were packed into a former gas turbine hall, a layout the source reports is out of step with current energy-storage best practices and that helped turn the 2025 fire into a catastrophe.
Vistra has been dismantling the site by removing intact modules, de-energizing them, and shipping them for recycling or disposal. Workers have pulled about 34,000 of roughly 39,000 modules and hoped to finish the last 5,000 later this year. The new fire ignited in batteries already damaged in the 2025 blaze, according to a Monterey County statement, and officials called it "not comparable" in size, with burnout expected within about 24 hours.
Vistra did not respond to a request for comment. A Pacific Gas & Electric spokesperson confirmed the fire did not start on or spread to PG&E property next door. PG&E's adjacent Elkhorn battery plant, offline since the 2025 fire, is scheduled to return to service on July 1, 2027. Authorities issued shelter-in-place orders for the surrounding coastal community.