MOSS LANDING, Calif. — Officials closed Highway 1 in both directions in Monterey County's Moss Landing early Tuesday after a fire was detected at the PG&E Elkhorn Battery Storage facility.
According to Jeff Smith, a spokesman with PG&E, officials became aware of a fire in one Tesla Megapack at PG&E’s Elkhorn Battery Storage facility in Monterey County at 1:30 a.m. Tuesday.
“PG&E is working with firefighters to stop the spread of the fire and provide a safe area for emergency response personnel,” he said via email.
According to a Monterey County spokesperson, the North County Fire Department and Monterey County Sheriff’s Office issued a shelter-in-place advisory Tuesday morning for the areas of Moss Landing west of Dolan Road/Via Tanques, South of Struve Road, and North of Potrero Road.
“There is an ongoing hazardous materials incident in Moss Landing. Please shut your windows and turn off your ventilation systems. In the event of changing weather patterns, impacted areas may change,” Monterey County spokeswoman Maia Carroll said in an email.
Kevin Drabinski, a Caltrans spokesman, said the California Highway Patrol reached out to Caltrans early Tuesday morning to set up the closure.
“(We have) hard closures northbound and southbound, with no estimated time for reopening,” Drabinski said by phone around 9:30 a.m.
The northbound closure of Highway 1 is in place at Molera Road, while Drabinski said the southbound closure was in place at Jensen Road. Dolan Road is closed at Via Tanques.
Meranda Cohn, a spokesperson for Vistra, said the company’s power plant in Moss Landing adjacent to the PG&E’s battery facility and substation was not affected by the fire.
“Our equipment is safe and is not impacted,” Cohn said in an email.
Vistra hosts its own energy storage facility at its Moss Landing facility. The batteries put up smoke on Sept. 4, 2021, and again on Feb. 13 of this year.
According to PG&E, there have been no injuries to onsite personnel at the battery storage facility. Smith said safety systems at the facility worked as designed when the issue was detected, and automatically disconnected the battery storage facility from the electrical grid.
“The safety of our customers, employees, contractors and the communities we serve is PG&E’s top priority,” he said, adding that there were no electrical outages for customers due to the incident as of Tuesday morning.
The PG&E Elkhorn Battery Storage facility became fully operational in April. It was designed and it is maintained by both PG&E and Tesla, and is owned and operated by PG&E. It has the capacity to store and dispatch as much as 730 megawatt-hours of energy to the California power grid at a maximum rate of 182.5 megawatts for up to four hours during periods of high demand. That’s enough to power 225,000 homes in Monterey County.
The closure disrupted the morning commute for many residents in the Monterey Bay area, causing large delays and traffic jams.
“There are a number of detours available but it impacts those roads as well, they’re not used to taking that overflow,” Drabinski said.
Highway 183 (Merritt Street) was backed up through Castroville during the Tuesday morning commute as drivers sought to go around the closure via Highway 156.
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