Did Tesla batteries cause the fire at the Monterey, California, power plant on January 16, 2025? No, that's not true: Fire officials said the fire at the Moss Landing facility started inside a building operated by Vistra Energy. While the building was near a Tesla battery storage area, a Vistra Energy spokesperson told Lead Stories that "the fire does not involve Tesla batteries."
The claim appeared in a post on X (archived here) on January 17, 2025. It said:
Additional footage of the fire at the Tesla battery storage facility in Moss Landing, California.
Here is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Fri Jan 17 15:11:07 2025 UTC)
Vistra Energy (archived here) operates a lithium-ion battery storage facility at the Moss Landing Power Plant location and added additional storage capabilities in 2023, according to this company investor statement under the "Strategy & Innovation" section (archived here).
Local fire and government officials said in a news conference on January 17, 2025, that the fire started in the Vistra facility on January 16, 2025.
Vistra spokesperson Jenny Lyon (archived here) told Lead Stories in an email on January 17, 2025, that "the fire does not involve Tesla batteries." Lyon added:
Thursday afternoon, Vistra personnel called for assistance from the North Monterey County Fire District after a fire was detected in the 300-MW Phase I energy storage facility at the Moss Landing Power Plant site. All site personnel were safely evacuated.
Tesla founder Elon Musk took to X on January 17, 2025, to also deny Tesla batteries were involved in the Monterey Fire (archived here):
(Source: X screenshot taken on Fri Jan 17 16:20:27 2025 UTC)
The original post on X claiming the 2025 fire involved Tesla batteries fire added an update five hours after its initial publication explaining that Tesla batteries were not involved in the fire:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Fri Jan 17 16:20:04 2025 UTC)
In an unrelated fire on September 20, 2022, the Elkhorn battery facility owned by Pacific Gas and Electric, adjacent to the Vistra fire scene, suffered a battery fire. According to a 2024 database of Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) incident failures, on page 5 (archived here), the report explains Elkhorn's facility involved Tesla batteries. The report said an investigation found the cause of that fire to be "rainwater intrusion through the container causing electrical arcing through the system."
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