Canary Media: California has a new law to prevent big grid battery fires

In January, the coastal California town of Moss Landing witnessed the most destructive battery fire in U.S. history. Now, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has signed SB 283, a law designed to prevent a repeat of the disaster by strengthening statewide fire safety standards for grid battery installations. The electricity company Vistra had packed lithium-ion batteries into an old power-plant. In the years since Moss Landing came online, though, the grid battery industry has moved on from that type of design. These days, most every project places batteries in individual containers spaced out across an open field, which minimizes the chances of a fire spreading between them. Even with those advances in grid battery designs, state Sen. John Laird saw an opportunity to tighten state requirements in light of what happened in January, and he authored SB 283 to do just that. More HERE.