On California's Central Coast, Battery Storage Is on the Ballot
By some criteria, 1290 Embarcadero in Morro Bay, Calif. seems like a prime site for a facility to store renewable energy.
The swath of coastal land houses a power plant that shuttered a decade ago and its still standing smokestacks. Vistra Corp.’s proposal for a 600-megawatt battery storage project on a portion of the site includes remediating the entire area and removing the plant and stacks, readying the land for future development. And the site’s history as a power plant means it’s well-positioned to connect to existing transmission lines.
“The location is fantastic, and certainly the need is there in the California grid,” said Mark McDaniels, Vistra’s vice president of renewables and storage, at an April 24 community meeting.
But some locals in the small city on California’s Central Coast disagree, and placed a measure on the ballot this fall that could impact the project’s future. Project opponents say they’re concerned about its impacts on tourism and the potential for fires at the facility, with one resident calling the proposal a “toxic bomb” during the meeting.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25052024/morro-bay-california-battery-storage-vote/