California battery industry confronts a trust deficit, armed with new safety data

At the California Energy Storage Alliance's 17th Annual Market Development Forum in Sacramento on 7-8 October 2026, a recurring theme cut across panels: California now has 21 GW of grid-scale battery storage - second only to Texas^[1], yet community opposition is threatening the pace of new installations the state needs to hit its 2045 climate targets.

The scale of the problem

The January 2025 fire at Vistra's 750 MW/3,000 MWh Moss Landing facility forced the evacuation of roughly 1,200 residents and became a reference point for opponents of battery projects across the country. The fire burned for days, reignited in February 2025, and left elevated heavy-metal deposits in the adjacent Elkhorn Slough. A Monterey County supervisor called it a "Three Mile Island" moment for the lithium-ion storage industry.

The backlash has been measurable. City councils in several California municipalities moved to limit or ban new battery projects in the months that followed^[1]. Earlier this year, neighbors of a proposed 320 MW project in San Diego County protested until the developer abandoned its plans^[1]. California needs to more than double its current battery capacity by 2045 to meet its climate goals^[1], with state agencies estimating a target of around 52 GW - meaning the siting pipeline cannot afford sustained community resistance.

What the data actually show

California Energy Commissioner Noemí Gallardo, speaking at the CESA forum, cited a new Electric Power Research Institute analysis published 5 October 2026. EPRI found that global annual BESS failure rates per deployed GWh fell 98% between 2018 and 2025, with the rate dropping a further 50% from 2024 to 2025 alone. The 2025 failure rate stood at 0.04 incidents per GWh deployed.

EPRI's report also found:

• 93% of all recorded BESS incidents worldwide resulted in no injuries or fatalities
• No member of the public has experienced an acute injury from a BESS arc flash, fire, or explosion in any incident in the database
• There have been no reported injuries or fatalities in the US related to BESS failures since 2019
• The current failure rate is comparable to that of large oil-filled transformers at grid substations

"Even though there is a minority of people saying batteries are not safe, this data shows they are," Gallardo said at the conference^[1].

The Moss Landing fire, while severe in its community impact, was also a product of an older system that had experienced prior overheating events in 2021 and 2022. EPRI's analysis covers failures caused by issues internal to the BESS, and the industry has incorporated lessons from early incidents into current design standards.

What California has done since Moss Landing

California tightened its regulatory framework in direct response to the fire. Key changes include:

• An updated California Fire Code, effective 1 January 2026, with enhanced BESS safety standards
• New CPUC safety protocols for maintenance and operation of BESS facilities, approved March 2025
• State legislation (SB 283) requiring developers to engage first responders during the design phase and bring them in to inspect fire-suppression systems before commercial operations begin

Governor Newsom also created a cross-agency State Battery Storage Safety Collaborative in September 2024, drawing in the California Air Resources Board, CEC, CPUC, CAL FIRE, and the Office of Emergency Services, among others^[1].

Who communities trust - and how to use that

Focus-group research conducted by the Reliable Grid Project and Data for Progress in three California communities - Orange and Ventura counties, the Central Valley, and the Central Coast - found that awareness of grid-scale battery projects was low and views were shaped heavily by distrust of utilities and memories of wildfire-related rate increases^[1].

When asked who they trust on battery safety, residents gave a clear answer: first responders^[1]. That finding is already shaping developer strategy. In Chino, a city council that had rejected a 400 MW battery project near a city park reversed course in early October 2026 after the developer made a package of safety commitments. Chino Valley Fire Chief Dave William told the council his department had been "very well-trained" to respond to battery emergencies^[1], and labor unions and clean energy advocates added their support.

A separate 400 MW project in rural Alameda County - the Potentia-Viridi facility - won CEC approval through the state's Opt-In Certification program, which routes projects through state review rather than local planning processes and requires collaboration with local fire agencies as a condition of approval^[1].

The pattern that emerges from both cases is the same: safety commitments made early, with first responders visibly involved, can shift local politics. The harder question - whether that model scales fast enough to meet California's 2045 storage target - is what the industry will be working through for the rest of this decade.