PG&E announced today, June 2, that its Elkhorn battery energy storage facility in Moss Landing—which is owned by PG&E and co-operated with Tesla, and houses 256 Tesla Megapacks—is coming back offline just a day after PG&E started taking it back online.
The Elkhorn BESS automatically shut down Jan. 16 when its infrared sensors picked up flames from the Vistra fire that same day, and it stayed offline indefinitely.
In early May, PG&E announced it would be taking the Elkhorn facility back online June 1, stating in a letter to the county Board of Supervisors, "PG&E believes it has the responsibility to return the Elkhorn facility to service by June 1 to meet summer reliability needs and that it is safe to do so."
According to the statement PG&E put out today, here's how that went: "On June 1 we began methodically returning the batteries to service as a part of the planned return to service and in the process a clamp failure and coolant leak was identified in one of the [Megapacks]," adding, "We are working to remediate the issue and out of an abundance of caution we are deferring the facility's return to service until a later date."
--
Correction 6/7/25: The original version of this story incorrectly stated Tesla co-owns the Elkhorn BESS; the Weekly regrets the error.
(0) comments
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In
Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person.
Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.