We need a grid battery public safety standard – Watts Up With That?

From CFACT

By David Wojick

The existing battery safety standards are grossly incomplete for the huge grid grid scale battery complexes being recklessly built in large numbers.

Massachusetts recently requested public comments that addressed important issues with its planned multi-billion dollar battery buy. Public safety was one of the issues so I submitted the comments given below. I only found out about this request at the last moment so the comments are brief but they touch on some central safety concerns.

By way of background, in December a law was passed mandating that the big Massachusetts electric power utilities but a whopping 5,000 MW of grid scale batteries. Round 1 will buy up to 1,500 MW of 4 to 10 hour batteries and Round 2 another 1,000 MW.

The State Energy Office and the utilities are working on the RFPs for these two monster battery buys. They put out a list of key RFP related “stakeholder questions” and asked for comments on them. Here are my comments.

Beginning of my submitted comments:

“These brief comments are for Rounds 1 & 2. Additional information upon request.

Massachusetts multi-billion dollar battery buy RFPs raise serious safety concerns as many hundreds of container sized batteries may be bought. Here are the stakeholder comment questions:

“9. Safety:

a. Which safety standards should be required as a minimum baseline.

b. The safety systems, insurance requirements, relationships with emergency responders and host communities, emergency response plans, and any other necessary protections to keep adjacent communities safe.”

Here are my comments:

The central issue is how to prevent or respond to a major fire. That these huge battery chemical units can spontaneously ignite or explode is well established.

It is imperative that the battery units be spaced far enough apart to prevent a unit fire from spreading to its neighboring units, which could catastrophically ignite the entire facility. The required spacing standards do not exist. The AIG insurance company discusses this issue here:

They call for at least 10′ spacing but I suggest a safer 20′ spacing and a limit of 10 containers per site. What is needed is careful thermal engineering based on the specific battery technology being used. These battery chemicals burn at an incredible 5,000 degrees F.

There should be no host community or adjacent communities. Sites should be rural and as isolated from communities as possible.

Liability insurance should be required for full facility fire offsite impacts. If there are nearby communities then on the order of a billion dollars including loss of life may be necessary.

Require on-site fire suppression or containment systems. Require large on-site water supply with containment of contaminated runoff. Fighting these fires requires special training and equipment. The facility should pay for these.

See my for more information.

Respectfully submitted,

David Wojick, Ph.D.”

End of submitted comments.

The present industry practices are catastrophically incompetent when it comes to the spacing between these huge battery units. Specifically they are misusing a standard issued by the National Fire Protection Association. This is NFPA 885, titled “Standard for the Installation of Stationary Energy Storage Systems.”

This sounds right but it is written for very small storage systems, on the order of just 70 kW or so. Grid scale battery units run 1,500 kW or more. The 3 foot spacing mandated by NFPA 885 is completely wrong for these monster batteries but incredibly that is what people are using.

Ironically the American Clean Power Association just released a “Battery Storage System: Blueprint for Safety” that features NFPA 885 and shows several big facilities with 3 foot spacing.

See

With this tiny spacing and a unit fire at 5,000 degrees neighboring units are sure to ignite, causing a chain reaction that engulfs the entire facility. This just happened at Moss Landing where 350 MW of batteries went up in very hot flames that could be seen for miles.

Grid scale battery storage is out of control. NFPA took comments on a new grid battery standard almost a year ago but nothing has happened. We need action now.

Related