Huawei Digital Power’s Commercial and Industrial Hybrid Cooling Grid Forming Energy Storage System (C&I GFM ESS) has passed a stringent extreme ignition test witnessed by TÜV Rheinland. Conducted at a national key fire safety lab, the test is the industry’s first fire assessment of an ESS in compliance with the latest UL 9540A:2025 standard, its rigorous conditions establishing a new safety benchmark for the sector.
The test was designed to create the industry’s most demanding verification environment, evaluating the safety performance of ESSs under extreme ignition scenarios. A pack-level overcharge method was used to trigger simultaneous thermal runaway in 60 battery cells, simulating a “worst-case upon ignition” scenario.
Under these extreme conditions, the C&I GFM ESS demonstrated outstanding safety performance, supported by its innovative five-level protection design. When the fire temperature reached 961°C, the highest cell temperature of an adjacent ESS was only 45.3°C, well below the threshold for opening the cell explosion-proof valve. The system fully complied with UL 9540A:2025 requirements, with no fire propagation between units and a recorded peak heat release rate (HRR) of 3 MW. Total combustion lasted less than three hours before self-extinguishing and, under open-door burning conditions, the system rapidly managed heat release, demonstrating superior thermal management capability.