‘There will be incidents’: Fire safety risk mitigation, public perception and design factors in BESS asset management

David Pursglove, asset manager BESS for Greensolver said that it was a few select, high-profile incidents and widespread news coverage of them that was behind that.

Vernon added: “Let’s face it, it’s quite a spectacular incident when a battery does go up. It’s one of the most powerful fires you can see. It is something that captures the public’s attention.”

Although not mentioned on the panel, the Moss Landing fire in California in January has been the most noteworthy incident and is clearly in the front of people’s minds when discussing the topic.

Mitigating risk of consequences

As more and more BESS sites become operational around the world, statistically rare incidents will inevitably happen. Ryan asked how the industry should, therefore, mitigate the public’s negative perceptions or the consequences of incidents when they do occur.

Obviously taking steps to prevent them happening in the first place is key, but you can also take steps to mitigate the wider negative consequences of them when they do, explained John Lilley, senior asset manager at Varco Energy.

“Plume analysis has become a much bigger thing within the industry. A big issue of battery fires is that the public are very worried about the fumes…We at Varco have put the work in to know that, if there is a fire, where that is going to impact, and we work with the fire services to manage that,” he explained.

“It’s all about planning. Inevitably there will be more issues as the portfolios grow. So as long as we as an industry manage that and ensure that there’s no injuries, effects on local water etc, and continue to manage our assets effectively, I think it will be okay.”

Information sharing

That’s about the practical steps you can take, but what can you do about overall public perception?

Vernon said there needs to be better education and information for both the public and the industry itself on what operators are doing to mitigate and control circumstances when incidents do happen.

“One of the best ways to mitigate that perception risk is to share the data around your near-misses, or actual incidents, when they do happen, freely within your industry. There are a few databases tracking incidents, but that’s top-level stuff,” he said.

“We need to start sharing the details better within the industry, and that includes owners, operators and OEMs. Once we are notifying each other of near misses and things that might have happened, you know, we can start doing a lot of pre-emptive solutions across portfolios.”

Fernando Casas Garcia​​​, head of operations & asset management for asset manager Gresham House, similarly told Energy-Storage.news: “It is crucial for all participants in the industry to share information, as we are all exposed to the same risks. For example, if there is a fire, the entire industry will be affected by increased insurance premiums. Therefore, it is essential that information is communicated among industry participants.”

Greensolvers’ Pursglove agreed but said that the biggest hurdle in sharing information is because people don’t want to put their names to incidents because of a perceived threat to their or their companies’ reputation: “I think we’d have to anonymise it to a certain degree.”

Vernon said however that it can be hard to get data from manufacturers after the incident, so a lot of work needs be done at an early stage at the lifecycle during contracting to enable access to that data in advance.

Design and data

When it comes to project configuration, unit spacing, water flow and emergency exits are key to reducing the negative effects from safety incidents, said Lilley.

Vernon added that you need to make sure your OEMs are building in all the detection measures they can to use the assets, so off-gas, temperature variation detection, separate fire alarm panels, CCTV monitoring, and all the smart analytics that sit behind that to look at the data and to analyse it.

This could including getting a data analytics specialist like Accure, which Masdar uses, to oversee commissioning and factory acceptance test (FAT) processes with daily reports detailing any incidents.

Issues can also happen pre-commissioning. One BESS unit caught fire at the under-construction 300MW/600MWh Thurrock project in Essex owned by Statera in January, but it quickly burnt out and construction had resumed within 48 hours of the start of the incident. It then started commercial operations in August.

Pursglove added that when it comes to product fire safety tests, it now needs to be at the BESS container level, not the module.

Managing and retrofitting older sites

Most of the discussion so far had appeared to be from the perspective of using the latest technology, but what about legacy sites with older, more outdated design?

“I’ve managed assets from 2015, and the ones we build now are a completely different world to what that was. And we’ve had a lot of challenges managing those older assets because of the older cooling systems, no gas detection, no pressure relief,” Lilley said.

“It’s difficult because the OEMs don’t really want to work on those assets, so you have to go out to third-parties, you can get off-gas detection and that has to go into the battery management system (BMS). So it’s a world of kind of pain for those older assets. But with all the new technology and data analytics coming in, that’s potentially where those older assets should be looking at, because early detection right now for those assets is probably best.”

Pursglove agreed, saying that OEMs are sometimes also reluctant when it comes to retrofitting older sites.

“It’s a challenge with the OEMs, because if you have warranties in place, they basically want to prevent any sort of modification to the equipment they’ve provided. That could be just drilling in cable trays or wiring into the alarm system. So there’s limitations to what you can do physically on the site,” he said.

“Off-gas detection systems are one example, where we’ve kind of been trying to work on that with one of the older assets, and it’s been a bit of a painful process, but we’re getting there. But it does limit the benefits of those and you’ve got to be careful isn’t become a tick box exercise where you’re installing this off-gas system, but if it can’t be wired into the alarm system to automatically react. In practical terms, a person monitoring isn’t going to react quick enough checking that manually, so just trying to make sure that that system is still useful.”