ESN Annual Conference 2023: Fire safety innovation and best practice what does the future hold
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- Опубликовано: 19 авг 2024
- Fire safety has risen to the top of the industry agenda in the last couple of years as the UK electricity storage market matures, insurers and funders become more knowledgeable and policy makers and planners focus on the issue. A whole systems approach is needed across the supply chain as well as close integration with first responders. In this session, we heard about the latest industry best practice, plans from government on further developments, and how we can work as a sector to increase transparency and learn from existing incidents - domestically and internationally.
Thanks for the video. I didn't send an email yet, but will soon. From a South African point of view, knowing local fire regulations, we take on board you recommendations for what you identify to be best practice for battery systems. I agree. All you have control over, in your expertise are how your product is stored (e.g.separation) or using the available data recorded to monitor the state of the battery.
Now, from a fire protection perspective, the
Monitoring and analysis of the system, although best practice, is not taken into consideration because of the reliance on humans to intervene.
The best practice from a fire protection perspective is to assign an occupancy classification to the batteries, a hazard classification in accordance with sprinkler protection and lastly a category to the batteries stored in terms of sprinkler protection. In addition, we would evaluate the battery on the content at any given stage of it's life cycle. A battery, when new, will have contents of cathodes and anodes, which are metals, wrapped in some insulating material, submerged in a weak acid solution. In an old battery, most of the distilled water would have evaporated, leaving the content submerged in a strong acid. So, when there is a build up of pressure during battery operation or charging and an explosion takes place, there is a great concern of acid being prevalent.
The first aim from a fire protection perspective is to prevent the explosion. We might typically treat a battery the way we treat a gas cylinder. These closed systems only fail because of high temperatures, so we would provide sprinkler protection that will be activated when a predetermined minimum temperature is reached. In addition, the room would be fire separated from any adjacent rooms.