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Wärtsilä recently completed rigorous, large-scale fire safety testing of its GridSolv Quantum energy storage system (ESS), and the enormous scope and scale of the test program set a new standard for grid-level fire safety testing in the energy storage industry — despite the fact that Wärtsilä‘s batteries have never caught fire!
“This new testing benchmark demonstrates Wärtsilä’s commitment to keeping our partners, customers, local safety officials, and local community members safe. It is crucial that the industry treats fire safety as its priority. Volunteering to complete testing beyond the minimum requirements provides confidence to key stakeholders that risks are being actively managed,” said Darrell Furlong, Director of Energy Storage Product Management and Hardware Engineering at Wärtsilä. “We are proud to set a new fire safety standard and we remain committed to safety as our top priority.”
To talk about some of the great safety strides made during the company’s ESS safety tests, we sat down with Mishaal SyedNaveed, Fire Protection Engineer at Wärtsilä, and Noah Ryder, a PhD and Managing Partner at the Fire & Risk Alliance.
“Wärtsilä’s bespoke testing is the ideal way to demonstrate that a fire will not propagate between ESS enclosures or from string to string. This outcome illustrates that with minimal or no response from the fire service or other responders, a fully involved fire is unlikely to spread beyond the initiating unit,” explains Ryder.
The result of our conversation was a great, 40-minute episode of CleanTech Talk hosted by yours truly that provides a great deep dive into some of the fire safety considerations that need to be taken into account as we push to roll out grid-scale battery solutions … and, for the record, it’s absolutely crucial that we do, not only to support the existing grid, but to “level out” the inconsistent energy production from renewables like solar and wind.
You can check out the episode for yourself in the player, below, or check us out on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, or wherever you find podcasts.
How Better Testing Can Stop Grid-scale Battery Fires
Fires happen. Battery fires happen. Mishaal SyedNaveed, Fire Protection Engineer at Wartsila, and Noah Ryder, Managing Partner at the Fire & Risk Alliance, discuss how to do more to prevent fires at grid-scale battery storage facilities.
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