If a battery is going to catch fire, the likely cause is thermal runaway. We’ve called energy storage the ‘Wild West,’ and it is certainly still in early development stages, but there’s a sheriff in town now.”Īlthough battery fires aren’t likely to happen, it’s still important to design and plan for the worst. “There’s a sort of awakening in the last year. There’s now a realization that although there are no literal moving parts, there’s a lot of different small components that need to be managed and are delicate,” she said. “Folks have been treating batteries as a black box add-on to their equipment they’re installing. Carey said she is comforted that the solar industry is taking battery installation more seriously now than even two years ago. Just because a solar installer is a certified dealer of a specific battery chemistry doesn’t mean it’s the best product for every job. Off-grid winter cabins might benefit from using lead-acid batteries over the latest lithium product. It’s always good to look at the chemistry capabilities and balance how to mitigate the impact with whether that battery’s energy density is exactly what’s needed for a particular application.”īatteries that like cool, constant temperatures probably shouldn’t be installed outdoors in the desert. “When doing installation design, you have to design for minimizing the likelihood. “Just because the likelihood is different doesn’t mean the impact is different,” said Victoria Carey, senior consultant of energy storage for quality assurance company DNV GL. But put even an LFP battery in a less-than-ideal situation, and the end result of an accidental fire is the same - potential damage to the system, nearby surroundings and human life. On paper, NMC batteries have an increased risk of thermal runaway, the phenomenon that causes battery fires, simply because of the addition of cobalt. Right now, solar + storage fire worries usually arise around lithium-ion technologies, with a divided war between nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) providers (Tesla Powerwall, LG Chem) and those developing lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) batteries (sonnen, SimpliPhi). The threat of energy storage systems causing or contributing to building fires is also real yet incredibly rare, but as adoption grows, life and property wellbeing will become larger concerns. The NBC television drama “This is Us” showed that Crock-Pots can cause house fires, but we’re still cooking chilis and roasts while we’re away at work. Still, thousands of Americans fly every day. Plane crashes rarely happen, but the fear of an accident is real for many people.
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