Wärtsilä ESS fire safety testing showed battery smoke is no worse than other smoke
Wärtsilä Technology Group has completed UL 9540A fire safety testing of its GridSolv Quantum energy storage system (ESS).
Overseen by Wärtsilä’s fire safety partners and stakeholders, including the Fire & Risk Alliance (FRA), the Energy Safety Response Group and the Energy Security Agency;
Under test conditions, a fire was ignited inside the ventilator and allowed to burn freely for more than eight hours. The results indicated that the fire would remain isolated within the generating unit, the doors would remain closed, and the fire would not spread from unit to unit.
As part of the testing, FRA collected tail gas data to assess the potential environmental impact of smoke from an ESS fire. FRA’s analysis concluded that smoke from an ESS fire is no worse in terms of environmental impact than conventional consumer product fires.
“Wärtsilä’s bespoke testing is the ideal way to demonstrate that fire will not spread between ESS enclosures or wire to wire. This result shows that with minimal or no response from the fire department or other responders, a fully involved fire is unlikely to spread beyond the initiating unit,” said Noah Ryder, PhD, Managing Partner, Fire & Risk Alliance.
“As the risks posed by energy storage systems are better understood by AHJs, the desire to include even more data in the safety analysis requires greater scale and evolution in testing. Test results, such as those from large-scale fire tests, help inform this process, which overall allows for better analysis and compliance with code requirements,” said Nick Warner, CEO of the Energy Safety Response Group. “In the case of Wärtsilä, when the system was fully engaged [fully on fire]The risk to neighboring units was minimal and could be managed by well-trained firefighters with proper planning and support.”
Wärtsilä’s GridSolv Quantum is a fully integrated modular and compact ESS. It received UL 9540 certification in April 2022 and completed UL 9540A unit level performance testing in February 2023. Wärtsilä’s GridSolv Quantum uses lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries.
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