Industry experts say US will need 100 GW of battery grid storage by 2030 and fire safety is needed to enable this. The 100 gigawatts grid storage capacity is needed if the US is to reduce greenhouse emissions by 50% and ensure grid resilience with use of renewable generation by solar and wind and in case of extreme climate events impacting the electricity grid. Expanding battery storage will mean installations in urban areas, in densely populated areas as well as wildfire interface risks. Fire safety standards and testing need to extend from existing single cell runaway considerations to address multiple cell runaway, explosion risk and full energy storage facility life cycle, including design, construction, commissioning, operation, maintenance and decommissioning.
“Fire safety is crucial to the growth of energy storage in 2023”, N. Warner and D. Furlong, Energy Storage News (Solar Media), 8th March 2023