The energy storage and optimization (ES & O) department of wasilan company, headquartered in Finland, announced on November 7 that, the Quantum High Energy and Quantum 2 battery Energy storage units produced by the company have been tested for fire safety under laboratory conditions.

After the two battery energy storage units are ignited, the fire continues to spread until all available fuels are consumed. During the test, the fire of the single battery energy storage unit with thermal runaway did not spread to the adjacent battery energy storage unit.

Wasilan company conducted a larger-scale fire test on its battery energy storage unit, which claimed that these test environments were very similar to the "worst case" in reality.

Wasilan conducted a series of large-scale fire tests on GridSolv Quantum container battery energy storage units in the first half of 2023, and burned for 8 hours at that time. The Quantum High Energy battery Energy storage unit is a product with higher capacity of wasilan GridSolv Quantum battery Energy storage unit, while Quantum 2 is its latest iterative product, which was released earlier this year.

These tests are conducted by CSA Group, a product certification and standard development organization, and their testing scope is beyond the current industry standard UL9540A testing scope. In the UL9540A standard test, thermal runaway was first caused in a single battery cell, and then gradually spread to the entire battery energy storage system through three steps.

Josh Dinabburg, a fire test expert of CSA Group and vice chairman of the NFPA Research Foundation alarm committee, said: "The recent tests on Quantum High Energy and Quantum 2 battery Energy storage units of vaseland show that, the burning battery energy storage unit fire did not spread to the adjacent battery unit. The design of limiting the spread of the fire allows the fire department to isolate and control the fire, reducing the overall threat to life, property and the environment."

evolution of fire safety testing standards

many insiders said that although the UL9540A standard is a good test standard in principle, there are also some shortcomings. In addition, in some cases, specific workarounds can be found to make the battery energy storage system show a higher safety level under the test conditions, but these conditions do not exist in reality.

These tests of wasilan company comply with CSA T-800 standard. CSA T-800 is a new large-scale fire testing procedure designed by CSA Group, aiming to be more comprehensive and applicable to field conditions.

Chris, product safety director of vastilan, discussed the fire test of battery energy storage system at the online seminar jointly organized by CSA Group and industry media.Grove will give a speech at the meeting and introduce the new standards.

Grove said, battery Energy Storage System the fire test also meets the requirements of the upcoming NFPA 855 standard.

He said, "these new fire safety measures show that we will strive to exceed the existing industry standards and meet the intention of quoting new large-scale fire testing requirements in NFPA 855 2026."

major stakeholders, including owners and insurance companies, observed these tests. Other battery energy storage system manufacturers and system integrators have also conducted large-scale fire protection tests on battery energy storage units, including Fluence company, Solar energy source and Tianhe energy storage.

Noise becomes a new problem facing the operation of battery energy storage system.

In an interview with industry media, Andy Tang, vice president of energy storage and optimization (ES & O) department of vaseland, said that people are increasingly worried about the noise generated by battery energy storage systems.

He pointed out that as battery energy storage systems are more and more commonly operated in densely built and populated areas, their noise may become another issue of concern to the community.

wasilan said that the company has introduced the noise attenuation control system, which can reduce the noise emission intensity, and can customize the control and operation according to the energy storage project.

Fadi Zara, energy storage project manager of vassilan company, said that the company would provide noise attenuation control services, in addition to providing third-party verification of noise level through technical consultants.

Ethan Brush, head of energy, environment and transportation joint market of Acentech Company, a noise and acoustics consulting agency, discussed this topic in an article published in May, it also introduces different noise sources of battery energy storage system and how to reduce its influence.