A parliamentary debate today calls for regulatory reform to implement national safety standards for battery energy storage systems (BESS).
Liberal Democrat MP John Milne will lead a debate in Parliament today as he warns that regulating only on a local level is hindering the green energy transition and putting communities at risk.
A common theme of community pushback when developers bring forward BESS plans is that the fire risk outweighs the benefits of the technology in aiding the energy transition.
According to Milne, a clear national fire safety standard for BESS would “accelerate, not hinder” the technology’s development. Under the UK’s plans to achieve Clean Power 2030, up to 27GW of BESS is required to support the amount of renewable energy capacity that will come online.
Milne said: “We need these battery storage facilities to make renewable energy work – they’re essential for storing wind and solar power. With government projections showing increased demand for grid energy storage, regulatory gaps must be closed now to ensure they are built safely from the ground up”.
Battery storage fire risk
Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are the dominant storage technology used in BESS due to their high energy density, efficiency and long lifecycle but safety concerns that arise due to the chemistry’s potential for thermal runaway hinder deployment.
The Faraday Institution, cited in a government research briefing issued ahead of the debate, estimates that lithium-iron-phosphate batteries made around 60% of lithium-ion BESS in the UK market in 2022 because of their lower cost and higher efficiency.
Large scale BESS facilities contain millions of battery cells that, if not shielded or insulated effectively, spread fire fast. Li-ion batteries are prone to thermal runaway, which occurs occurs when part of a battery is damaged or has a manufacturing fault. This causes the internal components of the battery to decompose, which produces heat. Without external cooling, this cycle can result in fire.
BESS fires are very rare—with one recorded in the UK late last year, and before that one in Liverpool in 2020—but the storage industry is still acting to ensure the highest standard of safety. In a contributed blog for Energy Storage News, Dr. Judy Jeevarajan of UL Research Institutes writes that proactive management and mitigation of risks minimises the risk of fires and other catastrophic events.
Milne is calling for local fire services to become statutory consultees for all industrial-scale battery storage, alongside implementation of mandatory safety measures.
In August 2023, the UK government issued planning guidance that encouraged developers and local planning authorities (LPAs) to consult fire and rescue services on BESS planning applications, however this is not a statutory requirement.
The National Fire Chiefs Council has a best practice guide for grid-scale BESS fire safety that government also signposts developers and LPAs to.
Frameworks to ensure battery fire safety
According to the UK government, a “robust regulatory framework” covers the components of a battery storage system, “which requires manufacturers to ensure that products are safe before they are placed on the market and installed correctly, and that any safety issues found after products are on the market or after installations are dealt with.”
Energy storage trade associations advocate safety standards, and arguably that there is not one is the result of the relative novelty of energy storage technologies, rather than industry reticence.
The European Association for Storage of Energy (EASE) has pushed for a safety standard to be applied across Europe, and in April this year the clean energy trade body American Clean Power Association (ACP) released a BESS safety framework outlining key actions and policy recommendations for the industry.
In the US there are already legal requirements in place that ensure developers mitigate fire risk, and New York is a frontrunner in this. The New York State Inter-Agency Fire Safety Working Group was formed by state governor Kathy Hochul, in response to concerns around battery energy storage system (BESS) safety and the fire code updated to strike a balance between improving safety and addressing key concerns while not creating significant obstacles to storage deployment.
If enacted similarly, a UK-wide regulatory standard for BESS would ensure a standard of safety was met, and assuage the safety concerns that slow LPA decisions.
