Fluence Energy, Inc., a leading global provider of energy storage products and services, and cloud-based software for renewables and storage, today announced the company has successfully completed a large-scale fire test for its sixth-generation energy storage products that surpassed the industry’s UL9540A safety testing requirements, designed to limit the spread of a fire in energy storage deployments. Results of the large-scale fire test were issued in a report by independent engineering firm DNV, who witnessed the test as well as a separate unit-level UL9540A test.
In partnership with the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), the energy storage industry developed product regulations and testing recommendations to ensure that energy storage products are designed to limit potential fire to defined subsystems and not propagate thermal runaway. Fluence’s large-scale fire test extended beyond the performance standards of UL9540A by initiating an extreme fire event in a Fluence Cube and testing whether the thermal runaway event propagated to neighboring Cubes, which were configured to simulate a typical energy storage system.
“The results of Fluence’s large-scale fire test show that, in the unlikely event a Cube goes into thermal runaway, the product is designed to contain extreme internal battery failures to a single Cube and not spread through an energy storage system,” said DNV Business Development Leader Martin Plass. “The test was particularly impressive in that, despite a full-scale fire in the originating Cube, neighboring Cubes didn’t reach internal temperatures that could have triggered thermal runaway, even without intervention from external emergency personnel.”
This demonstrates that, in a real-world application, a fire event could be contained to a single Cube, enabling the energy storage system to be rapidly restored to operation while the damaged Cube was replaced.
“Fluence has a long history of incorporating industry-leading safety features into every level of our energy storage products, including system monitoring, fault detection, incipient gas detection, and deflagration panels. Not only do these features help prevent and mitigate safety incidents, but this successful test shows that the highly modular architecture of our products limits the overall impact of potential fires,” said Fluence SVP & Chief Product Officer Rebecca Boll. “This minimizes costly damage or downtime for our customers should an event occur, with rapid resolution compared to less modular or unproven solutions.”
“Few companies understand how energy storage systems will perform under a large-scale failure and how to help protect first responders during such an event. Fluence has taken a significant step forward by performing this full large-scale installation-level fire and explosion test,” said American Fire Technologies General Manager Paul Hayes, who witnessed the large-scale fire test. “The test did not result in a deflagration event and, even with a fully engaged Cube, the failure was limited to one Cube with no propagation between containers at distances below code requirements. This test will help define safety standards moving forward.”
