2023-12-29 21:00:08
It was like the devil was playing with it. On Friday before Christmas, State Secretary Vivianne Heijnen (infrastructure) announced tightened safety standards for neighborhood batteries and other large energy storage systems. Then a similar battery caught fire on Christmas Day in Helmond. The fire started at Dens, a young company that, among other things, makes large batteries for construction.
Nils Rosmuller, lecturer in Energy and Transport Safety at the Netherlands Institute of Public Safety (NIPV), thinks the new safety standards useful. It includes requirements regarding compartmentalization, which should prevent one part of the battery from igniting the other too easily. And regarding systems to slow down the fire, extinguishing water connections, continuous temperature measurement, (emergency) ventilation and collision protection. The measures that apply depend on where the battery is located, its capacity and the type of battery.
Previously, there were hardly any rules
Anyone who wants to install such a battery should not be discouraged by these stricter rules, says Rosmuller. “On the contrary. It may seem complicated, but at least now you know what requirements your battery must meet. Previously, there were hardly any rules.”
These safety standards are not yet mandatory. State Secretary Heijnen wants to change this by 2025. From then on, use of the standard would be included in the Environmental Act.
The importance of good fire-resistant measures became apparent on Monday in Helmond. The battery that caught fire there had a capacity of 2.3 megawatt hours, equivalent to approximately 32 Teslas. It is the largest battery that Dens produces, says co-owner Max Aerts. According to him, the battery is the worldwide leader largest of its kind.
He says that his company already took the new safety standards into account during the design, for example by dividing the battery into 16 compartments made of steel and aluminum. Each compartment had a system to slow fire by capturing oxygen.
Lessons from the fire in Helmond
The division into compartments helped with firefighting. “Only 1 to 2 compartments were on fire at the same time,” said a fire brigade spokesperson. Without those compartments, he would have expected the entire battery to burn. A completely different scenario. The fire at Dens lasted several hours.
The most important thing for battery fires is sufficient extinguishing water, says a spokesperson for the fire brigade in Helmond. The water is needed to cool the battery for a long time. Otherwise a reaction may occur that ‘thermal runaway‘ is hot, where heat in the battery leads to self-ignition.
To prevent this, the fire brigade had a special ‘immersion container’ brought in in which batteries can be immersed in water. The container tore apart for an unknown reason.
Much is still unclear
There are more questions. The most important of these concerns the cause of the fire. Dens is still investigating this, says Aerts.
And then there is the internal reporting system that monitors the battery temperature 24 hours a day. In the event of heat, the system should emit an emergency signal. The fact that this did not happen may indicate that the fire started outside the container. Finally, an attentive passerby called the emergency number.
“It wasn’t my best Christmas, but it was exciting,” says Aerts. Once the investigation into the fire is completed, his company wants to use the experiences to help further tighten national standards.
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