Risk management firm Det Norske Veritas (DNV) has joined with Dutch partners to develop a testing facility in the Netherlands for complete battery systems.
The Battery Safety Lab project is a partnership between Norwegian firm DNV and the Twente Safety Region (TSR).
The project aims to ensure the safe development of battery systems with commercial and R&D testing and certification of systems entering the grid-connected storage, automotive and electric/hybrid ships markets.
Researchers will be able to conduct extensive testing for integrated battery systems in everyday use, with results contributing to the development of new standards to improve the safety of battery storage systems.
The aim is to help emergency services develop improved protocols for dealing with fires and other incidents due to failure of battery systems— a subject put in the spotlight earlier this month in the US lithium-ion fire.
Teams will be able to perform destructive testing to conduct root cause analysis to investigate why and how battery systems fail.
The Lab will offer design evaluation, fire propagation and fire suppression testing to validate manufacturers claims, as well as certification against the IEC standard released in 2020.
In addition, the Lab will offer power failure investigations to determine the root causes of battery system failures in the field.
The Lab will be located on the Twente Safety Campus (in the eastern part of the Netherlands).
Construction is due to start in the next quarter of this year with the first tests expected to start in Q2 next year.
This collaboration combines TSC’s knowledge of fire safety with DNV’s knowledge and experience in testing battery technology.
David Bornebroek, director of the Twente Safety Campus, said: “We see that batteries are increasingly being used in consumer electronics, vehicles and neighborhood batteries. That has to be done safely.
“Because there are still insufficient standards and general knowledge about fire safety of batteries is still limited, a test facility is essential to conduct research.
“Because we are now going to do this together with DNV, we are making a concrete contribution to solving safety issues surrounding batteries.”
The Twente region is also home to Lithium Werks BV’s— the company formed by Lithium Werks and Super B in 2018— 42 acre energy research and development campus at Twente airport.