UK fire chiefs are reviewing their body’s guidance on fire safety in energy storage – in the absence of any accepted national standard.
Phil Clark of the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) told BEST that the council’s guidance is out for technical review, with a meeting scheduled this week to consider feedback.
The guidance (Grid Scale Battery Energy Storage System planning – Guidance for FRS) states it “does not seek to provide a full specification or opinion on the entirety of a BESS system design. Instead, the aim is to limit the content to such matters that directly relate to facilitating a safe and effective response, by the fire and rescue service, to a fire or vapour cloud release involving a BESS installation.”
That includes facilities for fire and rescue, and design factors that contribute to reducing the escalation in the severity of an incident.
Clark said the guidance is aimed at use by fire and rescue services rather than the public. “Its status is that of guidance but unfortunately one of the issues we are seeing at the moment is that the current published guidance is being taken as prescription and being used to hinder the roll out of BESS.”
That is something it was never intended to do, he added.
Prof. Paul Christensen of Newcastle University told BEST energy storage companies in the UK were “crying out” for a fire safety standard. There are no standards at all in this country for lithium-ion BESS, he said…The NFCC guideline is being used by council planning departments in the absence of standards.
Writing on LinkedIn, he said he knows of two planning applications for grid-scale BESS rejected wholly or partially on the basis of the NFCC guidance. “This is hardly the way to facilitate the decarbonisation of the UK,” he added.
BEST carries a feature in its spring issue on the US NFPA 855 standard. It governs installation of stationary energy storage systems with fire safety in mind.
