Solar & battery storage will constitute 81% of new US electricity generating capacity in 2024, but concerns are increasing about failure to assess associated fire risk.
Co-located renewable energy projects – that is, projects consisting of a combination of two or more of solar, wind and battery assets – are a rapidly growing trend in the United States, but there are concerns that asset owners are not adequately addressing the fire risk associated with each different asset.
Data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows that co-located schemes are by far the fastest growing type of renewable energy project in the US. For example, solar and battery storage will constitute 81 per cent of new electricity generating capacity in the US in 2024. [1] This represents an additional 36.4GW of solar and an extra 14.3GW of battery storage.
Co-location trend to continue
This trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. Figures from Berkeley Lab – a US Department of Energy Office of Science national laboratory managed by the University of California –show that solar and battery storage are the fastest growing resources in US grid interconnection queues. Combined, they account for over 80 per cent of new capacity entering the queues in 2023 – and, as Berkeley Lab has highlighted, the majority of solar (53 per cent) and battery storage (51 per cent) currently in interconnection queues are in a hybrid configuration. [2]
Focus on battery fires, but wind & solar risk overlooked
The surge in co-located renewables assets has given rise to fears that owners of such projects are focusing on addressing fire risk associated with one particular asset – battery storage, for example – while overlooking fire risks linked to other assets. With the global deployment of energy storage on the rise as efforts to make better use of wind and solar energy assets increase, the focus on energy storage fire risk is sharpening. For example, the US-based International Association of Fire Chiefs recently ran an energy storage fire risk campaign, which focused on five key areas: recognition of hazards; firefighting operations; firefighter safety; post-incident considerations; and public education.
Lithium-ion battery storage systems are vulnerable
Meanwhile, FM Global has highlighted how lithium-ion batteries used in energy storage systems are vulnerable to thermal runaway. Consequently, the insurer has issued fire safety recommendations based on fire tests conducted on energy storage systems used for commercial applications, such as manufacturing, office buildings, power generation and utility use.
Elsewhere, DNV has carried out investigations into energy storage fire safety and has developed “explosion, fire and plume models” to assess the impact of an uncontrolled failure event and support the design of mitigation systems. The increased focus on battery storage fire risk is partly due to the fact that there have been 85 stationary energy storage failure events since 2011, according to a database compiled by the California-headquartered Electric Power Research Institute (which includes information about utility and C&I-scale energy storage failure events for which information is publicly available). [3]
Extent of solar fire risk underestimated?
In contrast to the significant attention given to battery storage fire risk, the danger of fire impacting on other types of renewables assets is often ignored. For example, some studies have concluded that there is a high likelihood that instances of solar farm fires are underreported. A study by the UK’s BRE National Solar Centre – which detailed an investigation into a total of 80 potential PV-related fire incidents – ended with researchers concluding that they “strongly suspect a degree of under-reporting, especially amongst solar farms and domestic thermal events that were resolved by a solar installer/maintenance engineer.” [4]
Meanwhile, despite the fact that data shows that one in every 2,000 wind turbines will have a catastrophic fire at some point in its lifespan according to insurance estimates, an alarming number of wind farm owners and operators have not taken the step of installing automatic fire suppression systems.
It is prudent for owners of co-located renewables projects to take steps to identify the fire risk hazards posed across the entire asset suite. This would enable them to develop an understanding of what the risks of failure are for each component and then evaluate what is required from a fire risk assessment perspective in the locality in which the project is situated.
To read Firetrace’s special report, Double Indemnity: How to tackle fire risk at co-located renewables projects, click here.