Technology group Wärtsilä has completed rigorous large-scale fire safety testing of its GridSolv Quantum Energy Storage System (ESS). The scope and scale of Wärtsilä’s testing program have set a new standard for fire safety testing in the energy storage industry.
The large-scale fire testing exceeds the mandatory testing requirements of existing testing standards (such as UL 9540A) and was designed to simulate a worst-case scenario. Overseen by Wärtsilä’s fire safety partners and stakeholders – including Fire & Risk Alliance, Energy Safety Response Group, and Energy Security Agency – the testing was completed at a facility in Piqua, Ohio, and run by the Energy Safety Response Group. Fire safety is a major priority for the energy storage industry and Wärtsilä’s ESS is designed to meet and exceed stringent safety and quality standards.
The testing involved intentionally igniting a fire within a Wärtsilä’s GridSolv Quantum to reveal important information about how the system would react in a highly unlikely event of a catastrophic failure and demonstrate that, even in the worst-case scenario, a fire in a GridSolv Quantum unit would not spread to neighbouring enclosures.
Under the test conditions, a fire was ignited within a ventilated unit and was allowed to free-burn for more than eight hours. The results showed that a fire would remain contained within the initiating unit, doors would remain closed, and the fire would not result in unit-to-unit propagation.
