18 - Battery fires: Risk, prevention and suppression with Ian Bartle (CEO @ Nobel Fire Systems)

OK, so so I do have to call you, sir Alfred or not, sir sir Alfred.

There's no sirs in the room.

There's no,

no.

So we're just saying it's a noble,

noble fire systems,

yes,

and linked somehow to the Nobel Peace Prize.

It does, indeed. Yeah, we have a long history dating back to 1874,

and our name comes from Sir Alfred Nobel, who built the first explosive site in the UK, which was based up in Scotland. And that, as it progressed, became part of ICI in the 1920.

Oh, the guys who do the Dukes paints?

Yes, Yes.

So the imperial chemical industry took over the noble name, and Nobel still exists now to manufacture energetic technologies and now to cellulose products and any kind of products to do with paints and thinners. But there's a big part of their business, which is explosives and energetic technology. So like airborne agents,

energetic,

exciting thing to say

it is. It can be quite a frightening thing. But in when you work with it. And you can control those explosions into production of gas, they become very useful tools to displace liquids powders, chemicals and things like that.

Well, OK. So so we're talking explosions, big bangs, booms.

There's no there's no bangs in fire protection. So

that's the thing we try to avoid. But you're

trying to

be the opposite. Yeah

OK. I'm here with Ian Bartel. Hello, everybody is watching or listening. We are today going to talk about one of those things that energy storage, which is sort of talked about, but perhaps not enough.

Yeah

and so we're talking about explosions, fire. We're talking about what happens to all this energy in energy storage. If bad things happen and how we design systems that are safe and safe is a very strong word. It's loosely

we've got Ian bartolone from Noble fire solutions

of fire

supply systems, Bae

Systems and you guys have been doing stuff to do with fire protection for energy storage for a long, long time, right?

Yeah

and so what we want to find out today is what's the risk? How is it being managed at the moment? Yeah and what we need to think about or what language do we use when we're thinking and talking about this stuff?

OK, OK.

But before we get started, Ian, Thanks for coming. We're in modo HQ. We're in Birmingham.

Who are you and how on Earth did you get into fire stuff?

Why am I here?

Is there a pole involved? Somewhere

there is? There is a

pole. OK, right?

There is a problem.

Yeah, and a pool table.

Yeah, Yeah.

Yeah, it's a spoiler launches and things.

Yeah, Yeah.

But yeah, my background is I've been in fire protection now. And what you would term special risk fire protection for over 30 years, although you can't really tell. But yeah, my background is in engineering and I was in mechanical production and design engineering.

And while I was doing that, I joined the fire service and

I was part of Lancashire fire service for 12 years as a fire firefighter. So it was good to get an appreciation of the sharp end of fire protection and what fire services are presented with when they do arrive at an incident. So over that time,

we're taught about getting going around in a fire engine and that

was on a main front line fire station with several pumps. And we've been I've been on some enormous 30 pump fires down to single fires, car crashes, you name it. If it's out there, I've been on it as

a whole podcast,

the whole of

you must have seen it seen a lot, right?

It's been a phenomenal experience, and the guys in the fire service do such a phenomenal job and they're being faced with this new risk.

Yeah

so going back 30 odd years ago, what I did to combine my engineering qualifications with the fire side and decided to get into what you would term special risk fire engineering. So what that encompasses really is get specialists in fire detection, which will do general fire detection within a building, and then you might get a sprinkler company that dedicate themselves to the active fire suppression side.

So you've got the detection system that will evacuate the building and then the sprinklers that will actually do something about the fire as it develops. So my fascination and my preference is to get into the active site of firefighting and I worked for I've worked for a number of companies before I decided to go self-employed, which was 30 years ago.

And we started to

or should I say, when I started on my own, I was started to sell products, so I was involved in selling specialist products to other fire companies. But those fire companies started to ask me if I wanted to install the products I was selling to them. So it became a case of yes, I can, and the expansion from that was incremental.

We're now in a position where we're 40 odd employees. I've been in business as Nobel fire systems for the last 20 years, but dedicated really to anything that doesn't involve just detection on its own or just sprinklers on its own. So we'll look at

some more complex systems.

Yeah, they tend to be things that don't naturally suit water as a extinguishing medium so that it could be that there's a dry medium required or a gas system required or some other form of suppression agent. That's better for that risk,

which is why batteries, of course, because we've got soap

for background. We've got a lot of systems out there in the UK. I think a lot of gas, FM 200 and other types of gases. You've got some water sprinkler systems.

We've got some powder systems. We've got all sorts out there in the UK.

Yeah

and what we're going to find out today is what is the correct one? No, of course there is. There is no correct answer.

That's very true. Yeah

but yeah, what we want to find out today is what's out there and what should people be thinking about? Because a lot of folks listening to this are involved in the value chain of energy storage, building, operating, developing, financing and really early on in that journey, it's probably a good idea to think about what is the right system. So going back to the Nobel and you, what have you done in energy storage?

What's the background of your company, energy storage and what have you learned along the way? And then we'll dig into some of the details and just to get it in there early, we need to talk about thermal runaway.

So yeah,

but what have you done in storage?

Well, it's been quite wide ranging. We've worked on very small systems from single rack enclosures up to 50 megawatt, and we're now involved in more on the consultative side and in the early development strategies of combined systems. So it's looking to how we prevent. Thermal runaway in the first instance,

and I think it's worth just let. Focusing on what thermal runaway is, and there's different

terrifying set of words to put together.

Especially in the context of we need to keep this place up and running.

Yeah, Yeah.

So there are certain aspects of what we offer, have certain attributes that we're looking for different phases of fire development. So in the early instances when you get before thermal runaway, you get a small window of opportunity to detect a developing incident. And we have specific products that will develop that will detect the off gas before thermal runaway starts.

So for layman terms, we're saying you're talking about different phases, right? Which is fire hasn't happened yet.

Yeah,

fire is going to happen.

Yeah,

fires happened. But it's small and you can do something about it. Fires happened and it's all over, right? You can't stop this thing.

And then fires happened. It's over.

Yes,

it is.

It is exactly that. And prevention is always better than the cure. Yeah so part of our strategy is really to understand the engineered environment in which we're going because whilst some are modular, some are building systems, some are a small quantity of racks and some are rack after rack after rack.

So really, our preference is to get involved early on in the process, as well as hopefully involving insurers and anybody else that has an interest in where this might be. So it might be local County councils,

whereas this best system going in a building is it in a field and all of these parameters will form a picture of how best to protect it. Because as a fire company, you can have a million products in there, but it gets too expensive and too unwieldy to operate.

Well, before

we take a step back,

I want to ask you

this may sound like a basic question, but what is a battery fire?

OK

define a battery fire.

OK, so each pack is made up a small modules of batteries, so it might be an individual cell or pouch.

So when you get some thermal runaway, what happens is there's an increase in temperature in an individual cell or a battery module. And that is it's a chemical reaction within the battery, but it's self-sustaining

and it's that vicious cycle of temperature increases, temperature increases temperature, and you get to a point within that cycle that there's a point of no return. Mm-hmm all the materials start to break down inside the battery, and then you get a big release of heat and then you get your fire situation.

So so this is just heats. Now we're not talking about ignition yet. Are we

in the testing that we've seen? There's lots of different reactions when you do fire testing to prove a fire system you use, say, a single material which will establish performance criteria.

So you know, against another product or another type of nozzle. Whether you're a suppression medium is effective at a certain density on a certain size of fire, and that's usually hectare in if you're testing forms or dry powders because it burns consistently from country to country, from test authority to test.

Sorry, we have to simplify this because I'm lost already, right?

So

I've got no idea what a team is or what it sounds like, what you're saying when you're testing, what when you're testing the performance of systems under fire conditions, you can use a lot of different ways to test for it. Is that is that what you're saying

there is that depending on this,

your suppression medium and what the risk is, there will be a material that you can test. You can fire performance, test the system. So you know how much to put on that fire and at what rate for it to go out.

Oh, OK. So we're on to putting fires out.

Yeah

so if we go back to a cell catching fire.

So a lithium-ion cell, for example, which is about the size of

what have I got around here? Yeah, it's the size of

this Louis Theroux. We got to get through this book, right? And that's full of a pouch of electrolyte and anode in a cathode.

Yeah,

and that thing catches.

So that thing gets very hot. Yeah and then it catches fire.

Yes

and then what? What's actually burning is, is it is it material? Is it gas or is it

very early on? It's a class D fire, but that is momentary. And then it becomes what

is a metal? Yeah,

but it is momentary.

Metal fire is like Lord of the Rings. But

the thing is, these fires are self-sustaining. They produce their own oxygen and gases and because of the temperature increase. They're very they're very difficult to put out.

And every suppression medium will find it very difficult to get the right quantity in the right place for the right amount of time to be as effective as there could be. So that production of gas, which is the first element, which feeds the fire, creates that.

So the cell gets hot, creates gas, the gas burns, gets hotter, creates more gas, get burns

and then you have the knock on effect to the other cells adjacent to it.

And then it's go time.

Yes,

then we a lot of noise.

And the reason for mentioning in and things like that. Does not one matter that will burn the same when you ignite it so you can get it to ignition point by overcharge, by mechanical abuse. It's usually done through the thermal overlords induced by increased current. So you're putting too much current into it that gets hot and then the process of thermal runaway occurs.

So the risk we're talking about here is we have grid scale batteries, which are fully full of small cells and those cells. If they do catch fire, you can get into a situation where they will keep on getting. The fire will get bigger and bigger and bigger until something intervenes. Yes, or until the fire goes out.

And that's the thing we talk about thermal runaway. That's that's the thing that's scary.

That's the frightening thing.

And why is that different to other fires? Why is that? What's the why is that a different category of fire to other fires or is it not?

It is, to a degree.

The main reason for that is because it is a self-sustaining fire and because the batteries are deep seated normally. What if you get a fire?

That means

if you get a fire in an office, it's a surface fire. So when you walk into a room, you can see where the source of that fire is. And you can. A firefighter can direct a jet of water onto it to put it out.

But when you've got a rack, you've got a module made up of batteries. So every time you put that cell inside something, it's another barrier to the fire suppression.

OK,

so that's the deep seated nature, so it will continue burning until you can get fire suppressant agent or liquids onto it. OK,

so it tends to be a catastrophic fire because battery technology is very safe. But when they do happen, it tends to be a big fire rather than a small smoldering fire that you can deal with.

Yeah, this is the funny thing, right? We're talking about

very scary. Yeah

but then again, we've got we've got to put this into perspective. The benefit of batteries are we basically need them for the renewable energy transition that we need. There is no there is no renewable energy, a world to live in without batteries helping. So we need them. Yeah

and then operationally, actually, we've got, you know, many, many gigawatt hours. I don't know someone's going to tell me what this is, but maybe hundreds of gigawatt hours.

I might sound silly saying that

around the world installed and very few fires.

Yes,

I don't know. You see about the odd one here and there, but it's not. It's not all the time.

Yeah

and so I guess we need to balance that risk.

And it is very scary, but also it's like an outside Black swan kind of event. And then what can we do to prevent? So I want to talk about prevention and

really get my words from here. But how do we stop the fires from happening? So prevention?

Yeah

and how do we put the fires out? So let's do the let's do the prevention one first.

Yeah,

because that seems like the most sensible.

The sensible option is make sure the fire doesn't start in the first instance.

Yes

and if we know

smoke in bed,

Yes.

So the best method of doing that is to have a dedicated device. And there's different types of detect lots of different types of detection device, and we're looking for different things. Typically, in a building, you'll have smoke detectors or heat detectors. But with lithium-ion batteries, the very first telltale signs you get prior to thermal runaway is an off gas.

So it produces very specific number of gases. Before it goes into an uncrowned controlled situation, so we have a detector very specific for that. Sniffing for those

sniffing for

that, Yes.

And what we do then is the control devices that that's attached to provide a signal for shut down. OK and what's been seen to happen in all of the testing is that when you isolate the battery from either charging or discharging, that temperature drops.

Yes,

so you avoid thermal runaway.

So we've got a big measurement device, a big nose sniffing for a gas. Yeah and when it smells it, it switched everything off.

Yes

and they go fire, fire.

Yeah, it's a case of isolate and alarm, so you've got to have

it needs attention, so you need engineers to attend. But it's very unlikely in that situation. You will need a 10 to look of all fire authorities and things like that.

One thing I must mention here is we've gone straight into active prevention, but there's a more

I'm trying to

sounds like I know what I'm talking about, even it. Wow

convincing makes

him

an expert know. Things like design, materials, design, cell design. You know, firewalls. Yes, distances, separation. All that stuff, which happens before you even get on site, right?

Yes

so let's probably skip that. For now, let's go straight into the more exciting sniffing mode. But we must give a shout out to all the people out there who are designing systems properly in the first place.

The segregation is so

segregation. There you go.

Yeah, Yeah.

And so, OK, so we've got we're sniffing for off gas. What else can we do?

Well, because we don't know what kind of reaction that lithium ion battery is going to have. It can either just produce gas and once you've isolated power, stop. But there are slim chances

and they are slim chances

of that thermal runaway still continuing because it's a chemical process and it's already reached its point of no return. And the way it goes into the disaster side.

So what with that to then do is there's a next phase of detection, and that's a production of heat and visible smocks. OK so we have a combination of detectors. So we don't get false alarms and spurious releases of systems. We have a combination of detection that will analyze the environment it's in.

So you get a first stage alarm, saying there's a fire condition in here, but it's just smoke and then we get heat. That kind

of thing.

It's more of a thermal.

Because the heat rate rises quick, we tend to go off changing temperature in the risk that it's in. So it might be the actual cabinet that those batteries are in and we have anything from spot detectors to linear heat sensors. We can run around the risk. Again, it depends on the format of the build of batteries and what the best units like.

But again, that's a choice of an engineering response to a risk. Yeah, yeah, because we've got so many things and parameters that we need to take into consideration. But at that point, you know, it's definitively going to go into thermal. Runaway under fire is imminent. So it could explode if the temperature and gas production is too high, or it might just fizzle into a progressive fire. So the better

question here, right? So like a campfire?

Yeah,

Yeah.

Campfire burns. Quite safe, really?

Yes

there's a few little puffs that come off it, but but you can. You can toasty marshmallows. All right.

Yeah

Now I remember the Galaxy Note phone.

Oh, you

remember that?

Yeah

like, how did

I get off on a tangent here? But didn't that

I remember being on planes where people are saying, if you've got a galaxy note, you need to tell us now. Yes, for a few weeks, whatever,

because their luggage.

Yeah, because the pouches were catching fire and whatever it was, the lithium ion,

the electrolyte pouch in the battery because they'd designed it too thinly or something. But the interesting thing about that is

I really am going off on a tangent here,

but that was all about explosions and projectiles, and it didn't look like a campfire. It was a pop

physical.

The audio is probably not going to sound good after that, but I guess what we're talking about here with lithium ion cells, are we talking about a fire heat? Smoke smells like residue?

I don't know what fire

the combination of all of those, but it's the very high temperatures that are involved because the materials are involved burn at high temperatures. But it's also as they burn, they produce explosive gases, and it's those explosive gases that can make the whole. Adamant that the batteries in a dangerous environment to actually go into

in the certainly the innocent incidents that have been in Texas and certainly in Liverpool just recently, there have been elements where there have been explosive gas releases. So you will see best modules now being made with explosion panels.

Yeah and it's in the containers.

It says yes, yes, or it's localized to whatever.

When you get an enclosure and an increase in pressure, you've got to design in a weak point so that you can which where the force from that blast is going to go, and it's usually upwards and out of the way

because a lot of the cells have got a lot of the cells.

So I know when I was at Centrica and we built bluescope, which was in 2017, which was big back then, it's 50 megawatts built in the building. They don't build them like that anymore. Magnificent thing, I Namaste. And that was Samsung SDI cells, and they had loads of things which

they had like overpressure the cells themselves,

cells prismatic

overpressure safety. You could put a nail through them and they were safe.

Yeah,

they had they were designed to pop in certain ways, mechanically, very, very well designed. I guess there's a nod here to the cell manufacturers who are also putting these things in place, too.

Oh Yeah. The design we

were going to see over the next 10 years. Such a radical change in battery density, physical size temperatures and people are already muting the no fire battery technology. We don't really believe there ever will be because even the batteries that say won't set on fire are setting on fire. Yeah, we're seeing the two buses in Paris recently in what was supposedly classed as non fire batteries burning quite happily.

But there is an element of it. So the funny,

there's probably a clever way to describe this, but it's like a sampling thing, right? Because the more that we have, the more electric vehicles get built. Yeah, there's a bigger sample for fires to happen. And so there's more fires in the news and your brain thinks, oh, there's more there's more lithium ion battery fires.

Yeah,

but there are more fires, but it's also way more lithium ion batteries out there. So there might be getting safer. But because you only hear about the worst case scenario and there's more of them about, then you kind of

there's like a bias in your head where you think there's more of them.

It makes the news,

it makes the news.

It does make the news because

the main reason is because the usually more newsworthy.

The fire in Australia that recently where you could see 1 40 foot container burning burning quite merrily in the middle of another 40 or 50 containers. It makes great news because there's lots of fire engines, lots of water being squirted. Yeah, but it was contained.

So just sort of one container didn't spread to the other containers.

No, no.

Just it.

It was. Fire brigade did a wonderful job of getting the fire surrounded, getting cooling water onto everything, and then it's a case of managing it as an incident for its duration of whatever it might be. Yeah, and the batteries, even if you've extinguished them, have the potential to have the potential to reignite maybe 40 hours later, a week later when they're sat there in a safe location.

Wow so didn't know that?

Yeah, it's probably the

different technologies that are of batteries, but certain technologies have an ability to do that.

Well, I guess we should say here we're just talking about lithium ion batteries, right? We're not talking about vanadium flow or other systems.

I think any of that is.

Batteries that technologies that we are seeing in back units today be their lithium ion phosphate or the earlier lithium ion type of batteries.

I don't profess to be a chemist or but from our perspective, we would treat them the same way because they're surrounded by combustible materials. So whatever happens when that battery sets on fire, it's going to take control gear with it, cabling with it, all sorts of things that surround it.

So we've got to consider the source of the risk and try. And

with fire suppression, you're trying to stop the growth.

So you're looking at containment first to try and stop that propagation from one rack to another, from one cell to another.

And when it's in the deep seated nature and it's difficult to get your suppressant in there, you end up with a bigger fire so it becomes more of a long term containment.

And insurance companies obviously want to see things minimum damage. And as back up and running as fast as possible, but with the nature of the risk as a whole, you're dealing with. A fire that is always going to progress into a bigger fire. Yeah so the suppression mediums have to be designed to try and contain it for as long as possible period to allow cool down and the propagation from one cell to the next.

Yeah OK. Makes sense, I guess on a high level. Just one thing that just occurred to me is without getting into the detail that all parts of the legacy energy system have got fire risk too. So yeah, you know, when I worked offshore and gas platforms, for example, you basically sitting on a massive compressed bit of gas. Yeah, it

would look,

we tried to reduce ignition sources. Yeah, same with oil, same with power generation, with coal units and gas units. So whichever,

I don't know why I'm making the case so hard for renewables here. I just feel like I feel like I need to

have to say that this is a very safe technology

to do why I'm doing this. I don't know. I just try to make the point are they are

getting defensive here anyway. So we talked a little bit about it's a bit like what I teach you at school where you have to smell for gas and then put the back of your hand on the back of the door to see whether it's hot

with the doors.

Basically, what you guys are doing with sensors?

Yeah

what about when there is a fire? How do you put a fire out on a battery? Let's talk about, for example, a 40 foot container filled with lithium ion batteries. Let's not say LFB or NMC or any of that stuff, but just a normal standard, run of the mill 40 foot container full of batteries. And we have a fire in a cell. Yeah, and it's going to spread

now. How do you put the fire out? What are the options? And b, what are the fire service? Fire department, fire

Americanism.

Say about it?

Yeah well, the

oh, and the insurers

insurance is

a big question. They're sorry.

Yeah I mean, insurers have a bigger part to play and should be consulted very early in the process. So when you're applying for planning permission, all the rest of it, really, it's to get in bed with an insurer because they will, at the end of the day, have to carry a can for the risk

and it's going to be their cost, so they'll have a preset way of doing things in their mind. So and because these fires burn hot, the process is to cool.

So we're looking at if you can reduce the temperature, you reduce the fire size and you will get ultimately once these cells burn out,

because there's probably very little that can stop them from burning. Once they burn out, it's a cooling process and it's more of a containment than suppression and extinguishing.

Well, let's take what

that kind of disagrees with something I thought, but I'm probably wrong, you're the expert, but we've got containers out there that have got gas suppression systems, right?

Yeah,

a big gas. Like

a handy gas thing, but a thinner one. Yeah, that's got nozzles that will fill the container with gases as a fire. Yeah but does that gas doesn't cool it, right?

There's a couple of chemical gases that will, but they don't cool it sufficiently enough. So our advice would be not to use those gases.

Really?

Yeah.

So your advice is not to use gases in containers.

There are some gases that are fine, but certainly we've seen in the field certain gases, and

I don't want to name them because it's not the right thing to do. But there are certain gases that are being used that will fight the fire in the cables and electrics. Fine, yeah, but won't have any effect at all on the lithium ion batteries.

OK, interesting. So what do you say instead? Should people be

a.? We said there's a different answer for different systems. Yeah, but well, my intuition.

What was actually changed a little bit

was electrical fires you shouldn't use water on. That's my gut feeling, right, because electric and water don't mix.

It's the very basics of,

yeah, I know of a number of systems out there. They've got a big fire tanks. You know, the planning commission is going in. They've got a massive fire, water tanks, they've got sprinkler systems and they advised to do that by fire consultants. So does that mean that the water systems are a good option?

In short, yes,

right. OK,

because it's what we're looking to try and do is prevent that fire from affecting other parts of the facility. So what you're looking to do is cool and contain so sprinklers by their very nature.

You might find this surprising,

but they're not designed to put fires out.

All right

now, they're designed to contain a fire and stop it where it's propagating from.

So when you go into a building, especially if you go into a factory fire that's on fire and the sprinklers are operating, you will very closely see that the source of that fire, if it's big enough, will be surrounded by active sprinklers and it be retaining it in its place. The fire may be too large for a single sprinkler to deal with, but it's not progressing through the building, so it becomes manageable.

So what would the water element that we're trying to use on bass systems is there specifically for that purpose? It's to cool, manage and contain with possibly the added benefit of extinguishing because it's cooled sufficiently.

What about cost cost?

So I asked you those questions. And I didn't get all the answers, but that's my own fault for asking you five questions in one. But I want to jump to costs now.

Yeah

so is gas or water or gas or liquid?

I assume it's all water. I assume it's ionized or something like that.

It won't be because when you diagnose water, it becomes unbalanced. So it's looking for those

that will

rebalance itself with it when it comes into social things.

So sorry.

So water or gas, which is more expensive,

I would say,

oh, it's a good question. It depends how you configure them. But if you're on small modular systems, say if you were on 1 40 foot container, it's going to be cheaper to put gas in. Or we have a product that's a condensed aerosol, which has gone through all sorts of testing to say yes, it can hold back, contain and extinguish lithium ion batteries.

So we tend to put our ions in one fire, so to speak.

Also So you guys do sell or install or design gas systems on batteries.

We we also

it's not all just as bad an all waters.

No, it isn't right.

We have lots of different gases that can be chosen and we can pick from any range of gases they operate.

They may be inert gas, they may be chemical gases. Limit CO2 is no good in this

are quite nasty, aren't they? If you're going to put a fire out, I imagine you do want to breathe it.

Well, we've got to in all of what we're doing, consider the environmental impact of what we're doing as well. Because when you do put a lot of water on these, you get fire, water runoff.

I only got contamination from.

Yes

Yeah.

So it could be if you've got water courses close to it or drains that all of that contaminated water is going to end up into the environment. So yeah, it will come down on you. And

so you need to bundle it, put it in a big swimming pool kind of thing.

There may be areas and swamps that you can put in place that would contain an element of water. So we tend to for rather than sprinklers, which may use 100 liters per minute from one head for water mist that would use 200

liters a minute for one. And

so it's like

at the minimum.

Right, OK.

So if you have

to figure out what that looks like,

you've got,

well, it's almost a two liter bottle of Coke every second.

Yes Yes. Yeah, it's

a Or if you get the ones from Pizza Hut and they give you 1 and 1/2 liters or 0.25, it's kind of one of those, isn't it? Every, every second

bite,

it's a lot. It's a lot of water.

And the problem with spring sprinklers is they're very good at containment and that's why they're being used. But the vast majority ends up on the floor and running out and not on the fire itself. So it's acting to cool the surrounding area very well. But what we're trying to do with water is utilize water better and get more of water's capabilities for heat absorption from it. And

so of drop? Yes, surface area.

That's the key.

OK,

Yeah.

So we've talked about gas a little bit. We've talked about water. I'm sure we could talk about this for four hours, but I want to talk about insurers. And what did a fire the fire service say? Yeah

you know, OK, you and I own a nice big batch somewhere. We're very happy with it. And then it catches fire and we call,

do we have a button? I don't know. Maybe do we have a button?

It would be an order. Limited response

I

get from a building now, so there may be an automated alarm and you get what they call a predetermined attendance of fire engines, which will probably at a best site at least three or four.

All right. So this is really exciting.

Yes so you know that you're going to have a response, but depending on where this is, it could be in city center, in a building, in a basement or on a roof, or it could be in a farm that's 20 or 30 minutes away from someone.

Yeah so for hours, it's probably outside the building or next to a big substation in the middle of nowhere, which is, I guess, is a good thing. You want to be in the middle of nowhere.

Yeah

so income, the blues and twos, if you like this is all like

the five-year-old me is already really excited about a four fire engines turning up and then all your buds turn up, turn up with their gear and then what do they do?

First thing they do is stand back, make an assessment of the risk.

What they'll have done prior to that is they'll have made themselves and local crews aware of what risk they're coming to. So on their attendance, they'll get information

fired at such and such a place

so they know it is about risk. They know they're going into a sticky situation.

And unless there is a life risk where they need to make a rescue, they're going to stand back, carry out a good risk assessment and then look to contain that fire. They're not going to want to make an entry into there where they can put themselves at risk. So life is paramount and capital cost is second. Yeah, and then they've got to

even know we mortgaged our houses to build this battery.

It's

still not going in there.

No, there's no live risk. So it's I think there's a growing attitude that it should be the responsibility of the people that are building it to take care of their fire risk and supplement it by local Fire Authority because they're not deemed as experts in this type of risk.

So they're going to an active fire and the only medium they've got to put that fire out is water. Yeah so they're going to stand back and they're going to surround that and pour water on to the other best units around it to

stop them.

Yeah, and that's going to be allowed to burn out.

That feels good. So we might lose one container out of 40.

Yeah and I think given consumerism working an it, yeah, they are

saying, OK, what can we afford to lose as a risk? And that kind of meat is the protection levels.

It's quite nice, actually. So one of the second order,

one of the effects of building batteries in shipping containers, which in itself.

And

I've said it a few ideas a few times. But you know, if you do actually 10 years ago, we're going to build grid scale batteries and someone said, we're going to put them in shipping containers.

Yeah,

I probably would have thought it was silly, but anyway, they're everywhere, and there's a lot of really good reasons for that. But what are the additional good reasons is that you can put them distance apart from each other, right?

So you get a fire and a container

separation

is good, which is good.

Yeah, a natural steel walls that will take some

doors may be blown off or panels may have been exploding. Panels may have been dislodged.

The John Cain bit. We need to kind of put in here.

But yeah, but at least it gives the fire service a

lot. John Cain, Michael Payne, Michael Cain,

Michael

Michael Caine,

Michael Cain. You're only supposed to

there. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Paul

cares about.

He's a friend of his daughter. Oh

Yeah. Anyway, so the doors might be blown off. That sounds very exciting, too. Yeah don't get in the way of that.

Yeah,

but you've got some separation. What about

so we talked about insurers for a moment, but bringing all this together? What would be your advice to people who aren't fire experts, perhaps in the investment community who want to get into this asset class, want to build these assets, see the huge societal benefit of them? Yeah, what should they be doing to?

What's your advice?

I think the best starting block is to involve very early people that have an interest in the site. So that would be local Fire Authority who have to have a say because they're attending and in particular, get to know the insurers and their attitude to that risk.

And then what you can do is the fire service will feed in safe roads into it. So they've got access points and safe areas to work in, depending on the wind and environmental conditions. But the insurers will say, OK, they'll quantify the risk levels, and that might be best based on a lot of different things, and it could be the internal structure and build and format of the bass. The battery technology and also the cabling and grid connections. And whether it's

is it a scam? Is there a standard? You know, if I'm investing in it, I want to own one of these batteries. Can I in due diligence? Can I say, you know, has it been built to standard x1 1 two or whatever? Which means that from an insurance perspective, we're comfortable. Let's take an adequate precaution against fire.

I think this is where some of the difficulties lie in. There isn't one universal standard that everybody can refer back to. So what we tend to do with face as we look at British standards or UL standards, which is a universal us Underwriters Laboratory standard that people can look at and say, this is my marker in the sand

and we're starting to see them develop and come through and which is what the whole industry needs. And there are two stand out guidelines at the moment NFPA five five, which is a guidance document and best practice

NFPA. going to take a stab at it. National fire Protection Association.

Boom,

boom. That's that's made my day.

But the one that has more teeth

and has

got an acronym yet is Earl 5,

4 zero a so I forget the numbers. listen, there's a letter on the air

on the end.

Yeah, the

universal

no.

Well, underwriters laboratory, which is us.

So it's the insurance driven standards. So anything in the US has to be from a plug socket to

it's the British standard

and take a photo of it. Yeah,

so they have concentrated on developing a standard for the build of best systems,

and they have got four levels of test. And part of that is the fire suppression system.

So a great way to hang your hat on something is if it conforms to that UL standard. So I think

we should put

these free. Can people read these for free? Can we put links in the show notes to anybody who's interested?

Yeah, there will be. Yeah,

you can access them online, but I think some of them, you've got to pay to download.

Brilliant,

but they are free to view online, I believe.

OK, that's good. That's good.

But yeah,

think make it a really important five specification and then make everyone pay into it. What a nonsense.

I mean, it's in its fourth derivation. I think now it is useful and the amount of time is spent on it

and it's a constantly moving program. Yeah, so and it costs an absolute fortune to fire test to these.

OK, so maybe they do they do have a good reason to charge.

Yeah and once they've got to stand, it tends not to change too often. So usually, but it's standards every 10 years. But if you get a technology like batteries that are moving so quickly, it demands far more change because

iterating and iterating and it's right.

Yeah, so fire systems now should be looking to have performance standards and designs ratified to you, UL.

So we've got a couple of key ones to look out for. This is an NFPA is something like that

and four, eight, 5.5

and a UL one with an eye on the knife. I see the

nitro 5, 4 or a

well, yeah, this is a problem you've got if you got that wrong and we've got people building things to a standard.

Yeah,

all right. I want to give you a chance now.

Anything you want to talk. Anything else you want to talk about or anything you want to plug

because we've covered a lot of ground here. I want to say thank you for coming on and having a reasonable conversation about this because there's a lot of scaremongering

there is.

And actually fire fire related companies have actually

the cynic in me would say,

have got a stake in that.

Oh yes, I think

we've had a very, very normal, rational. Nation today, so yeah, over to you, anything else you think we should talk about? We haven't mentioned or you want to plug?

I think from our perspective, it's we always operate from a risk assessment. And whilst we have lots of different products, there are certainly ones that are better than others. And what we look at on the prevention side, which is the most important, is a product called lion tamer. It's globally

lion two lion

tamer.

Oh,

it's a great Yeah. US products manufactured by Honeywell and we as well as manufacturing our own equipment, distribute four of their key product manufacturers. And that's one of our products that we would offer.

So can we get a lion tamer on our battery? Is that what you're saying?

Absolutely that's the sniffer. That's the best

sniffer.

Hopefully prevent thermal runaway from occurring.

OK, so you heard it here. First, get your lion tamer

lion

sniffing lion tamers on your batteries.

Yeah,

and you guys can help people.

We can, indeed. Yeah, but the second phase of that is detecting thermal runaway and then starting that containment and control process and the product we use

again. We don't manufacture this us manufacture because

it's

got a better name than

it has got

it. Yeah

statics statics, which

is I'm not sure it's as good as lion tamer.

No, it's not as good.

We'll go for the Leopard Tim. And

yeah,

but the product has been tested independently by both DMV and to UL by laboratories, and it's been proved to contain and in some instances, some instances because you can never guarantee to extinguish it. So and then the third is we would use water mist.

So it's to consider this three stage process. Get your insurers involved to discuss this, to see what they'll be happy with because they may just be happy with one of them if they're quantify the risk loss to them adequate. So, yeah, early conversations all the way around build it into the specification because what we're finding is fire systems are left as the poor cousin at the end, and the price and cost comes as a shock.

So you've got a lion tamer, it's a sniff. It statics

it,

it contain, contain it. And then an A mist it.

Yeah

easy,

easy, easy.

All right. We're going to leave it there. I want to say thank you so much for coming on Face to face driving all this way to Belgium.

It's nice to see people face to face again.

Yeah, it's fantastic. And for anyone who's watching or listening, do let us know what you thought of this conversation.

There'll be some links in the comments, so you can find out more about what we've discussed. And Yeah. See you next time.

Thank you. you.