Fire Safety Myths BUSTED Facts vs Lies in Battery Storage | EP 300

Think battery storage systems are fire hazards? The data tells a different story.

Today on the Clean Power Hour, Joe DeBellis, Global Head of Clean Energy at FireTrace, reveals shocking findings from a survey of nearly 4,000 Americans about battery storage safety. While headlines focus on rare fire incidents, 71% of Americans actually support battery energy storage technology.

Here's what you'll discover:

The surprising truth about battery fires: 89% start from electrical components, not the batteries themselves. Only 11% originate from battery cells or modules. Fire incidents have dropped 97% between 2018-2023, with just one fire per 35 gigawatts of installed capacity.

Why public opposition exists: 52% of the 29% who oppose battery projects lack basic information about the technology. Misinformation drives fear more than actual risk data.

What's inside battery containers: Beyond batteries, these systems contain HVAC equipment, power conversion systems, battery management systems, and control cabinets. Each component presents different fire risks requiring specific suppression strategies.

FireTrace's dual approach to safety: Clean agent systems protect electrical components without damaging electronics. Aerosol technology using potassium carbonate prevents thermal runaway in battery cells.

How developers can improve project approval: Proactive safety planning beats reactive measures. Early engagement with authorities having jurisdiction and communities builds trust through education.

The regulatory landscape: UL 9540, NFPA 855, and evolving safety standards are creating better frameworks for safe deployment.

The key takeaway: Focus fire prevention efforts on electrical components, not just batteries. This approach addresses 89% of actual fire risks while building community trust through education.

Connect with Guest 

LinkedIn: Joe DeBellis

Website: Firetrace

Transcript

Joe DeBellis: 0:51

See the headlines and get very scared about battery energy storage projects, especially in their community. 71% of Americans, an overwhelming majority, actually supported the technology, and it was really just kind of that vocal minority that were opposing the best sites and diving further into that which we could discuss. A lot of that opposition came from just a lack of understanding and misinformation and not having enough information about battery, energy storage, the benefits, the technology and the risk factors

intro: 1:20

there are you speeding the energy transition here at the Clean Power Hour, our host Tim Montague, bring you the best in solar, batteries and clean technologies every week. Want to go deeper into decarbonization. We do too. We're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to it together. We can speed the energy transition

Tim Montague: 1:47

today on the clean power hour battery fire safety, it's a major concern for project developers, whether you're a CNI or utility scale developer, there's a number of issues that we're going to dive in today with my guest, Joe Debellis. He is the Global Head of clean energy for fire trace, and the issues are four fold. Okay, public acceptance and NIMBY nimbyism, lack of standardization or lack of standardized regulations across jurisdictions. Need for proactive versus reactive fire safety planning and knowledge gaps among communities and some stakeholders. So we're going to dive into all these things. I'm so thrilled to have Joe on the show. Welcome Joe.

Joe DeBellis: 2:32

Thank you, Tim. Hey, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Tim Montague: 2:35

Check out all of our content at clean power hour.com Give us a rating and a review. Follow us on YouTube, reach out to me on LinkedIn. I love hearing from my listeners. So Joe, how did you come to fire trace, and what exactly is fire trace up to in the world?

Joe DeBellis: 2:51

Yeah, again, thanks for having me. Tim. So I've been with fire trace now for about three years. I've been in the energy industry, though, however, for about over 1515, years now, a lot of that was working with utility companies the oil and gas world for a bit, and then really focusing in on renewable energy. So about three years ago, made the switch from wire and cable, which was my previous industry, into fire trace, which is fire suppression fire safety company and industry. So what fire trace focuses on is manufacturing fire suppression solutions for multiple industries, but one of our core industries is the renewable energy sector. So really zeroing in on how can we protect not only lives and livelihoods but these renewable assets? So wind turbines, battery storage containers, solar inverters, things of that nature. So we've really put a hard press on on the renewable energy industry, and we've been very successful in helping provide solutions to our customers while also keeping safety at the top of our minds.

Tim Montague: 3:54

And you know, one of the cool things that I learned in our pre interview Joe is that the majority of fires related to batteries are not necessarily because of the battery cells themselves or the modules. There are other things in battery containers that can be problematic at the end of the day. We need to improve our fire safety, and we want to be installing 99.9% safe equipment. Bar none. Period, right? Full stop. Nobody likes fires, but anything in the built environment that has electricity involved is a potential hazard for fire. Electrical fires happen all the time, and so you know, you see the the battery events in the news or the electric vehicle events in the news, because they're still novel, relatively speaking. But we're going to get into what are the potential problem areas when it comes to battery containers. What developers need to know, and I would love to, you know, dig into some of the technical aspects of how you guys work with OEMs and other stakeholders to develop really good protocols. Joe, why don't you set the table a little bit you guys have done a big survey, which is very interesting. But what is your introduction to this topic for our listeners?

Joe DeBellis: 5:20

Absolutely, and you kind of hit the nail on the head previously with some of your intro comments there. It's really it's trying to battle misinformation, misinformation and folks not being educated enough on the technology, and so you did mention a little bit of the pretty surprising statistics that the majority of the battery energy storage fires that we've seen in our past did not originate from the batteries themselves. There are electrical components. It's just the. Inherent risk of electronics throughout basically every industry that there could be a fire, just the inherent risk. And so a lot of these electrical cabinets, BMS, systems, things that are inside of the containers that have that inherent risk actually were the origination of some of these fires. So I believe it was 89% of the fires started from these electrical components. Only 11% of the fires started from the batteries. And so when you think lithium ion battery, that's what everybody kind of zeroes in on. And I think a lot of the community also hears lithium ion batteries being installed, and they inherently think that they are risky and prone to fires, but really the majority of the majority of the fires started elsewhere and then propagated over and so, you know, we did release a survey recently where we polled nearly 4000 citizens across the US. So we tried to make it as comprehensive as possible, covering all 50 states. And we asked certain questions about battery, energy storage. And surprisingly, Tim, what we found was, while there are a vocal minority of folks that see the headlines and get very scared about battery energy storage projects, especially in their community, 71% of Americans, an overwhelming majority, actually supported the technology, and it was really just kind of that vocal minority that were opposing the best sites and diving further into that which we could discuss, a lot of that opposition came from just a lack of understanding and misinformation and not having enough information about battery, energy storage, the benefits the technology and the risk factors there. So it was pretty overwhelmingly positive in terms of the reviews and the polls, but kind of wanted some wanted to discuss that a little bit with you as well. And I think that's a good kickoff to to really paint the picture in terms of what the communities are really thinking when you take a look at a comprehensive poll like

Tim Montague: 7:44

that. Yeah, I want to talk about the poll, but first, let's set the table a little more with what are the elements of a battery system. I'll lay out my basic understanding. You've got a container, okay, often a, you know, a NEMA four. It's, it's out there in the weather, it's weatherproof. It's got a space conditioning system to maintain a, you know, reasonable temperature. Batteries don't like to get too hot or too cold. So there's some kind of HVAC system. There's the batteries themselves. The battery modules in racks, very similar to server racks, right? And sometimes the batteries are in a separate container from the PCs the power conversion system. The power conversion system is a rack of inverters that are dual, two directional, right? They are converting DC to AC and AC to DC. Unlike a solar inverter, which is unidirectional, generally speaking, a PCS is bi directional, but otherwise it is a very similar device, but it's doing heavy lifting, and I'm more familiar with some manufacturers like chin power systems, where they keep the PCs in a separate container from the batteries. And then you mentioned the BMS. What other elements of a battery system are there?

Joe DeBellis: 9:05

No, I mean, those are the core elements, and you're correct. So some folks are implementing some of the PCs to control systems outside or separated out, a lot of the original containers, or some of the large energy storage containers. They will have control cabinets, electrical cabinets in there, monitoring or also providing inputs to, again, the HVAC systems and the BMS and things of that nature. And so it's really a lot of these control systems that we're seeing, as well as the capacitors and inverters and things of that nature, that could be a potential high risk scenario. So generally, the battery racks here, correct, are separated out into one side of the container. When you're trying to really maximize efficiencies in space, there are different elements inside of that container, with the control cabinets and things of that nature that could pose an electrical risk.

Tim Montague: 10:50

Yeah. And I think of your comment about, well, the majority of fires started elsewhere than the battery modules or cells themselves, but at the end of the day, like, if there's a thermal event, a spark that then propagates to the lithium ion materials. Lithium is extremely reactive, and once it has a thermal runaway, it is hard to stop that fire. Obviously, you want to stop things as early as possible, and maybe you could give us a quick overview of these events, so to speak, abnormal events inside a battery container. What are the major types of events, and how do you? How does fire trace, provide and address safety in these systems?

Joe DeBellis: 11:40

Yeah, absolutely. And so you're. Absolutely right when you take a look at lithium ion batteries, if the batteries are compromised in a certain way, that could prove to start a catastrophic event. So really, taking a look at the battery composition in and of itself and the structure, and ensuring that it stays structurally sound is most important. So we take a little bit of a two pronged approach when we look at battery energy storage systems. And really one is to protect and ensure that there is no event that happens outside of the battery rack and propagates over. We utilize clean agent systems, very simple systems, very effective for electronics in the sense that they're not conductive, safe for the environment, safe for personnel. So if a system does discharge inside of a cabinet, system or one of the electrical systems inside of the container, it does not fry all the electronics and potentially cause even more damage. So it really just eliminates the fire, dissipates heat out of the equation and good to go, eliminates the fire right at the source, on the separate side of things, when you're addressing battery storage and the chemical composition of lithium ion, we take a different approach there, where we use an aerosol technology. And the aerosol technology really dispenses kind of a potassium carbonate that essentially creates free radicals that bind to the fires free radicals, and eliminates that fire chain reaction. And so we've seen through testing multiple different tests, that when you're taking a look at early onset fires that are happening inside of the batteries, that the aerosol systems are very effective at immediately cooling the fire, immediately cooling the batteries and preventing thermal runaway. Obviously, thermal runaway is a giant issue across the industry. And when I say giant issue, not that all of these batteries are turning into thermal runaway, but when I say issue, it's more so at the top of people's minds. They want to prevent these catastrophic fires, and so using that two pronged approach is really what we feel is the safest. But then you're taking a look at a battery, energy storage container, and really trying to be proactive in implementing some of these safety measures. So outside of what we do on the fire suppression side, you know, there's plenty of proactive measures that are taken and can be taken in terms of early detection, for off gassing, or for heat explosion proof venting inside of the container. So there's a lot that the industry is working to kind of not only engineer out some of these problems within these battery energy storage systems, but also create a safer environment to ensure that if there is an issue, it's handled appropriately quickly and safely.

Tim Montague: 14:20

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Joe DeBellis: 15:56

That's a great question. Tim, so I wouldn't necessarily say that there is a weak link in the chain. I think that there's a lot that the industry is doing, and that's kind of across the spectrum between, you know, OEMs, developers, end users, as well as folks that are on the boards and working groups of these standards, the hJS do a lot, the local communities do a lot to try and ensure safety. I think the weak link, so to speak, when we take a look at it, is more so the communication across the board. So it's trying to get everybody on the same page. I think that's a little bit of what created, a little bit of the stagger when battery, energy storage, really started taking off and we started implementing these projects, the fact that different regions. Missions across the US, different states, different hJS. They all had their thoughts. They all had different standards that they were looking at. They all had different safety measures that they were taking a look at. And the problem was everybody was doing things a little bit differently to start. And I think once we start really working as a group, and started working as a group, I think everybody's understanding that we need to figure out a way to open up that communication a little bit better and standardize what we're doing so that it's the safest, most efficient, most effective way to implement some of these projects, and that also goes towards the public as well. So it's not only what the industry is doing, it's how do we feed that information and correct the misinformation over to the public. And so how do we educate folks to understand exactly what the technology is doing, the benefits of the technology, and then also a lot of the safety measures that we're implementing across the country?

Tim Montague: 17:37

And in general, would you say the safety standards of the UL safety standards are adequate.

Joe DeBellis: 17:45

I think they are adequate in the sense that we are certainly implementing the right path, I think, to create a safe environment for the community and for these projects. And I think, you know, you take a look at NFPA 855, and then ul 9540 and and some of the test methods and risk based fire suppression standards that they're putting forward, I think all of it is really taking in a lot of the information that we've uncovered over the last few years, and a lot of these working groups are trying to put together essentially the best plan forward to create a safe environment for These projects to thrive, but I do think that there's a lot happening, especially like within UL, in terms of the test methods for thermal runaway and some of these batteries. And how do we get these batteries structurally sound so that when they go through some of this testing, you know, we're engineering out a lot of the problems, but then also taking a look at our experience in the past. You know, you know, you take a look at some of these large fires that involved energy storage or lithium ion batteries, and what did we learn from that? You know, was it a fault of the battery themselves, or was it an issue with water ingress or building structure, or whatever the case may be that some of these forensics have uncovered after we've evaluated some of these issues in the past, and so I think it's a combination of information that we're constantly uploading and feeding to get these things just right.

Tim Montague: 19:11

And when it comes to authorities having jurisdiction, there are various flavors. You know, there's the cities and counties, they are the ultimate authority, but there's also fire districts and fire departments. And often times the hj, you know, the city or the county will will kick things over to the fire department, you know, because they're the ones who have to really clean up the mess if there is a mess. But because batteries are still relatively new in the landscape. Many of these authorities don't have that much experience, and so they're reliant on, you know, whatever information they're gleaning. I mean, I don't know if what Joe, when you think about how a HJ is, are preparing for this the onslaught of development right that's happening in certain parts of the country, in California, in Texas, here in Illinois, in New York, in Massachusetts, there are certain states right, where it's game on for both CNI and utility scale batteries, not to not to mention residential How are HJ is preparing to have thoughtful responses to these applications,

Joe DeBellis: 20:32

you know, and we speak a lot with hJS across the country, and you know, we've been involved In many organizations where fire marshals have created or started almost, I would say educational sessions or seminars. They'll have working groups where they'll bring folks in to learn about different technologies or or how to stay on top of some of these projects. And I do think hJS are working to fully educate themselves at the same time. I also think that's part of the responsibility that that we have as manufacturers of fire suppression, or people that are evaluating fire risk, as well as the developers. Right? If you take a look at the planning phase of a lot of these projects, ensuring that the local fire services, hJS fire marshals, ensuring that they're involved in the planning and the design of these battery storage sites. It's it's pretty essential to not only comply, you know, with with different standards, but to make sure that you're getting that community support. And then the fire marshals and hJS are fully educated on what's going in and what these safety measures are. And so I think, with the notoriety or a lot of. The Press that some of the issues that have happened with energy storage throughout the years, obviously, they've made big headlines, but I think a lot of HJ is out there taking a look at that and trying to understand and educate themselves to say, hey, if this project's going into our community, how do we implement these safety measures? What are going to be our standard protocols for safety. If there is an issue, what's the proper spacing of these containers? You know? How can we put our input into this so that if there is an issue, that not only is the community safe, but these folks that are the first responders are also going to be safe and putting out the fire or mitigating the issues that happen with it. So I do think there's a lot of that education that's happening throughout different communities and hJS and fire marshals,

Tim Montague: 22:30

and when you think about improving the success rate of getting projects permitted from a development perspective, do you see a major difference In how developers need to communicate with the public versus hJS.

Joe DeBellis: 22:48

You know? I don't, I don't necessarily think there's a difference in between the communication between the public and the hJS. I think it's more so being proactive and getting everybody together, right? I think the the public relies on information from the hJS and the fire marshals in their community, and then the developer, their responsibility is to educate and make sure that everybody has a level playing field of of understanding. And so, you know, kind of going back into the survey that I mentioned before, that we could dive into in a little bit. But one of the things that really stood out was that of that small minority, that 29% of the Americans that opposed energy storage, an overwhelming majority of those folks, 52% of them, actually did not have any information about energy storage. So that was why they were essentially scared of having these in their community. So they opposed it because of the headlines that they've seen in the news, but 52% half of these folks really didn't have any sort of information about battery storage. So it was one of those things where if the developers can bring together the hJS fire marshals as well as the community during these planning sessions, and have everybody kind of understand what they're doing and what the project is about the technology, how energy storage works, the relatively low risk that energy storage does have on on some of these incidents, it's better for everybody. So I don't think there's a different approach between the communication. I think it's more so kind of bringing everybody together, if that makes sense.

Tim Montague: 24:22

And let's we're going to get into the survey, but I am struggling a little bit to understand exactly fire traces role. Obviously, you have a technical solution. So you have technology that gets installed by manufacturers and integrators in these battery containers, but you also are serving as a consultant to developers. Is that right?

Joe DeBellis: 24:50

Absolutely. Yeah, we, we certainly do that on on occasion. So we will work with so our expertise is fire and fire suppression right at the at the end of the day, what we do is try to make sure that folks are protecting themselves, their livelihood as well as their assets. And so we try to create a safe environment, especially with these renewable energy projects. And many times, we'll work side by side with developers to not only discuss fire risk and ensure that they fully understand the technology that is going into their planned projects, but also helping them with, how do we communicate to the community? So if there is a permit hearing or there is a planning session with the community, how do we get people comfortable with having these projects essentially in their backyards, right? You mentioned, you know, the the opposition that a lot of folks have, and I think again, kind of going back to that misinformation side of things. It's, you know, we are the fire experts, but having a clear understanding that we could promote over to the developers, and then developers can discuss with the community to say, Hey, these are the mitigation strategies that we're putting into our project. And it's, you know, we're just on the fire side of things, but there's plenty of other things in regards to safety that can be talked about with these communities. And so, you know, you take a look at some folks that are possibly concerned about environmental impacts fire and safety. These are all discussions that can happen at the planning phase. We on the fire side of things, as fire experts, will certainly work with developers, work with the community to ensure that everybody has a clear understanding on the fire risk, how it's being mitigated, and really, essentially, hopefully soothe concerns, to understand that these risks are relatively low when you have the proper mitigation strategies.

Tim Montague: 26:40

So let's talk about the survey. What was the impetus behind the survey? Who was it sent to? And let's get into some of the results.

Joe DeBellis: 26:49

Yeah, absolutely. Tim, so the impetus really for us, it was trying to get a clear understanding. You know, as we just mentioned, we do work with developers and other folks during the planning phase to discuss some of these projects with the communities. And we've seen, you know, different communities that have had, I would say, a little bit of backlash to some of these projects or just general concerns. And so, you know, over the past couple of years, we've seen, actually, I think in the last year, there were about nine projects energy storage related, that were delayed and or pushed off or canceled due to community concerns. And at the end of the day, we understand right the community has a right to be concerned about the safety of their community, of their people. But at the same time, we started really wanting to dig down into what was the root cause of that, and we essentially came up with the idea to issue a survey across the US, and we polled nearly 4000 citizens across all 50 states. So we wanted it to be very comprehensive. And as mentioned previously, these results actually surprised us quite a bit. You hear about a lot of this opposition, you see the headlines in the news, but 71% of Americans actually support energy storage. They supported the technology. It was really the 29% that we seem to understand is going to be the more vocal minority, and they oppose energy storage sites. So it was an overwhelming majority that did support it. But when we drill down with further questions into the 29% of people that opposed it, we understood that it really came down to a lot of misinformation about energy storage technology, people zeroing in on some of these high profile, isolated energy storage fires, you know, in California, New York, Arizona, and then just a lack of knowledge regarding energy storage and technology in general. 52% of that, 29% so about half of the folks that opposed it didn't have any knowledge about energy storage at all. They were just kind of zeroing in on some of the the past headlines. And so, you know, we wanted to make sure that we had a clear and comprehensive survey that really kind of let us understand a little bit more of where the community was heading, and that could help us help the developers as well. And so, you know, one thing that we also really took from the results as well was when we started asking questions about if people were a little bit more aware of the benefits of energy storage. Would that sway their opinion, or would that make them more comfortable? So when we took a look at the survey results, 52% of the US citizens that were opposed said that they would actually be more comfortable with energy storage sites if they had a clear understanding of the benefits. So not only just the technology, but also the benefits. And so, you know, you drill further into that, and you take a look at, you know, better, reliable power, cheaper electricity bills, economic benefits, more jobs in the community. And so it was an interesting thing to read, to understand that a lot of citizens, if they just had a little bit more education, and we wiped out some of that misinformation, could easily sway from, you know, a somebody that's opposed to a project in their backyard to, you know what, this is actually pretty good for the community. There's relatively low risk. So yeah, it might be something that we would support.

Tim Montague: 30:13

So 4000 people were surveyed. How did you collect this? Those responses, and how many states are represented in that in those results.

Joe DeBellis: 30:25

So we polled nearly 4000 citizens across all 50 states, so we had a sample from each state. Okay, we did use a third party so it wasn't related to to fire trace. So we hired a third party. I'll have to get you the name of the census group, but they actually performed the survey on our behalf. We did help in structuring the questions, but we did not sway the questions, and it was really just kind of black or white. Do you support? What would help you support? Or why would you oppose it? And so we did poll across all 50 states, and the reason we did that was to kind of get a better understanding and a pure sample across all the regions in the US. So there might be some folks that don't have a lot of renewable energy projects happening in there. Yeah,

Tim Montague: 31:10

that's the first thing that strikes me, though, is is obviously some jurisdictions have a lot more experience. Southern California, for example, do the results demonstrate that in some regard, the the exposure that the public has to CNI or utility storage is going to be quite biased geographically, right? They're not. Those projects aren't happening everywhere. They are concentrated in certain states. So you know, when you pull out Texas and. California and New York and Massachusetts and Illinois. Do the results differ in some work, some regard,

Joe DeBellis: 31:49

you know, and not as much as you would, you would think. And we thought the same thing. So we took a look and kind of drilled down a little bit more into the results, because we thought the same thing. Maybe it was a lot of the potentially favorable folks that were concentrated in these areas, or reverse certainly. And we could share a little bit more of those results with you, I'll have to drill into exactly the percentages there. But we did dive into that, and we did not see as big of a correlation as we would have thought. Where we do think that a lot of the potential lack of information may be happening is some of the areas where maybe they're not too prone to some of these technologies and so, but, you know, we did drill into that, and it was something that we kept in mind. But also we want to have kind of a clear picture and really survey the entire US, because a lot of these projects are kind of shifting around. There are different areas that are in process of of development. But really, it was one of those things where we want to get a full picture of the US in general. And that's why we did all 50 states.

Tim Montague: 32:53

I mean, ultimately, and there's and there's emerging data on this, solar and batteries and wind make for a more reliable grid, and the grid, you know, you can think of a battery as a sponge, right? It receives energy, it stores it, and then it releases it instantaneously on demand, which is a lovely thing if you're a grid operator, right? There are constantly struggling to balance the grid as demand rises and shrinks, and so the more renewables, the more batteries you want, and renewables are the cheapest source of power, and so 90% of new power plants on the grid now are wind and and solar. And so I guess this is also a message that we need to drive home with the public and authorities having jurisdiction. Obviously, the federal government doesn't really appreciate this right now. They're trying to stick a stick in the eye of renewables. But trust me, grid operators understand this, and they are going to continue to develop wind, solar and battery projects. I

Joe DeBellis: 34:03

agree there, yeah, I was just gonna say, I agree, Tim, I think it's, it's vital for us, especially we take a look at, like, the the net zero targets that we have, battery storage is a key component to that. And then, you know, you take a look at the renewable energy industry, but it's one thing to look at wind and solar, but then you start looking at just the development across the grid in terms of, you know, some of these data centers and, you know, with AI coming on board, and how do we, how do we structure the the grid to be sound on that? And, you know, battery storage is going to be something that is, is kind of added across different micro grids and different developing cities. So I think it's one of those things where it's, it's going to be a vital technology. It is a vital technology. But to your point, you know, we just got to make sure that make sure that folks understand that it's going to be a key part of our our success moving forward for a sustainable future.

Tim Montague: 34:51

Hey guys, are you a residential solar installer doing light commercial but wanting to scale into large CNI solar? I'm Tim Montague. I've developed over 150 megawatts of commercial solar, and I've solved the problem that you're having you don't know what tools and technologies you need in order to successfully close 100 KW to megawatt scale projects. I've developed a commercial solar accelerator to help installers exactly like you. Just go to clean power hour.com click on strategy and book a call today. It's totally free with no obligation. Thanks for being a listener. I really appreciate you listening to the pod, and I'm Tim Montague. Let's grow solar and storage. Go to clean power hour and click strategy today. Thanks so much. Yeah, yeah. So there's a few points of in our final few minutes here together that emerged from this research you've done that developers and it's a and OEMs, it's a both. And you know, really can learn from you mentioned focus on cost savings, reliability and job creation, those are the goods right that these projects are providing, and they're very important. And then addressing environmental and safety concerns with transparency, no, no aspect of the built environment comes without any risk or impact. Let's be frank. Okay, there are risks. Any kind of a building has risks, but there they can be mitigated, right? And we can integrate these products into the built environment responsibly, safely and reliably. Now you there's two others here, though, that I'd like to shine a light on shifting public opinion. So by reducing fire risks, how high is the fire risk, and what do you think developers and OEMs can do to further reduce fire risks?

Joe DeBellis: 36:56

So the fire risk in general, if you take a look at energy storage, you know it's, it's, I think it's the attention grabbing headlines that really scared a lot of folks, and I think created more so of a perception issue into how prevalent the risk is. You know, we discussed EPRI releasing that report. About 89% of the fire starting elsewhere, outside of the batteries, and propagating over every also released a study, which was, I thought, very informative. But the data showed that between 2018 and 2023 energy storage fire incidents dropped by nearly 97% they were rare to begin with, but they dropped by nearly 97% and that demonstrates you know, that the fire starting by lithium ion batteries are rare in installations. If you take a look at the entire landscape of 35 gigawatts of batteries that we have installed, there's one fire, or, excuse me, there's one fire in every 35 gigawatts of batteries that are installed across, you know, all of the gigawatts that we have out there. So I think the EPRI data really kind of spoke to itself and proves that the technology is relatively safe with with every installment, so they don't pose a very significant fire risk to local communities. However, there is that inherent risk that you just mentioned, and I think that's just natural with any sort of development or project, especially when you're dealing with electronics, and so I think being proactive and mitigating those risks in the sense of, you know, it's one thing to install a system and then think about safety afterwards, and then you start retrofitting a lot of these safety measures into it, but going into the design with safety in mind, and eliminating some of these safety fires will help you engineer out a lot of these issues, and then just prepare for potential risks and the worst. So I think it's that proactive approach that developers and OEMs could take to say, Hey, this is a great technology that we have. These batteries are are sound, but let's implement some of these mitigation techniques that we have, whether it be, you know, off gas sensors, heat detection, fire suppression, all of those things that could combine into a great package to develop a really safe and robust technology.

Tim Montague: 39:13

Yeah, check out episode 243, of the Clean Power Hour. The title of that episode is ensuring safety in grid scale battery systems with Dr Zhang, ye of CPS America, and Ryan Mayfield of Mayfield renewables, and we go deep into ul 9540 and ul 9540 A. So that's a great resource for you listeners. And then Joe, there's one final point here. Maybe it's two final points. Okay? So we can and should reduce fire risks, okay? And I guess we can and should also sway public opinion, I guess, in the greater scheme of things is, is it simply a both? And these are, these are both equally important, or is there one, one of those two that developers really need to get better at first?

Joe DeBellis: 40:14

I think it's certainly, let's, let's tackle the problem first and develop what we're going to do and the solutions that we're going to take for these projects. And so I think that's, that's kind of step number one, so that the next step following closely behind is that we could educate the community and the public on these measures that we've taken. And so I think it's, it's understanding what we're going to do for the project, the safety measures that we're implementing, and then having that discussion with the community to sway their opinion, and again, the majority of them, based on our survey results, are likely in favor of these projects, but the folks that are concerned, there needs to be a clear line of communication to say, hey, we understand your concerns. Here's what we're doing to battle those risks and really get them more comfortable with the technology and the project. It's it's really not supposed to be a us versus them type conversation. It's, let's all get on board. This is a great thing for our community, great thing for our future, for the environment, and we're doing this really to kind of help out the world. And so it's one of those things where I think it's that communication, but definitely tackling that problem and understanding what you're going to do as an OEM or a developer, upfront and proactively so that we could discuss that with the community to ease some of those concerns. Well,

Tim Montague: 41:30

unfortunately, we're out of time. I'm going to put some of these results in the show notes, and from your survey, I really, I really appreciate the information that you're putting out there. You. And Joe, how can our listeners find you?

Joe DeBellis: 41:45

Yeah, no. Tim, again, appreciate you having me, but yeah, our listeners could reach out to me. I'm on LinkedIn. If you also go to the fire trace website, there's a lot of different areas that you could contact someone from our team. We have a very robust technical team that could help you out with any questions you may have about fire risks, you could reach out to me directly via LinkedIn. So I welcome that, and we're always here, really just to even share information. If you just have questions concerning different projects or technologies and fire risk, fire safety, fire suppression techniques, please feel free to reach out. We're always available.

Tim Montague: 42:24

Yeah, there's a wealth of information on your website. So check out fire traces website. We'll put a link in the show notes to that. Check out all of our content at clean power hour.com. Please give us a rating and a review on Apple or Spotify. Follow us on YouTube and reach out to me on LinkedIn. I love hearing from my listeners. With that, I'll say thank you so much. Joe Debellis, Global Head of clean energy for fire trace. I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. Thanks, Joe.

Joe DeBellis: 42:54

Thank you, Tim. I appreciate it. You.