Investigation confirms cause of fire at Tesla’s Victorian Big Battery in Australia & More News Here

A liquid coolant leak triggered thermal runaway in battery cells, which began a fire at the 300MW/450MWh Victorian Big Battery in Australia final July.

A technical report into findings of specialist investigators has been launched to the general public, written by consultants at Fisher Engineering and the Energy Safety Response Group (ESRG). The fire occurred because the system was beneath building and destroyed two of the 212 Tesla Megapack battery vitality storage system (BESS) models being put in.

After the state of affairs was introduced beneath management and authorities cleared the location to renew building and pre-commissioning testing actions in September, developer Neoen and Tesla introduced the Victorian Big Battery on-line in December, since when it has been taking part in the National Electricity Market (NEM).

The technical report was offered to stakeholders in January this yr and now made public. It notes that the incident is the primary fire to have an effect on Tesla Megapacks. The US-headquartered EV, photo voltaic and BESS firm deployed round 4GWh of vitality storage in whole worldwide throughout 2021. It has simply introduced an formidable goal for its deployments this decade, claiming it may attain 1,500GWh of annual installations by 2030.

A single pre-manufactured 3MWh Megapack unit caught fire on 30 July 2021, spreading to a neighbouring Megapack. The unfold stopped there and the fire burned itself out over a six hour interval. This was in line with steerage provided by the producer to emergency responders to let burning Megapacks eat themselves whereas monitoring different potential exposures at a secure distance.

It was a ‘safe failure,’ with no accidents reported to website personnel, first responders or most of the people and the multi-team investigation commenced nearly instantly, on 3 August.

The investigation largely confirmed what was discovered by Energy Safe Victoria, the state’s regulatory physique, because it cleared the undertaking to renew testing and commissioning, however added extra particulars as they grew to become recognized.

Site personnel observed smoke emanating from a Megapack at round 10am on the day in query, and as soon as emergency crews arrived, a fringe was established across the unit, and water was utilized to chill it. Fire then unfold to the adjoining Megapack, which was about 15cm away.

Fisher and ESRG mentioned {that a} leak throughout the first Megapack’s liquid cooling system triggered arcing throughout the battery modules. Heat created then took battery cells into thermal runaway.

Tesla has already taken steps to forestall repeat incident

It is vital to notice that some of the circumstances which triggered the fire are unlikely to be repeated when the system is in regular operation – because the unit was present process testing, it had been manually disconnected from some of the same old monitoring, management and knowledge assortment that it might be hooked as much as.

High wind situations additionally contributed to the fire’s propagation, regardless of the models being correctly spaced aside as per necessities. The report mentioned UL 9540A burn testing solely accounts for wind speeds as much as about 12mph, whereas that day the realm skilled wind speeds of as much as 35mph.

Tesla has already addressed many of the components which led to the incident, together with improved inspection procedures for coolant programs and including extra alarms to the Megapacks telemetry.

In an interview with this website just a few months in the past, Paul Rogers of ESRG, one of the corporate’s principals and a former firefighter that elected to turn into a battery storage security subject material knowledgeable, mentioned that battery fires are prone to be extraordinarily uncommon occasions, however that each potential care must be taken to handle each the chance and what to do in the occasion they do occur, as they are often extraordinarily severe in any other case.

The launch of the technical findings comes as energy firm AES Corporation is enterprise an investigation of its personal right into a fire at a 10MW battery storage facility in Arizona, US.

The report into the Victorian Big Battery incident could be discovered right here.

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