The Challenges of Ensuring Safety for Battery Energy Storage Systems

The webinar, hosted by Underwriters Laboratories on Jan. 20, 2021, was presented by Laurie Florence, UL Corporate Fellow and UL’s Principal Engineer for stationary/motive batteries and energy storage systems.

There has been increasing use of batteries in new applications such as motive and energy storage applications. To keep up with these various applications, there has been a proliferation of safety standards and codes to address the potential hazards associated with these new applications. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the battery energy storage system (BESS) applications.

Underwriters Laboratories has been at the forefront of safety standard development through the publication of UL 9540 product safety standard for ESS, and UL 9540A, which is a large scale fire test for BESS. There has been significant code development in the US and standard development in the IEC as well.

This presentation discussed the development of the standards and experience with testing and certifying these types of products.