Fire Service Considerations Investigations of AZ Li-ion ESS Incident

On April 19, 2019, one male career Fire Captain, one male career Fire Engineer, and two male career Firefighters received serious injuries as a result of cascading thermal runaway within a 2.16 MWh lithium-ion battery energy storage system (ESS) that led to a deflagration event. During this recent Battery Safety Science webinar installment, Dr. Steve Kerber and Dr. Mark McKinnon provided an overview of the incident, the contributing factors determined through the investigation, and recommendations for the fire service, code officials, utility companies, and manufacturers to prevent similar incidents. Link to the full scale ESS fire test report below with free burn, gaseous extinguishing system and automatic sprinkler system comparisons. https://fsri.org/sites/default/files/...