Welcome to Inland Marine Underwriters Association's webinar, Battery Energy Storage System. I'm Lillian Colson, and I'm happy to introduce this webinar and our presenters today. I'd like to thank everyone who's joined us today. We have over 348 attendees registered for this webinar, and we look forward to your participation. Before we get started, here are a few quick tips. To help reduce strain on your local network, close all unnecessary browsers and internet-reliant programs. You'll find your attendee control panel, and that will minimize by default. At any point, if it does and you'd like to reengage it, just click on the orange arrow and uncheck the auto-hide option to access your control panel. You'll use your Q&A box in your control panel to type and submit your questions, and I'll share them with our presenters at the end of the webinar today. Our presenters look forward to your questions and your comments. As most of us learn better in an interactive environment, we encourage you to ask lots of questions. To give you a little incentive today, at the end of the webinar, we'll award two prizes for the best question and or the most engaged attendee, and that will be $25 Amazon gift cards. Okay. Please take a moment to review the CHUB disclaimer. All right. And I'd also like to reference the IMUA statement on the next slide, as well as the IMUA policy statement reminding all to refrain from entering into any discussions on matters affecting rates or conditions of insurance contracts. All right. I'd like to thank our presenters today, Eric Olson and Carl Furlitt, for taking time out of their schedules to present this webinar on battery energy storage systems today. I'd also like to thank my colleagues, Eileen and Ali Monreale for coordinating this webinar with our presenters. Eric Olson, who was promoted to Senior Vice President at CHUB Risk Engineering earlier this year, began his risk engineering career in 1999 at CHUB. He spent his early career as risk engineer for property and casualty survey work ranging from life science to heavy manufacturing accounts. Eric specializes in property protection risk engineering and complex evaluations for industrial and commercial facilities and property conservation for large properties and construction. He became the Executive Property Specialist in 2016, where he spearheaded global CHUB property engineering technical initiatives ranging from development of technical guidance on existing and emerging issues, fire protection, climate change, natural catastrophes, and secondary perils. Eric earned a bachelor's of science degree in environmental studies at Cook College Rutgers University. He is a certified safety professional, certified protection specialist, and he is a member of the National Fire Protection Association. Carl Furlitt is a Senior Property Specialist for CHUB, who began working at CHUB in 1996 after working at industrial risk insurers for several years. He is responsible for providing risk engineering assistance and support to large commercial clients. Carl has 30 years of commercial insurance experience evaluating risk and assisting clients with property and fire protection risk mitigation. Carl is a member of CHUB's battery energy storage team system team, where he works closely with his home office to provide support of this program. He also leads a team of engineers across the U.S. and Canada in BESS. Carl earned a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from Penn State and a master's of business administration from John Hopkins. He's a professional engineer and he's a member of the National Fire Protection Association too. Both Carl and Eric are experienced instructors and we are very fortunate to have them today. And so now I'd like to turn the floor over to Carl. Welcome. Thank you Lillian. Eric and I really appreciate the IMUA inviting us to speak today on this topic. We're going to go ahead and just jump in. We have a lot of information and we want to make sure we get to the Q&A section at the end. So we're going to start with a poll question. There we go. We have, I think, five poll questions throughout the presentation. You're going to start with this one. I'm going to read it. Energy storage systems are a new niche technology intended only to supplement solar installation. And our selections are true, false, and I'm not quite sure. So if you take a couple minutes or a couple seconds to put some answers in there, we'd appreciate your help. I think this is a really good opening question because we all want to understand what these systems do and why they're becoming so popular. All right. The poll questions are in. I see mostly all falses, 88 percent, a couple true, a couple of people who are not quite sure. That is a very good mix. This is a good time – that's the correct slide. This is a good time for us to talk about what energy storage systems do. So what functions do energy storage systems serve? Most importantly, stabilize our power supply. Storage can help meet I'm sorry. It went by itself. I'm not sure why it advanced. Just back to what energy storage systems serve. Most importantly they help stabilize our power supply. Energy storage can help meet peak energy demands in densely populated areas and cities and they reduce strain on the power grid. As time goes on storage systems will play an increasingly pivotal role between green energy supplies and our electrical demand. This is why they're getting so much attention. And solar is only one way that we can charge a battery but not the only way that we can charge the battery. All right. This is our agenda for today. We just went through an introduction. BESS. We're going to talk a little bit about BESS, of course. Lithium-ion battery basics, dig in too deep into battery design because this is a fundamentals class. Thermal runaway. When thinking about lithium-ion batteries, this is what most people think about. I will explain what it is and what causes thermal runaway. NFPA 855 and UL 9540 and 9548, these are the guidelines that are used to develop and install these systems. Eric and I will use these guidelines when we do submittal reviews. These guidelines are followed throughout the United States. Causes of loss. Is thermal runaway the only cause of a major loss with BESS? I think you'll be surprised what Eric has to say during this part of the program. Off-gas detection. This is much different than the typical smoke and hydrogen detection we normally see in these systems. Very interesting technology and the only one that claims that may be able to prevent most thermal runaway types of losses. And of course, we're going to do a summary and we're going to go into the Q&A section. Just some basics. An electrical charge to charge the battery. DC electric to be exact. But we're not going to go into that during this discussion. The electricity has to come from somewhere. Batteries do not generate their own electricity like a generator. They store energy that is generated for them. Power as mentioned in our poll question number one is a common method for charging the battery. Over the past one to two years solar is becoming more and more popular. The other two popular methods of charging are wind and just by pulling the power right off of the power grid. The power grid is the most common source of power that we use to charge the battery. Of course, the power grid is the network of power lines that provides power to the country including our homes. The power grid charges the battery at night during off peak hours is then fed back into the power grid during the day when demand is high. This helps create the stability that we just talked about and that is known as peak shaving. As we all know energy storage is rapidly expanding. Not only here in the U.S. but worldwide and it's quite a challenge for risk engineering to stay up with all the challenges that have taken place in just two years. Usually during the week I'll read the energy storage news and I looked at it just this morning and they are developing – there's a company out there developing a 100 hour battery based on reversible rusting of iron which is – this is new technology. They've raised $800 million so far and there's a huge push for batteries that will be used in the energy storage market. It takes a lot of work to keep up with the technology in this industry. This slide shows just one month alone what gives you an idea of how much activity that we're seeing. Just how fast is the market growing? If you look at the statistics up in the right hand corner in 2020 the lithium battery market was $75 billion. It is projected to be $193 billion by 2028, 23 percent increase. Now if you think this is 2022 but 2028 is only five or six years away so we expect to see a lot of activity in this type of business. Let's take California for example. A recent article tells the story. California's solar market is now a battery market. At the end of 2022 California alone had a total of 282 solar projects compared to 533 battery projects and they're adding 35 gigawatts of storage power. A lot of these projects will most likely be solar and VESC combinations. Texas and Arizona are large growth areas as well. We are seeing more and more systems in the East Coast. Eric and I are getting submittals in from New York City which we weren't getting about a year ago. For those of you from New Jersey just today in the energy storage news the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities has proposed several policies to add two gigawatts of storage in New Jersey, energy storage. If you think about it this expansion creates a vast market of other industries all around it for support. For example what are we doing with all the used batteries? And a lot of people wonder and they ask that question. Think about how many electric vehicle batteries we have out there. We need recycling plants to safely recycle these batteries. Earlier this year a commercial scale lithium ion battery recycling facility was constructed in Georgia. They will be able to process 30 metric tons of discarded batteries per year. If my calculations are correct that's 66 million pounds per year. Sixty-six million pounds is a lot of battery. So there's big things to come in this industry up in the future. All right we're going to go to poll question number two. The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act does what for us? It will spur the rapid development of energy storage systems, prevent developers from pursuing a large percentage of solar systems, provides tax incentives for sitting production within US, has nothing to do with climate change or energy storage. And the last selection is A, B and C. All right we'll just wait a couple of seconds for the responses to come in. Okay I'm going to close this one out. Okay A, B and C. The answer is E of course, 82 percent. Only a fraction of the renewable energy used in the United States are built domestically. No lithium batteries that I know of are manufactured in the US. The Inflation Reduction Act provides production tax credit to help US manufacturers accelerate production of things like solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and to process key minerals. For example there's $10 billion investment tax credit for new manufacturing facilities that make turbines and solar panels, $500 million to use the Defense Production Act to speed up manufacturing of things like heat pumps as well as processing critical minerals, $2 billion in grants to help automakers facilities, automaker facilities transition to clean vehicle production and up to $20 billion in loans to construct new manufacturing facilities for clean vehicles. ESS versus DESS, you'll hear the terms ESS and DESS used in quite the same manner, however, they are not quite the same. In the next slide, we'll discuss the difference. ESS is more of a general term, and DESS is a type of ESS. So, let's take a look and see what some of the other ESS systems are that we see out there. We hear energy storage systems. We automatically think of battery systems. We also have pumped hydropower systems, flywheels, compressed air systems, supermagnetic. I just wanted to show this slide in here to show everybody that energy storage system does not necessarily mean battery energy storage system, although that's what we generally think of when we hear about them. Which ESS were largest in the global market, including the United States? What do you guys think? Do you have any ideas on that? Okay. As of 2019, by far, look, 93.4 percent. That's a huge part of the market. DESS comes in a distant second place with only four and a half percent of the total market. And then, if you take thermal, flywheel, and compressed air and combine them, those are only two percent. But just remember, hydro has been around for a lot longer than DESS. So, California has a hydro project that they are getting ready to build that will include BESS technology. The power from any of these can be used to charge the battery. This is a picture of what a BESS looks like. BESS is a system that stores energy and batteries for future use. Again, the purpose of these systems is to help stabilize the power supply during the heavy demand period. Throughout the year we may see interruptions in the power supply, especially during those extreme hot afternoons. In 2020 California suffered its first rolling blackout in 20 years. Since these batteries can help stabilize the power supply, that is why we see so much activity in California and in Texas. This is an example of a BESS installation. It is a 50 megawatt Tesla site in Australia. As I mentioned, these solar and BESS combinations are becoming more and more popular. How it works is power is generated through the solar panel system and stored in the lithium ion batteries seen at the bottom of the slide. Those are those white boxes that we're looking at. In this installation we're using true green energy from the sun and it is being stored for later use. From there the power is fed into the power grid for use by the general public. The batteries may be used daily or only when needed on such high demand days. I went to a location in Maryland and the solar system will feed directly into the power grid throughout most days and the batteries just sit there idle or at low partial charge. Then based on the weather forecast the site will be notified a few days in advance by the power company and the solar panels will then charge the batteries instead of sending the power to the grid until the charge is complete. On the day the power is needed, such as a very hot summer day when the power use surges in the afternoon, the power, battery power is fed into the grid. Another thing I think about is battery lifespan. How long will they last? Think about your cell phone battery. When we first get a new cell phone the battery will last all day and then after we use it for a while the charge does not last as long, say after a year or so. Usually it discharges so fast that we have to keep it plugged in most of the time. I think we can all relate to a story like that. There are two main factors that affect the lifespan of a battery. First, the frequency of charging and discharging. Is it daily or like many are less frequent than the arrangement that I saw in Maryland? Second, to what extent the battery is charged and discharged. I read an article somewhere that if a battery is completely charged to 100% and then discharged to 0% it will last 500 to 1500 cycles. But if you take that same battery and you're only charging it up to 70% and then only discharging it to 30% it will last for tens of thousands of cycles. This is an important part of the engineering design. How hard are the utility companies going to push the battery cycle? It is important that they are operated within the design specifications or they may not last as long as they're expected to. This is a place that I went to in Maryland. You can see up on the top there's a – it's also – it's a solar and VESC combination installation. The VESC container. This is an LG system. That is an air conditioning unit on the side. And then there was another one located on the other side as well. The battery and the battery management system, the BMS, and other operating equipment are located inside the container. The inverter. Power coming in from a solar station is DC power. Batteries are also DC power. So it does not need to be converted before going into the battery. But when you take the power – when the power is discharged into the power grid it needs to be converted to AC power because that is what we're using in our homes, our businesses, and in industry. Transformers. Both of these transformers are metered. One transformer uses grid power to run the equipment in the VESC such as air conditioning units, the BMS, let's see, gas and smoke detection, fire protection, and among other things that are in there. The owner has to pay for this power. The other transformer simply brings the AC power from the inverter and it feeds into the power grid. The electric company pays the owner for this power. As I mentioned, charging the battery from the grid is very popular. The incoming power to charge the BESC would cost less than the power that's fed back out into the system. And that provides the incentive for the owner to put it in because that's where he's making – they're making their profit. This is a typical connection of a BESC connecting to a power grid. On the top where you see P plus, the power from the grid comes in as AC power and then it's converted to DC power by the inverter to store in the battery. The square box with DC AC on it is the inverter like we just saw in the last slide. When the power is needed the DC power comes out of the battery and it is converted to AC power through the inverter and fed back into the grid power. Power does not need to go back into the power grid. It can be used for other purposes as well. For example, a company could buy electricity going off hours to charge a company owned BESC and use it during peak production hours. This could potentially save the company a lot of money. I think this will become much more popular as the price of the batteries come down and they're more accessible. All right. Just some battery facts we go over. Lithium versus lithium ion. Not all lithium batteries are a fire concern. Lithium ion batteries are rechargeable. In that different design type is why they are a concern. One of the things we make that make them a fire hazard is they use ignitable liquid electrolyte which is not used in a non-rechargeable lithium battery. Battery power does not last forever. Remember, just like our cell phones, the tablet and tablet, the battery does not last forever. These large systems provide power for a certain amount of time. At first it's one hour, then it's two hours, then as technology improves now we're seeing some batteries that can last up to three and four hours. And at the beginning of the program I mentioned that different technology and they're working on a hundred hour battery. So, compare that to one hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, that battery is a long time battery. Lithium iron phosphate, LFP, and nickel manganese cobalt and MC are the battery chemistries that we see being used in lithium ion batteries. Both have specific characteristics that are favorable to the user. The actual chemistry is a closely guarded trade secret, but the primary formula uses the same chemicals. What they all have in common is they all use an ignitable organic solvent as the electrolyte. The main difference, LFP is more stable but provides less power. And MC batteries can produce around 3.6 to 3.7 volts per cell, and LFP battery produces around 3.2 volts per cell. I know that a half a volt doesn't sound like that much, but these systems contain thousands of cells, so it adds up. Producing the most power from the best is the most critical need of the utility company, so there is a tradeoff here. LFP is promoted as a safer battery. This can be very misleading. Safer than an NMC battery? Probably, but not safer than a solid state battery. LFP can fail and does fail the same as an NMC battery with the same fire results. We treat them the same whenever we're evaluating installations. All right, we're going to go to poll question number three. Iron phosphate, LFP, are incapable runaway events, true or false? All right, false, good, 94% false and we had 6% true. You may have heard that LFP batteries being promoted as a safe battery implies that it will not go into thermal runaway. These batteries are very capable of going into thermal runaway and they do go into thermal runaway. Okay, regardless of the electrode material, all lithium ion batteries, the picture looks very intimidating, but I know that we are not going to dig in very deep here. In the charging cycle, the lithium ions move in one direction. When it is discharged, they reverse and move into the – they move in the other direction. Heat is generated during these cycles. That is all we're going to discuss about how the actual battery works, is the separator that I would like to talk about. You can see the separator in the middle of the battery that's identified. The separator is a critical component in the battery. The separator prevents contact between the cathode and anode and prevents electrons from passing through. If either of these things happen, the battery will go into thermal runaway. The only thing I'd like for you to remember from this slide is that if the separator fails, the battery fails. One more slide on the separator, since I think it is so important. Separator acts as a safety within the battery to help prevent thermal runaway. This is a side view of the separator. This separator has three layers, and they are found in larger cells. It is designed so that the polyethylene melts before the polypropylene. This will close the pores, stopping the flow of ions from one side to the other. Without this safety, we would have a lot more thermal runaway incidents than we have now. It looks big in the slide, but it is actually very thin. If you took a human hair and split it, it would equal the thickness of the separator. It is much thinner than I ever thought it would be when I started working on batteries. I thought it would be much thicker than it actually is. How many separator layers do you think your cell phone and tablet battery has? Because these batteries, the batteries in those devices are so small, they have a single polyethylene separator in them. Only the bigger batteries have the multiple there. Now we are going to talk a little bit about thermal runaway. There are at least two ways a thermal runaway fire can start. The first one is failure of the battery itself, which we will discuss in a few more slides. The other is a fire within the container. A lot of combustibles, including plastics, inside these containers. If you have a fire inside the container producing high levels of heat, that could cause the battery to go into thermal runaway. For example, when they do the UL9540A testing, the unit is externally heated to the point the battery goes into thermal runaway. A fire within the container will act and do the same thing. What causes the battery to fail? Internal short circuit is one way. During the manufacturing process, microscopic metal parts may end up inside the cell. Now a few particles will not have a great effect on the battery. However, if there is enough that can gather in one spot, a major electrical short can develop and cause a thermal runaway. Also, mechanical damage to the battery can cause an internal short. Other things that can cause a thermal runaway are external short, overcharging, and excess current. Next we are going to talk about the four stages of a thermal runaway. Stage one, abuse factor, causes a thermal runaway. Stage two, off-gas generation. We can stop the thermal runaway at this point if it is detected early in stage two. Smoke generation is stage three. Once it gets to stage three, it's too late to stop thermal runaway. And then stage four is fire generation. This is where we have fire and most likely a violent reaction. Let's look at these in a little bit more detail and we'll go through the different stages. Stage one, abuse factor, thermal, electrical, or mechanical abuse. The heat generated by the chemical reaction in the battery starts to boil the flammable electrolyte, burning it into a flammable gas. And then we go to stage two, off-gas generation. A great step-by-step description of stage two. As the heat continues to increase, more gas is created. The battery then releases the gas as designed. At some point, there is more gas being produced that can be vented. Heat and gas continue to build pressure in the battery. As the vent is becoming overwhelmed, the heat and gas inside the battery greatly increase. The good news is if the gas is detected during this stage, failure can be stopped just simply by stopping the charge, shutting the charge off. Now we're going to go to stage three, generation. There is no going back once you get to stage three. The reaction continues and the separator starts to melt. The exothermic process begins and cannot be stopped. Excessive heat causes the separator to fail. And remember, we just went over a couple of slides about the separator. That is our safety stop. So once it says that the separator failed, that means that the battery failed and goes into thermal runaway. And then we have stage four. At this point, we have well-developed fire that can spread to adjacent cells. The question is how many cells will become involved? Will it be one? Will it be 10? Will it be 20? That's a really difficult question to answer and it will directly impact the size of loss that you have. And why are these so hard to extinguish? The exothermic reaction is creating an ignition source. The deterioration of the oxide cathode provides oxygen and the ignitable organic electrolyte is producing a flammable gas. It does not take anything else to keep the fire going. That is our fire triangle. We have an ignition source, we have fuel, and we have oxygen. Within the design of the battery. All right, dendrites are a common cause of failure in a lithium-ion battery. Remember, if the positive side combines with or touches negative side, the battery will violently react. As you can see from the diagram, dendrites are tiny tree-like structures that grow inside the lithium-ion battery. These spiky structures are formed as the battery charges. When they grow long enough, they pierce the separator. Remember, when we pierce the separator, our battery fails and this can cause a short circuit. Dendrite formation cannot be prevented. However, there are ways to reduce the chance of a short circuit. What they do is they send an electrical pulse through the dendrite that flattens them from preventing the dendrite from growing too long and piercing the separator. All right, this is my favorite part of the presentation. This is going to be an 18-second video of a single two-cell battery that is heated until it goes into thermal runaway. It will show the violent reaction we discussed in stage four of a thermal runaway that cannot be extinguished until it stops on its own when it runs out of fuel. You will see how it burns when the flammable gas ignites. After the gas is burned off, the fire will slow down and then you will just see just the plastic case will continue to burn. And again, the question is how many of the cells will ignite around it and around those and so on. After the video, Erickson will discuss insurance considerations, the codes and standards that we use. He'll talk about losses and what we are seeing in the submittals that we are reviewing. And I believe Lillian and you are going to show, help us out with the video. is burning at that point. So I think that kind of brings everything together of why we are so concerned about having thermal runaway fires in these lithium ion battery installations that we are looking at. And from here I'm going to turn it over to Eric. Yeah, thanks Carl. I think it's just fascinating to look at that little video and think that's just one cell. Energy storage systems contain thousands of cells and a rack may have hundreds of cells. So you can see how the propagation of that event is something that's really severe and really hard to control. So I'm going to just progress a slide or two, just hang tight. So let's talk about some insurance considerations we're getting there. There we are. There are so many insurance considerations. While we talk about fire a lot because the standards and the codes are really focused on that peril. Environmental considerations and natural hazards are leading loss drivers in the industry and BESS is no exception. These installations, they're going to be found in a variety of environments including undesirable and cheap lands very often that are areas that are prone to windstorm, flood, wildfire, you name it. We see submissions as Carl had indicated in all of these environments including more and more out of urban environments where you have nearby adjacent exposures, everything from commercial to residential within close proximity. So if you think of those containers that Carl just showed you, God forbid you have thermal in the way events, you can imagine what that looks like and we'll show you what it looks like shortly. So several reviews came in recently to us with flood concerns and a major issue is the lack of good modeling for developers to reference these days for perils like intense rainfall, flash flooding, what we call pluvial flooding. Think of Ida just over a year ago where we had seven or eight inches in a couple of hours. These installations are really prone to that kind of damage, obviously they're electrical installations and something as simple as flood elevations we see them getting missed in terms of good planning on these kinds of installations where developers are just relying on FEMA firm maps. And FEMA performs great studies but there are many additional great flood models out today that surpass the limitations of FEMA firm flood projections. The west is a huge growth area for BEST and it's pushing these installations into wildfire prone regions. So you've got to ask yourself, did the developer or the owner, did they seriously consider a wildfire event around these kinds of installs and is there an emergency response plan specifically around not only direct flame impingement from a wildfire but more likely fire brands and embers that are going to be blown all over the place and lodging onto and into these containers. How about smoke intrusion? Think of the smoke that accompanies wildfire and how that's going to interact with a box full of electrical ventilation systems and how they're planned or not planned to respond to that kind of environment. So when you see these installations, don't be myopic just around fire. Fire is a challenging exposure and we will talk about it because frankly most people want to know those angles of exposure but you cannot neglect environmental exposures because the loss experienced globally on these systems is really spread out between fire and environmental loss, cause of loss drivers. Water supply is a big issue in our industry, right? The fire department, they will want strong water supplies to combat and control a fire involving energy storage and battery energy storage. Where you have these installations in remote areas, especially where land is cheap and development is easier and there's less question about what's being installed, you know, think of volunteer firefighting companies throughout our country, the majority are volunteer fire departments. They're likely to show up with a couple of thousand gallons of water. That's not going to last long. So these are severe fire events. A lot has to go wrong for it to happen, but it does and can and will continue to happen. And when it does, if you've ever seen an EV fire, like a Tesla fire, the fire departments use and need a lot of water because thermal runaway is not easy to control and finally extinguish. If you know any firefighters, you'll learn that if there's a Tesla fire or if there's an EV fire, they'll have to submerge that vehicle to discharge, to safely discharge the thermal runaway lines, all right? Spacing is a big issue. Don't put too much faith in what the right separation distance is at this point because it totally varies based on the UL testing results. So when you see a bunch of containers, I want you to know there's no right number, but the more distance between the containers is generally better, okay? Security around the site, big issue. How are they being protected? When we see these things getting installed in not so desirable areas or not so desirable neighborhoods, you can't overlook site security, camera systems, physical barriers, all right? The NFPA has great language in standard 855 on commissioning requirements, but you've got to make sure you know how well the OEM is working with the installer on the latest procedures, all right? So a very popular installation out there is Tesla on energy storage. Tesla's constantly updating and revising commissioning as they learn more from loss events on the best way and safest way to commission these installations, which needs to be highly documented. It's got to be a living process, and you really should look for the commissioning reports and look for a current commissioning report. Nearby exposures, that's a really big, big consideration, right? If you're looking at an installation, is it nearby residential? Is it in a remote area away from nearby exposures? You think of an event involving one container or perhaps several containers, how's that smoke and off-gassing going to impact a third party? Think of nearby residential, all right? Think of wind direction, predominant wind direction. These are really critical considerations depending on the coverages being anticipated by the carrier. We don't want to just be speaking about property here, but the property exposures will lead a lot of the general liability exposures as well when we have nearby residential, nearby commercial, and how that fire is going to potentially spread beyond that container, beyond that site, and how has the fire department pre-planned for that scenario, right? BMS, big consideration, right? That's the software system that is the main pathway to control thermal runaway, right? 855 spells out EMS and BMS as the primary control mechanism to monitor that state of battery charge and health, to pull it out of a potentially overcharge scenario to prevent that thermal runaway. Now, there are other ways to prevent thermal runaway, and we're going to show you some of the gas detection and off-gas detection systems on the market. Last but certainly not least, 9540A. It's a test method towards a UL listing for the 9540 listing. It's the best practice. It's a young test method. It's still evolving, but it's your gold standard that you want to look for in this marketplace. If you see energy storage systems that are battery-based, you want to look for UL 9540, and you want to, even more importantly, ask for a copy of the 9540A test report and read it. And whatever that submission says they're doing, it should match the assumptions and the recommendations in that 9540A test report, all right? So 9540A is a test method. It's a report, and it is a specific report on testing a large-scale fire scenario on that product. It has to be done to get the 9540 listing, so it's critical. And Carl sits on the technical committee, and so we have lots of good future guidance and direction and influence on that standard to make it as thorough and all-encompassing as possible. The starting place that you really should be very intimate with in this technology and in this industry in insurance for fire is what you're looking at, NFPA 855. It's not a long document, all right? It's not like a lot of the other NFPA standards, which can be really, really long. This is a really short document, and you got to know it back and forth if you do business or you plan to do business in energy storage, especially Chapter 4 and Chapter 9. There are plenty of holes in this document. Why? It's a first draft. It's the first edition, excuse me, of the document. It's brand new, and it's a fantastic resource. And I think the committee did a beautiful job trying to get their arms around technology that's moving so quickly that many of the hazards that we're finding today, they may not have been fully anticipated yet when this was written, but they did a great job. And the next edition, it'll be even better to fill in some of the blind spots. And there are blind spots in this edition, especially around explosion potential and explosion protection with ventilation systems and standby power for gas detection and off-gas detection systems. So there are holes. It's not perfect, but it is really good, and it's a great starting place. You got to know how to practically apply, Chapter 4 and 9 especially. It's an easy standard to practice on incoming submissions where you're looking at installations. I think they did a great job. Let's start with it. No matter what you think, it's obviously heavily focused on fire protection. Unfortunately, I think it lets installers and developers get away with a lot in terms of inadequate or even no water supply and lack of fire protection systems for remote installations that are utility-controlled and nowhere near, let's say, other infrastructure or nearby other development. So we do see a lot of installations out there that are just plain old unprotected. And if there's an event, you're going to lose that container. And hopefully, you just lose one container. That's the goal. So there's room for improvement like any standard, any standard. It's a living document. But please, you can go to nfpa.org slash 855 for free and read it for free and really get to know Chapter 4 and Chapter 9 if you're going to play in this business on energy storage. Okay. I'm going to hit the next slide. Okay. I think I went – give me one second, guys. I think I went a little too far. There we go. 9540, it's a system standard. So really, what the standard is doing, it's evaluating the compatibility and the safety of the various components integrated into a best system. So it's a guide that they use to provide the system, the entire system with the UL listing. And the 9540A is really data generated from a large-scale test. So it's a large-scale, it's a full-scale fire test that generates a lot of data. And that data is used by a fire protection engineer to determine the fire and explosion protection required for a specific installation and a specific integration of a battery energy storage system. And this includes the separation of the systems. And these systems are relatively new as technology goes, and that proper spacing is very much a living conversation. It's still being discussed. So you'll see minimum separation distances referenced in 855. Again, are they good starting places? Sure. Are they absolutely based in quantified and large amounts of data? No. They're young, and they're evolving. And UL will continue to certify these approved systems. And best manufacturers and integrators, they'll receive a label to affix to the container. And it'll, you know, as well as receive the listing on UL's website, you can go to UL's website to see that or prove that a specific OEM, that their best product is in fact certified to 9540A. Let's look at the next slide. All right. So we've got a poll. We've got a poll question, trying to hold it there. All right. Thank you, Lynn. Thank you. UL listings for battery energy storage systems include consideration for effective fire department pre-planning at the site. True or false? What do you think? All right, Eric, the votes are coming in. We'll just wait a few more seconds for people to vote. I will tell you fire department pre-planning is, in my mind, the numero uno on any best installation. It is so fundamentally important. All right, let's see what they said. Oh, I love this. You know, look at that. I think my question is better than Carl's. Almost a 50-50. I'm picking on Carl. I think you guys took a good stab and we didn't give you enough to really make that call. So the answer is false. The answer is false. The UL 9540 is not assuming the capabilities or adequacy of the responding fire department. All right, and NFPA 855, that's the standard that's spelled out in great detail. Let me hit the next slide, Lillian. Yeah, thank you. 855, let me go up. I think I skipped. There we go. 855 really does a great job spelling out fire department pre-planning considerations because it's such a unique exposure. All right, it's not like a building fire. This is completely different than most occupancies. All right, and a lot of these containers are occupiable. All right, so take a look at the section on fire department pre-planning, and if you get a submission in on this, guys, you got to say to whoever's giving you the plans and the documents or your questionnaire, is there a formal pre-plan with the local fire department on this installation? I will tell you, FDNY has done a fantastic job recognizing the unique hazards of this technology and where those installations are happening in my backyard in New York City. They've really done a great job of understanding what they're facing, but guess what? Other cities too, Boston Fire Department, really strong on it, but the majority of the country, especially where these things are getting installed, are remote and rural areas with volunteer fire departments, so the answer, the majority of times, that question is going to be no. It's not well thought out, and you're going to see very varying tactics across the country how to address these kinds of exposures. All right, so let's look at this hierarchy of 9540 and 9548. It's a test sequence, and essentially how it works is it goes from the cell level test all the way to the installation level test. It's soup to nuts, and I will tell you, in spite of this, we still see industry fire losses in the industry with energy storage even on 9540A approved installations. It's clear this is the gold standard. You want to see this referenced. It helps me sleep better at night, but it's not a panacea. It's not the end-all, be-all. There are holes and loopholes, all right? UL will certify them, but remember, we're going to talk about some of the weaknesses. All right. Oh, I went too far. I keep going too far. Excuse me. So we see quite a bit of protection and detection schemes that come through to us for review. We see protection methods that are changing quite a bit over the past year or two. Originally, we saw a lot of gaseous systems out there, but then we found out they don't work so well on batteries in thermal runaway. They're good for other materials in the container, like electronics and paper, and they can serve a good purpose in the box outside of the thermal runaway event. We like to see water-based systems, and we've seen so many variations of them. 9540A considers the installation of fire protection in the box. So if you see 9540, but you find that it's an installation in the middle of the desert with no water supply, you have an issue. We've seen submissions come through. This fact sheet from the OEM says, this box is 9540A tested, but they're assuming there was a water supply to hook up to the box. And guess what? The developer wants to put it on their parcel of land in North Texas, and there's no water. There's no private, there's no public, there's no water. We see it all the time. So 9540A, the test methods report, you need to read it and understand the assumptions in it, and you need to ensure that in my worldview, you got to understand that there's no copious amount of water. And when I say adequate water supply with these installations, I'm talking hundreds of thousands of gallons. I'm not talking thousands of gallons, hundreds of thousands of gallons. Because these things will come pre-piped with fixed suppression systems, but you need a good strong water supply because when it goes wrong with these things, the fire department wants to limit the fire spread generally outside of the one box where it's happening. We all accept in the industry, we're probably going to lose everything inside that one container, okay? We want to keep it spreading from that one container to the next container, to the next container, or from that one container to the nearby building. All right? So the fire department, to do that, they need a lot of water for cooling and cooling the adjacent containers and cooling the adjacent structures. If they don't have that water, guys, they're going to watch it. And if it goes really, really great, maybe it burns out and it doesn't spread to the next container, but that's a big gamble. All right? Flood zones, it's a big issue. More and more of the submittals we're seeing are being installed in flood prone areas. We're seeing them installed with big flood walls around them. Another big issue is gas detection. We're seeing a lot of installations where gas detection is being underappreciated. Thermal runaway prevents, I'm sorry, thermal runaway allows for off-gas generation. Off-gas is a cocktail of flammable gases that Carl discussed a couple slides back. It is highly flammable. We're talking about hydrogen. And air circulation and ventilation studies should be conducted to identify the location of where the gas detection should be installed in that specific installation, where in the box, where in the racks, where in the modules, all right? Because the batteries are installed in modules, in racks, in a box, kind of like a servo farm, all right? So that needs to be detailed in 9540A. They should talk about the calculations and how explosion is being prevented or controlled. So during early thermal runaway events, gas will actually sink first before it rises. So you want gas detection at the bottom of the box, at the top of the box, and inside the module racks most often, because you can have pockets of flammable gas that can quickly accumulate inside the ESS rack. It's not enough to just put a hydrogen detector at the top of the box and call it a day. It's not enough. All right. Let's talk about pre-plant. It's everything, all right? Lithium ion batteries present challenges that are not seen in a typical fire. That fire department needs to have special training for these types of fires. They're much different than a fire involving a building, a transformer, a manufacturing plant, all right? The specialized training is required for the safety of the fire department personnel. Water is the best method for controlling the fire until it burns out. But remember, these batteries generate their own heat and oxygen, and the ignitable electrolyte is there for fuel. So even if they think they extinguish it, these things can reignite very quickly. They're going to surround and drown. That's what the industry has experienced with these. And they're really going to protect the exterior exposures more than what's directly involved on fire. It will vary by fire department. It will vary by education. It will vary because pre-planning is really necessary here. And where you don't have pre-planning, it's not going to go as well, all right? So you've got to ensure the fire department can work with the developer and the installer. Here's a picture of when it goes wrong. You know, this was actually, this occurred, this fire occurred during commission. And so during commissioning, you know, something happened. And I'll tell you what that something was in a minute. But this is required, this topic of how to do this right for commissioning before the project's turned over is covered very clearly in NFPA 855 in Chapter 6. This is the Tesla Megapack fire in Australia a couple of summers ago. It received a lot of press. And it allegedly involved a leak from cooling lines. And they leaked during commissioning causing a fault. And the point of the slide is that OEMs, they're learning themselves in real time the best way to commission their own products. All right? You need to get a copy of the commissioning report. Just like I say, get a copy of the fire department pre-plan. Get a copy of the commissioning report. They should be able to produce that too. All right? So let's take a look at some of the losses in around the globe. This is only 2022. So, I mean, we're in October. Let's get this perspective. Despite all of our progress in the past couple years in this industry, these losses are continuing to happen with battery systems. There have been nine so far this year that I wanted to kind of highlight to you. Five of the nine have been in the United States. We'll discuss in a few slides South Korea. They've had a lot of issues which have created a great learning opportunity for the rest of the world. But the losses range from fire to water and environmental and natural hazards, dust, humidity, flood. Okay? So I don't want to over talk fire. But these are, you know, some recent examples that when we distribute the slides, you can do your own research to take a look at the range of loss the industry is experiencing and the frequency of the loss that the industry is experiencing. This was a big one just in September. This is the Moss Landing dust fire. And the fire involved a mega battery. It's one of 256 Tesla batteries at the PG&E plant. And it eventually burned out five hours later, but it continued to smolder. And the investigation is ongoing. So these systems continue to catch fire. The result of this was the loss of the entire container. A lot of the success that we measure is whether or not that fire spread away from that one container or not. That's kind of a big measuring stick for standards around success on fire control with energy storage is really propagation to adjacent exposures. And it's kind of assumed once it goes off in a box or, you know, an engineered container, which is usually fire rated, you're going to lose everything in that box. Right? So your PML approach, when you're working with underwriters, is really you estimating how many of these boxes you could potentially lose depending on the adequacy of compliance with pre-planning, commissioning, technology, listing, certification, water supply, what kind of fire protection system, right? Natural hazards, environmental conditions, a lot to consider when you're putting these really electrically loaded boxes out in the middle of the environment. Right? So the fire department pre-planning and the fire department planning, I don't know why that just switched on me, but they're going to put a ton of water on these to prevent the other energy storage systems around it from catching on fire. That's what they're going to do in most circumstances. Some fire departments, depending on the circumstance, they may say, hey, let it burn out, you know, let it burn out, let the fuel consume itself, you know, instead of, you know, building up and causing a worse hazard like an explosion hazard. So it depends on the technology, depends on the fire department, depends on the pre-planning. But this is what makes separation of containers so important. You know, what would happen if they did not have an unlimited water supply and a trained fire department here? What would happen? What do you think? All right. So this was the loss here I'm showing you in the industry that really, I mean, this was concurrent with the development of NFPA 855, and it, it really spurred a lot. This is in June of, I'm sorry, I got ahead of myself. This is South Korea, excuse me. South Korea, this is an article in energy storage system fires in June of 2019. So between August of 2017 and October of 2019, there were about 28 fires that occurred. And South Korea announced the conclusions from their investigation regarding the root cause for 23 energy storage system fires in a short time in that, in that country. And the fires were caused in South Korea, mostly by functional failures and some poor installations. Now remember, you know, this is South Korea. They weren't subject to NFPA 855, right? They were ahead of that standard. But we learned a lot and, and the NFPA standard obviously integrated a lot of the best practices, but one of the system, it was located near a concrete plant and the container was not sealed and it had vents. So dust was entering the container for a while. And that facility was also near the ocean. And at times the humidity and dampness from the ocean would reach the area and it moistened the dust and it created a conductive path and it caused shorts and then a fire. And another incident in South Korea involved containers located at a swamp and the containers were connected through a common conduit. And one of the pads where the container, where it rested, it partially sank in unstable soil, causing a short and a fire. So environment is, is really key. Don't, don't neglect where these things are and where they're being installed. And don't, certainly don't think just about fire. Okay. So as a result of those fires, South Korea, they, they said, okay, they updated their grounding requirements to, to, to mitigate that fire exposure. And they also, you know, recognized, you know, that natural hazards really needed to be considered much more in the design of the box, right? If you're going to put a box in the middle of the desert and you have fresh air intakes or ventilation systems, well, how's that going to function in a dust storm or a wildfire event, right? You're opening the box up to the external environmental issues. What about firebrands and embers from a wildfire event, right? So lots of considerations. The other findings from the South Korea event was really around faulty installations that need to be picked up on commissioning. So the goal of commissioning is to find these issues before it's, it's put in service. And finally, the required, you know, UL 9540 listing that helps us identify that all the system components will actually work well together. All right. So system integration and 9540 is key. This was, this event here I'm showing you is the Arizona surprise incident. This was a couple of years back and this was April of 2019. And essentially this is a one container event. And you can see it's not a, it's not a really large installation. It was kind of in the middle of nowhere. And you had one career fire captain and one male career fire engineer, two other firefighters that received serious injuries as the result of a thermal runaway event with this, with this best, this was a pretty small installation by today's standards. It's only like 2.2 megawatt hours. It was lithium ion battery based. And this was before it was installed before NFPA 855. And this one event really served as the basis for a huge amount of co-development and standards. So UL issued a report on this, I think it was July of 20. I mean, in a nutshell, the thought at the time was lithium ion batteries don't prevent the explosion hazard and they were wrong. It was a thermal runaway event and a huge amount of off gas was contained within the box. There was no active ventilation system to lower, to remove the concentration of flammable gas and hydrogen. The firefighters essentially waited a while. They saw a haze kind of floating around the whole area. Well, that was off gas. And when they opened the door, the oxygen was introduced into the environment, which allowed the concentration of the flammable gas to fall within explosible limits. And all it had to do was find a little emission source, which is everywhere and kaboom. And the firefighters got thrown up to 75 feet away. They got thrown through the fence, under the fence. It was a horrific event and it led to and it led to a lot of the best practices, standards and codes that we use today. So poll question number five, poll question number five. Water supplies are not critical for fire department response at best because most fire departments today are just going to let them burn out. True or false? All right. Let's see what you think. There you go. Thank you. Yep. False. You'll hear rumors. You'll hear kind of chatter. You'll hear at conferences and industry events and by installers and by developers and, oh, let it burn out. Best thing to do is let it burn out. Well, if they talk to any firefighter ever or any fire chief ever, they're not going to just sit there and watch the fire burn. In all likelihood, they're going to use water and they're going to try to prevent that event from spreading to adjacent exposures. Ask for the pre-plan. Ask for the pre-plan. Lithium ion batteries present a very challenging scenario. All right. And you guys know that one. So we'll hit the next slide. We're just about to wrap up. So hang in there. And thank you for your time today. This is showing you some of the recent losses, guys. This is just when we thought we had it all figured out. This was Australia and this was that commissioning fire. And really what happened here was a coolant leak that went undetected. So they were doing startup tests. And the fire department, you know what they did? They sprayed water on the burning battery system for three days, not hours, three days to keep it from spreading to the adjacent containers until it finally burned out. A lot of the criticism around that is that, well, you're just kind of prolonging the inevitable. You're letting it burn longer because you're not letting it consume the fuel itself. Well, most firefighters and firefighting companies and fire chiefs, they're going to do the same thing. They're going to use water. All right. Odds are UL updated 9540 to require liquid detection in the next publication as the result of this event. So 9540 is also evolving. So this is just basically what I told you here. These investigations on that event, it was triggered by short circuits in two locations and it was caused most likely by a coolant leak outside of the battery compartment. And maybe Tesla will reveal. Tesla's been pretty good about revealing and improving and being transparent about it in the industry, to be honest with you. All right. That's the challenge. All right. I have here, there's a video here on our presentation that Lillian will send a link to because of the time on off-gas detection. Carl talked about off-gas. We're seeing more and more solutions for installing inside the box in the market today. One of the first ones that we started seeing in, I would say, state-of-the-art installations was the Xtralis Lion Tamer solution. And Lion Tamer is a solution that essentially puts a bunch of, think of like VESDA or very early warning smoke detection that you may find in a data center. Or a server room. It's basically a state-of-the-art off-gas detection system that gets installed in the boxes and they put these sensors in predefined areas around the VES unit to essentially get the earliest warning that thermal runaway is happening. So you can just de-energize and pull the battery back out of the thermal runaway event. So the video shows you how it works. I'm not going to take everyone's time to show you. It's a three-minute video and we'll send the link out. Lion Tamer is not the only player in the market for off-gas detection. There are other players and they're starting to look very similar to each other. But essentially, think of little gas detectors that are being deployed in the modules, in the racks. Not just a hydrogen detector at the ceiling or not just a hydrogen detector in the rack, but at very predefined areas for very early detection, looking for a very specific off-gas signature that's fine-tuned to the chemistry of the lithium-ion battery and fine-tuned to the OEM. So it's really kind of your quickest way to pull an installation out of thermal runaway beyond just an EMS and EMS system, which is software, right? It's software controlled. And yes, A55 says that's the primary way you should control and identify for that thermal runaway exposure. But this is another acceptable method. All right, so I wanted to show you what that generally looks like because you will see them. And really, this is just what I told you. It's quick. It obviously adds to the bottom line cost of an installation. Not every installation out there is going to go with this. They're going to go with the cheapest option. Usually, you engineer to the cheapest solution. And unfortunately, what I've seen in my experience is that's not good enough. It's not great. It's usually sticking a hydrogen detector at the top of the box. But guess what? Depending on the chemistry, depending on the box, depending on the modules, the configuration, it may be a while before that flammable concentration of gas reaches that hydrogen detector because there are other flammable gases, and they may not disperse evenly in that box. So really, computational fluid dynamics and testing and ventilation and circulation studies should be performed and disclosed in the 9540A report to tell you the layman what kind of off-gas detection and explosion protection and ventilation systems should be installed in that box. And that's an area for improvement that the industry is grappling with right now. It's not as easy as just saying, yep, we have a hydrogen detector. This thing's good. We're good to go. Nope, not good enough, guys. All right. So lots of challenges that remain. Standards are getting better. I would say the future is very bright. And we are going in our lives to see these installations more frequently in all sorts of environments. There are still losses happening. We've already covered several of them just this year. Fire protection is evolving quickly. Water-based, we believe water-based is your best option, your most effective option. Plan on losing the box. Your best bet is hoping that it doesn't spread beyond the box to the next box. Those minimum separation distances are dictated by 9540A and 855 and local fire officials. Spacing is a major concern. There's no table for you to look at to decide if that spacing is adequate or not. Fire department pre-planning and water supply are key. With that, Carl and I are ready to answer any of your questions. All right. Thank you so much, Eric and Carl. And we do have quite a few questions here. We'll start with Robert Bailey. So can you talk more about the non-lithium alternative options we're seeing in BESS systems such as flow batteries, vanadium-based, and zinc hybrid cathodes saltwater battery? They're safer. And Carl, you want to opine? I think you're probably looking for, hey, is it inherently safer technology than lithium-ion? And my opinion is yes. And that's why that market is taking hold. Yes. There are several options out there. We were just looking at a zinc bromide the other day. And we are getting other technologies in. And there's a huge push by the battery manufacturers out there to come out with the safer alternative that excludes the exposure of having a thermal runaway as part of their operation. And we like those. We like to get them in and we take a look at them. And we hope more of them come in. Also, I just mentioned earlier that we had that battery submittal. It wasn't a submittal. It was a thing that I read in the Energy News this morning that they're working on a 100-hour battery. And that battery is going to – somehow it's going to turn rust into iron. There's no flammable liquid associated with it. So, the technology that we're seeing coming through that's non-lithium-ion is much, much safer than the lithium-ion battery option that's the most popular right now. 855 will still apply. So, if you see an alternative technology, guys, for the most part, check out 855. It covers alternative technologies. And the next edition, the draft edition – anyone can go read the next draft of 855. It's public. Get in there and see what they're saying about that technology. But in general, Carl's absolutely right. And look for a 9540. Look for a listing. Look for a large-scale fire test. You don't know about the technology. It's brand new. But water-based – 9540 has already been – we're already adapting that to lithium-ion battery type of technology. And this is another question. Well, it's about the battery enclosures. Can you give more detail about what's inside them? This is from Kevin Burlow. Ones that I've seen appear to be thousands of AA-size battery cells that in an array – see your slide – 31. Is that the way most battery units are, or is it specific to Tesla batteries? It varies by manufacturer. Form factor and chemistry vary. Highly variable. Some of the earliest that we saw, yes, he's thinking of probably LFP cells. And they're integrated into a module, right? Like Carl said, you have thousands of these things, and they're integrated into a module, and these modules are installed in a rack, right? So very common installation. A lot of the newer solutions will look differently, and they'll use different form factors. And that's why off-gas is a really hot topic, because depending on what it looks like inside the box, it will behave differently in a fire or explosion scenario. And that's why that 9540A test report is so critical. All right. Thank you. This question is from Marina Cicharin. Thermal runaway fires are scary. How often is safety and maintenance loss control visits required in any given year? Carl, you want to talk about that? The code, each battery manufacturer has a recommended maintenance schedule. Usually the manufacturer will have trained reps that will come out, and the battery type and how big they are will dictate on how often that they come out to do inspections. Of course, all the batteries are monitored by the BMS system. So any time that they would get a signal from that BMS system, there is something wrong with the battery, or something a little bit out, or something's getting a little bit too hot or anything like that, they will send technicians out to figure out what the problem is and to fix it. And they also are able to shut that down from the remote station. All right. Thank you. From Mark Kane. Three hours of deluge in Australia. Often water can break down into its constituent parts and enhance the burn. What alternative methods are currently being considered? Yeah, so, you know, it's a hot topic, no pun intended, the best fire, fixed fire protection in the box. And, you know, the industry started with clean agent, and they learned really quickly that that didn't work well. Arizona's surprise incident used clean agent. And what it did was it actually exacerbated the explosion potential of the box because it displaced the oxygen, right? So there was a fire, it was a thermal runaway, it was a fire, the clean agent, which has a 10 minute hold time, it dispersed. And what it did is it displaced any oxygen. So the second the firefighters opened the door and oxygen was introduced into that environment full of hydrogen and other flammable gas, it allowed the LEL to be hit, actually the UEL to be hit because it was so rich. And once you hit that, you know, that threshold, kaboom. So, you know, I think you've seen a lot of, there are, we see everything from condensed aerosol solutions like statics, to deluge, to open head systems, to pre-action systems. Carl and I, frankly, you know, we know we're going to lose the box. We just want control as best as possible in the box. So even if it's an open head system with a fire department connection, so the fire department has the option of putting water in the box, we've seen that. Carl, we've seen so many different configurations as the fire protection community is trying to figure out the best way to control these events outside of just exterior control. Have we seen anything else? Am I missing anything here? No, water still seems to be the main thing that everybody's concentrating on. Just put as much water on it as you can, protect the exposures around it, and let it burn out. All right. Okay. Thank you. This question is from Todd Holland. Everything in the presentation discussed stationary systems. We're starting to see mobile lithium ion VEST systems that are trailer mounted and can be deployed and connected at plants and then reused at other sites. Are we at a comfort point with this type of technology? Yeah, that's a great question because now you're not a remote installation. So 855 gives all sorts of, in my personal professional opinion, allowances that are way too liberal on remote installations. And now when you're near an exposure, now you're an installation near an exposure, Todd. So when you look in 855 Chapter 4 and Chapter 9, you're going to see more stringent requirements for cutoffs and water supplies and fire protection installations that will actually work. So if you saw a trailer, Todd, with a clean agent system right next to a building, any building, any exterior exposure, I would not feel super great about that. You're going to need explosion protection, explosion prevention, you're going to need off-gas detection, you're going to need fire suppression that works. And when I say that works, not clean agent. Give me something else. Ideally, give me water or statics. Give me condensed aerosols. It's going to be better than clean agent. You're going to lose the box anyway, right? But we want to prevent that explosion potential, especially. So the ventilation requirements, that language, I think it has room for improvement in the next edition of 855. And a big consideration on this one, I don't want to neglect it, is backup power. So if you have these systems, you got to make sure that there's standby power for them to work. All right? So if it's a portable BESS trailer, like a generator, like a gen set, like we used to do with a cat gen set somewhere, you know, forever, and we want to put a bunch of batteries next to the building, well, let's make sure that we have some serious cutoff and water supply, ventilation systems, gas detection, and a fire department pre-plan, Todd, a fire department pre-plan. And I think our loss scenario would increase, exposure would increase on that because we are moving it. So every time that we moved it somewhere and put it down, we're bouncing it around, trailer driving it around, and you don't know what that's going to do to the battery. So each time you stop to use it somewhere, I don't know if it'd be there for one month, six months, you would have to recommission it to make sure everything is working okay. And then when you pick it up and move it to the next spot, you probably have to re, you probably have to decommission it and then transport it to the next area and go through all of that again. And the fact that you're transporting it around and moving it, it's probably going to end up in a remote area. So then you would come up on your concern about fire department and water supply. Thank you. And I know we're, we're a little bit past our time. So I will just do two more questions from Julio Carrillo. Can you recommend a distance of VESS from a building? Julio referenced NFPA 855. It's in there by the way. Okay. And, okay. And then you mentioned, you know, that it can be read for free. So where, Jason Thomas was asking, where can you, can you get that? Okay. All right. Thank you. There's contingencies. So I know the answer, but I don't want to, I don't want to assume anything. So it's best for you to just go to that section of the standard and read it yourself. Okay. Excellent. So this is from Christy Rocos. What is the lifespan of the batteries? And do you think replacement costs is an appropriate basis of settlement? Go ahead, Carl. So the submittals that we are getting in, they're engineering these to last 20 years. So they, batteries to last at least that long. And again, it depends on, when you think about how long a battery is going to last, it depends on are they following the engineering design that was meant to make them last that long. So for example, if they're charging it, charge it up to 90% and only take it back down to 20%, that was the parameters and they're going, they just want to produce a bunch of power. So now they're going up to a hundred percent and they're reducing it down to, you know, discharging it down to 10%. Those batteries are not going to last for that whole 20 year cycle because they're using them a lot more and differently than what the design is. We haven't been out, we don't have any batteries out there right now. I mean, most of them are probably in the, you know, between being brand new and maybe five years old. So it'll be interesting to see in 20 years from now, if the designers had met that requirement, if they're using them properly, where they're located, what kind of environment are they in, such as Eric was talking about? Do we have sand? Do we have dust? You know, what kind of environment are they working in? All that stuff is going to decrease the lifespan of the battery. All right. Well, thank you so much, Eric and Carl, for a fantastic presentation. We have had, we've had so many questions. And because we have so many questions, instead, what I'm going to do is just randomly select two winners from those, all those that were submitted. And so the first winner that we have today is Kevin Furlow. Kevin Furlow. And the next winner that we have is Christy Roscoe. Christy, congratulations, Christy and Kevin. And thank you to everyone who submitted questions. Thank you to everyone who submitted questions today to the presenters. And thank you again to our presenters, Carl and Eric. We do have in the chat, we have a survey link. So please click on the survey and provide your feedback to IMUA. We want to know what worked well and what we can improve upon. And, you know, thanks so much to our attendees for your wonderful questions. This ends today's webinar. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you.

Battery Energy Storage Systems

Critical considerations

Environmental exposures

Fire risks

Security concerns

Regulatory standards

Battery lifespan

Thermal runaway events

Fire protection measures

Fire protection systems

Off-gas detection systems

Alternative battery technologies

Mobile energy storage systems