NFPA Journal - Summer 2022 - 50

ESS
Since UMass is a state-run organization,
McCormack said, the BFD
wasn't involved in the permitting
process for the design and installation
of the ESS equipment on the
UMass Boston campus, even though
the department could be called there
to respond if something goes wrong
with that equipment. It's a problem for
fire departments across the country,
McCormack said. ESS installations
often fall under a patchwork of state
and local regulations, potentially
leaving departments in the dark on
hazards that could be hidden in their
own backyards. Between counting
smaller-scale ESS attached to single-family
homes and larger-scale
commercial configurations like the
ones at UMass, the number of ESS in
Boston is anyone's guess. " We have no
idea, " McCormack said.
Compounding that problem, when
departments arrive on the scene of
a fire involving an ESS, there's little
formal guidance on how to approach
the situation: Do you use foam or
water? Should you try to vent the
structure? How long do you need to
stay on the scene? " If we got an alarm
for an ESS fire right now, it's going
to be a crapshoot, " said Chris Towski,
a lieutenant in the fire department
for the city of Cambridge, across the
Charles River from Boston. " Don't get
me wrong-we've gotten a lot better
over the years. But we're still a work in
progress. "
One big step forward is slated for later
this summer, when McCormack finalizes
a set of standard operating procedures
(SOPs) he's writing for firefighters
responding to ESS incidents. The idea
for the SOPs-which McCormack and
Towski believe are the first of their kind
in the United States-emerged from a
partnership between the Boston and
Cambridge fire departments about a
year and a half ago. Additionally, the
City of Boston is accepting bids for a
project to install solar panels and an
ESS at a fire department training facility
on Moon Island, about two miles east
of the UMass Boston campus. " It will
give any firefighter in Massachusetts
a hands-on look at this technology, "
McCormack said.
50 | NFPA JOURNAL * SUMMER 2022
Experts say efforts like this to better
educate and train firefighters on
ESS incidents are key to addressing
the need for enhancing responder
preparedness for ESS nationwide.
Addressing the issues involved in the
regulatory aspects of ESS design, installation,
and management could be a
bit more challenging. But there's hope
that with more widespread adoption of
NFPA 855, Standard for the Installation
of Stationary Energy Storage Systems,
'One of the biggest
things we need to get our
members comfortable
with is just realizing you
can use water very
effectively on these fires.
In fact, that's what you
should use.'
coupled with increased attention to
collecting and accessing data, those
challenges will ease, too. ESS safety will
be the topic of several education sessions
at the NFPA Conference & Expo®
in Boston in June. [See " Conference
Sessions " on following spread.]
" We don't want to be the bad guys,
saying you can't have an ESS, " said
Towski, who serves on the NFPA 855
technical committee. " We just have to
improve the regulatory piece of it, and
we need quick-hitting, bulleted items
telling firefighters what to do if they
respond to incidents involving ESS. "
'The new hazmat'
As of early 2022, nine states across
the country had goals in place to
achieve energy storage capabilities of
varying degrees by 2030-from a massive
6-gigawatt goal in New York to a
400-megawatt goal in Maine. These
goals will be met by installing dozens
of ESS, most of them battery-powered,
across each state over the next
several years.
While there's little scientific data on
how often ESS batteries overheat, catch
fire, or explode in the US or globally,
it does happen. More than 30 ESS
battery fires have been documented
in South Korea alone since 2017, for
example. Perhaps the best illustration
of the potential dangers of ESS to first
responders occurred in April 2019,
when ESS batteries began overheating
and off-gassing in Surprise, Arizona, at
a facility owned by the utility company
Arizona Public Service. A subsequent
explosion at the site severely injured
four firefighters. Investigations later
revealed that firefighters opened a door
attached to the ESS, allowing oxygen
to mix with the chemicals being offgassed,
creating the right conditions for
a blast.
It's situations like these that McCormack
and Towski want their fellow
firefighters to be prepared for.
" Something that's always said on the
scene of a fire is 'Fire's knocked down,
companies are overhauling,' " McCormack
said. " And overhauling means
you're opening things up, exposing
leftover fire spots. With an ESS, doing
that could be deadly. So these SOPs
and other training efforts will really be
about teaching firefighters to wait for
things to burn through before dousing
them with water or making sure
something's not going to explode if
you open it. "
According to Towski, simply alleviating
concerns over mixing water with
batteries will go a long way toward
establishing better responder preparedness
for ESS. " We have this hysteria
over mixing water with any kind of
electricity, " he said. " So one of the biggest
things we need to get our members
comfortable with is just realizing that
yes, you can use water very effectively
on these fires, and in fact that's what
you should be using. Every engineer
says the best thing for putting these
fires out is water. "
" In Boston, we're lucky because we
have tons of water, " McCormack added.
" We have the entire Atlantic Ocean if
we need it. "
When McCormack finalizes the
SOPs, they'll be made available to any
department that wants them. But even
then, McCormack cautions, they will
be subject to change and by no means
final. " They're not very scientific, " he
said. " They're really just my best guess
based off my own department's and
other departments' experiences with
ESS and other battery incidents like
NFPA Journal - Summer 2022

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