Safety by Design
Our focus on system safety begins in the design phase of your project.
Confidence in the safety of your energy storage system is our most basic commitment to you. Our focus on system safety begins in the design phase of your project. The design plan includes electrical safety measures, review of interior and exterior environment conditions, site readiness, monitoring and controls, as well as active countermeasures for fire suppression.
Our designs follow the most current standards of the National Fire Protection Association and the best practices of the Energy Storage Association. During integration activities, all system elements are confirmed for proper certification and tested to meet the applicable project requirements.
LS Energy Solutions delivers equipment designed to detect unsafe conditions and stop a fire if it should occur.
Electrical Safety
While rare, storage fires are caused mostly by a thermal runaway in the battery cells. This dangerous condition can occur when a cell reaches a high temperature due to a heat or mechanical failure, short-circuiting, or electrochemical breakdown.
The overall system integration can significantly affect the potential for thermal runaway – and its avoidance. LS Energy Solutions uses a design approach that prioritizes safety at the system architecture stage with the proper selection of system components – including the batteries themselves – as well as power conversion and protection equipment. All system elements are designed with proper certification and testing standards including UL1741, UL9540, and NFPA 855.
We work to enhance storage safety further by building systems in modular units, an approach enabled by incorporating our AiON-SIS string inverters. By dividing a large installation into smaller sections, we can minimize short-circuit ratings, which represent one of the key challenges of servicing storage systems.
Enclosure Design and Equipment Environment
Modular Architecture – After selecting certified electrical components, our next step is designing the system’s enclosure according to best practices. A modular architecture enables this step by making it easier to design for safety. We place battery racks, power conversion systems, and controls in separate segments of a single enclosure, each with its own protection system.
Thermal Management – Each enclosure is designed to address thermal management, including properly sized HVAC systems and sufficient ducting to handle expected battery and external heat loads.
Fire Suppression: Prevention First
The best fire protection is prevention, and many key fire protection features are intrinsic elements of the LS Energy Solutions safety-centered design. This includes the selection of appropriately certified battery equipment and battery management systems, ground fault detection systems, and remote monitoring capabilities.
However, while fire risk can be minimized, it cannot be eliminated altogether, necessitating additional site-specific systems for this purpose.
