According to the Beijing Fire official Weibo in the early morning of the 17th, 12:17 on April 16, 2021, the Beijing 119th Command Center received a report that a fire broke out at the energy storage power station No. 14 in the Yonghongmen West Horse Factory, on the South fourth Ring Road, Fengtai District, and dispatched 47 fire engines from 15 fire stations to the scene. At about 14: 15, during the disposal of the southern part of the power station, the northern part of the power station exploded without warning, resulting in the death of two firefighters, the injury of one firefighter (in stable condition) and the disappearance of one employee in the power station.
It is understood that the project is an integrated DC optical storage and charging project, and the first phase of the project was officially put into operation in March 2019. Before the incident, the power station was under construction and commissioning. 23:40 on April 16, the open fire was completely extinguished and cooling treatment was still being carried out at the scene. Relevant departments in the urban area have organized special forces to do a good job in monitoring and checking the fire area and its surrounding areas to ensure safety. The cause of the accident and property damage are under investigation.
It is understood that the DC optical storage and charging system has a total capacity of 25MWH, of which 12.5MWh is used for external electric vehicle charging (including 4MWh social vehicles in the south and 8.5MWh bus operation in the north) and 12.5MWh is used for indoor energy storage and power supply. The project effectively delays the capacity increase of Beijing urban power distribution network by 10MW and can meet the construction needs of more high-power charging piles.
The charging station of the DC optical storage and charging project is built in accordance with the maximum specification of the new national standard in 2015, with a single gun up to 150kW, each charging post equipped with two guns up to 300kW, charging voltage: 50-800V, charging current: 3-200A, rated power: 120 kW. The first phase of the project has a power sales capacity of more than 40,000 kilowatt-hours, which can participate in green power consumption and power demand-side regulation. When charging a bus with four guns, the total power can reach 600kW, and the ride-hailing car can be fully charged within one hour.
The cloud control platform of the project is a FDS2016 intelligent optical storage automatic control and management software developed by a company. As a mobile energy butler, it provides technical guarantee for user product experience from the aspects of optical storage and charging energy control and management strategy, intelligent terminal equipment and accurate and timely cloud data transmission.
The project has made corresponding explorations in four aspects: the largest energy storage power station on the user side, the largest charging station in the city center, the first DC optical storage and charging integration project, and the first regional DC incremental distribution network project.
According to the (CESA) statistics of the Energy Storage Application Branch of China Chemical and physical Power Industry Association, by the end of December 2020, global energy storage projects have been installed with a total of 188.3GW. Among them, the installed scale of pumped storage is 169.8 GW, accounting for 90.2% of the installed power, and the cumulative installed capacity of electrochemical energy storage is 12.7 GW, accounting for 6.7%, second only to pumped storage.
With the rapid growth of energy storage projects at home and abroad, safety problems have become increasingly prominent, especially the fire incident has attracted great attention from all walks of life. Energy storage is still in the early stage of industrial development, for example, the public will generally magnify the awareness of new things. For example, under policy incentives in South Korea, energy storage project construction has exploded, resulting in major security risks in system integration, construction, operation and maintenance. In 2019, a fire broke out at the battery storage power plant deployed by APS in Peoria, Arizona, and four firefighters were injured. Therefore, it is necessary to objectively and rationally look at the hidden dangers of accidents that have been exposed, draw lessons from examples, and seriously do a good job in the safety and security of energy storage projects.
In view of the fact that the fire accident may be related to many uncertain factors, such as cell safety, system safety, electrical safety, construction and installation, and some of the evidence may disappear or change in the combustion process, the cause analysis is more complicated, so it will make the accident investigation difficult.
According to the data of the Electric vehicle Safety report released by the Electric vehicle 100 talents Association, the annual combustion accident rate of cars in China is 3.16 per million, and the combustion accident rate of new energy vehicles is 0.98 per ten thousand. Among them, the charging process and the static state after full charge are the main components of the fire accident.
Safety is the lifeblood of the development of energy storage industry. We must attach great importance to it, make unremitting efforts, and earnestly fulfill the main responsibility of quality and safety. The accident of the energy storage power station has sounded the safety alarm again. We should learn a lesson from the accident, such as manufacturing, installation and construction, operation and maintenance management and other industrial chains.
In terms of technology, for the fire accidents frequently exposed by energy storage projects at home and abroad, manufacturing enterprises should attach great importance to and strengthen the safety verification of the battery system. The rapid growth of the market has led to a continuous shortening of the product development cycle and insufficient product verification time, so it is necessary to have an in-depth understanding of the early energy storage battery design and cannot rely on external fire remedial measures. it is necessary to speed up the research and development of energy storage battery intrinsically safe controllable technology and system integration technology, such as safety agent injection technology, to completely prevent the occurrence of fire and explosion of energy storage battery. The system integrator should strengthen the management of the supply system of key parts and strictly control the quality.
In terms of standards, for projects in densely populated areas or close contact with personnel on the user side, it is necessary to consider the highest safety level standards to speed up the formulation and improvement of safety standards for the whole industry chain. It is necessary to effectively implement safety responsibilities at all nodes, including the formulation of industry standards and policies, as well as the implementation of standard testing during product acceptance.
In the aspect of project operation and maintenance, it is necessary to do a good job in system integration and daily use and maintenance of related components, to find and eliminate potential safety risks in built projects, and to adopt the man-machine combination and joint prevention and control mode of online detection of monitoring system and offline monitoring of staff, to improve the special operation system norms and business level of project construction, operation and maintenance, and to take necessary measures to eliminate hidden dangers in the event of safety accidents. To further build the battery safety, the whole station safety, charging safety, use safety and other multiple life cycle ecological security protection system, to focus on policy safety, management control safety, technical safety, multi-pronged approach, users can be safer.
We suggest that the competent departments of the industry should actively organize and carry out in-depth investigation and analysis of fire accidents, defect risk assessment and determination by third parties, and issue information sharing mechanisms to further improve the safety judgment technology and ability of the industry, strengthen supervision in advance, during and after the event. At the same time, work with relevant departments to promote the research and development of safety technology, the revision of safety standards and the promotion of system operation insurance system to improve product quality and application safety; at the same time, it is necessary to strengthen the norms of power plant construction and operation and maintenance system to ensure the safe operation of the project throughout the life cycle.
