Fire in small battery storage unit at ITRI solar site, Longjing District, Taichung

In 2022 a fire broke out in a small battery storage installation co-located with solar generation at the ITRI Green Energy and Environment Research Laboratories solar storage demonstration site in Longjing District, Taichung City, Taiwan, operated by the Industrial Technology Research Institute. Local fire services were notified and arrived in about 13 minutes, brought the fire under control roughly 19 minutes later and reported it fully extinguished around an hour after the initial call. No injuries were reported. The system used cylindrical nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) lithium-ion cells and had been in service for approximately two years. The cause was not confirmed at the time of reporting. The event prompted wider discussion in the sector about cell chemistry selection and about operations and maintenance arrangements for storage deployed alongside solar demonstration projects.

Reporting at the time stated that no root cause had been confirmed. Commentary published alongside the reports noted that some demonstration-scale storage projects lack a dedicated operations and maintenance budget, and included unverified speculation that a small animal may have entered the enclosure. Neither point was established as a cause.

1. Fund and schedule ongoing operations and maintenance for demonstration and pilot-scale storage on the same basis as commercial assets, including named responsibility for routine inspection.
2. Verify the ingress protection rating and physical sealing of enclosures, cable entries and vents against pests and small animals, and record this in periodic inspections.
3. Include thermal stability and propagation behaviour, not only energy density and rate capability, in cell chemistry selection for systems operating at high charge and discharge rates.
4. Where a cause is not yet established, state clearly in internal and external communications which findings are confirmed and which remain unverified, and issue an update when the investigation closes.
5. For ageing pilot installations, review whether monitoring, alarming and remote isolation remain in service after the original research programme has ended.

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