Battery fire at Damyang Solar Power Plant ESS marks fifth South Korean ESS fire of 2022

A fire broke out in the battery room of the Damyang Solar Power Plant ESS, an energy storage system co-located with a solar power plant in Deokgok-ri, Mujeong-myeon, Damyang-gun, Jeollanam-do. The facility manager was alerted by an abnormal alarm from the ESS monitoring equipment at around 15:32 and found smoke leaking from the battery room, with no visible flames. The fire department was notified immediately. Damyang Fire Department dispatched 22 fire appliances and about 150 firefighters. The onboard carbon dioxide suppression system had activated before crews arrived, and water was applied to control the blaze. Because stored energy in the battery continued to release heat, full extinguishment was expected to take around three days. The 9.1 MWh battery system and associated power conversion equipment were damaged. This was reported as the fifth ESS fire in South Korea in 2022 and the 38th cumulative ESS fire incident in the country since 2017.

The battery had reportedly undergone a prior intervention roughly two years before the fire, when manufacturer Samsung SDI replaced batteries and retrofitted additional capsule-type fire suppression equipment following a period of frequent ESS fires nationally. The specific technical trigger for this event (battery cell fault versus other equipment fault) was not confirmed in the source reporting.

1. Early-stage smoke or alarm detection without visible flame should trigger immediate isolation and fire service notification, as battery room fires can develop with limited external warning signs.
2. Retrofitted suppression measures and battery replacement programmes following earlier fire clusters do not eliminate recurrence risk, so ongoing monitoring and inspection remain necessary.
3. Recurring ESS fires within a national fleet using the same battery chemistry and cell supplier warrant fleet-wide investigation and coordinated remediation rather than site-by-site fixes.
4. Suppression systems should be designed for extended thermal runaway events, since full extinguishment of a battery fire can take considerably longer than typical fire response timeframes.

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