Press
The Energy Incident Register is an independent, free, public record of safety incidents at utility scale energy assets: battery storage, solar, wind and grid infrastructure. Every entry is written from published reporting and lists the sources it came from, so it is checkable rather than anecdotal. It is free to read and free to cite. This page is for journalists: what it is, how it is built, the live numbers, what you can quote, and who to ask.
Figures are read from the live register as you open this page.
What it is
A register, not a news site. Each entry records what happened at a named site, where, when, at what kind of asset, how severe it was, what contributed, and what lessons were published, in plain language, with the sources it was written from linked at the bottom. Entries name the site, the place and the companies only where the public reporting names them, and never an individual person. Incidents submitted to the register in confidence are anonymised absolutely.
It exists because public knowledge of these failures usually stops at the fire being put out. The follow up, the cause, the regulator's finding and the lesson are scattered across fire service reports, regulatory filings, court records and trade press, in many countries and languages, and nobody was collecting them in one place that a reader could check.
How an entry is made
Public reporting is searched every day, and the archive is being worked through year by year. A candidate report is drafted into an entry, reviewed against its sources before publication, and given a tier: confirmed, or provisional while reporting is still thin, in which case it is rechecked automatically as new reports appear. Where two independent sources agree, the record behind the entry is marked verified; where one authoritative source stands alone it is marked single source. The status is shown on every entry.
Being named in the register is a statement of what public reporting said, not a finding of fault. The register does not investigate and does not assign blame. There is a published corrections process, and the methodology is linked from every page.
What you can cite
- Any published entry, by its reference (for example EIR-0011) and its page address, which does not change.
- The live counts on this page and on the statistics page.
- The benchmarks: where incidents cluster, how severe they are and what fails, computed live from every published entry.
- The sources behind any entry, which are listed on it. Cite the source directly where you can; the register is the finding aid.
Attribute the register as Energy Incident Register, energyincidentregister.com. A statement from the register is attributed to the editor, Energy Incident Register.
What the register will not say
- The cause of an incident while an investigation is open. It will say the cause is not yet established.
- Anything about a site, operator or supplier that the public sources do not already say.
- A failure rate. The register knows the capacity of the sites where something happened, not the capacity of every site at risk, so it publishes counts and says so.
- Anything about a person.
Those are the rules the register holds itself to, and they are why it can be quoted.
A worked example
EIR-0011: thermal runaway and explosion at the McMicken battery storage site, Surprise, Arizona, 2019
The free entry gives what happened, why, and the lessons: gas detection thresholds, suppression on cell level events, separation distances. Eight firefighters and a police officer were taken to hospital. The entry names the site and the operator as the public reporting names them, and lists the sources it was written from. The verified record behind it, for subscribers, holds the same event as structured fields: manufacturer, integrator, capacity, root cause as stated by the investigation, and every source with its verification status.
Quotable statements
"Most of what is publicly known about an energy asset failure stops at the fire being put out. The register collects what came after: the cause where one was established, the regulator's finding, and the lesson, with the source for each so a reader can check it."
The editor, Energy Incident Register
"The register is a record of what public reporting says, not a safety rating. A company appears more often for having more of the installed base, or for working where reporting is open. It is checkable, which is more than most claims about safety in this industry."
The editor, Energy Incident Register
For a statement on a specific incident or a figure for a story, ask. Comparable entries and the numbers behind them are usually sent the same day.
Solar & Storage Live UK, 22 to 24 September 2026
The editor is at the NEC all three days with press access. The demonstration is short: name a company or a site you know and it is looked up on the spot. For anyone who prices, finances or insures these assets, the counterparty check takes the names on a term sheet and returns what the register holds against each in one go.
Contact and materials
Editorial enquiries: editor@energyincidentregister.com. Everything else: info@energyincidentregister.com. The register is independently run and self funded, and its editorial decisions are not influenced by any operator, vendor or service provider in the industries it covers.