Episode #94: 'Prioritizing And Advancing Battery Fire Safety At Utilities' With Jay Sadler Of Duke Energy [an Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast]

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Thanks to the sponsor of this episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast: West Monroe. 

Key Links

• Jay Sadler's Energy Central Profile: https://energycentral.com/member/profile/jay-sadler
• Did you know? The Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast has been identified as one of the industry's 'Top 25 Energy Podcasts': blog.feedspot.com/energy_podcasts

TRANSCRIPT

Jason Price: 

Welcome to Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast. The show that brings leading minds from the energy industry to discuss the challenges and trends that are transforming and modernizing our energy system. And a quick thank you to West Monroe, our sponsor of today's show. Now let's talk energy.

Jason Price: 
I'm Jason Price, Energy Central Podcast host and director with West Monroe, coming to you from New York City. And with me as always from Orlando, Florida is Energy Central producer and community manager, Matt Chester.

Jason Price: 
Matt, as the utility sector seeks to continually decarbonize, more renewable energy resources means we need more battery energy storage systems as well.

Jason Price: 
While the rate of grid tied battery installations has increased to unprecedented levels and that a rate of growth is poised to only accelerate prevalence of batteries on the grid brings with it new challenges.

Jason Price: 
One of those key areas that is critical for utilities to be thinking about today is preventing fires at battery sites and ensuring fire safety is at top of mind.

Jason Price: 
Matt, can you share some background about the safety related to battery energy storage systems?

Matt Chester: 
Sure, Jason, so the issue of fire safety around batteries is particularly important because the technology typically used, the lithium-ion, has some specific areas that must be kept in mind when it comes to safety.

Matt Chester: 
The chemicals used in these batteries bring with them risk of thermal runaway, which is a fire inside the battery that can't be put out with conventional methods.

Matt Chester: 
And while generally the likelihood that fires would start in systems housing these batteries isn't necessarily any greater than at any other utility facility, with some estimates that a lithium battery fire has the odds of about one in 10 million.

Matt Chester: 
The potential risks once those fires are started can lead to large safety concerns as teams fighting those fires are simultaneously dealing with the risk of reignition, electric shock, and even toxic fumes.

Matt Chester: 
That said effective fire prevention practices and proper emergency response preparation can mitigate these concerns.

Jason Price: 
That's great, Matt, thank you for that. So indeed, this is a situation where utilities would do well to lean into the ounce of prevention.

Jason Price: 
And our guest today is perhaps the leading voice when it comes to espousing proper preparation for lithium-ion battery fire safety at utilities.

Jason Price: 
Joining us today is Jay Sadler, the energy storage operations manager at Duke Energy. Jay comes from a background that combines both the firefighting industry and the nuclear generation sector. So he is indeed uniquely positioned to understand the technologies, procedures, and best practices.

Jason Price: 
And as Duke Energy continues to grow its energy storage footprint, Jay is leading the enterprise and doing so responsibly while also sharing those key insights with peers across the utility industry.

Jason Price: 
Jay, thanks so much for being here and welcome to the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast.

Jay Sadler: 
Thank you very much for having me. I'm excited to join.

Jason Price: 
And we are thrilled to have you. So Jay let's dive in. We want to talk about fire safety aspects in our conversation, and I'd love if you could paint a picture for our listeners about what these energy storage facilities look like?

Jason Price: 
Since the need to respond to a small EV battery fire is no doubt very different from what you address at a larger scale energy storage installation.

Jay Sadler: 
Sure. So my group at Duke Energy, we operate and maintain distribution tied battery energy storage systems. You may hear me refer to it as a BESS system.

Jay Sadler: 
That's the acronym. In the utility industry we love to use acronym. Our sites are smaller footprint than that of a transmission tied site.

Jay Sadler: 
Our sites are usually between one to two acres and our energy storage systems are typically less than 20 megawatts. And one of our sites you may have anywhere from one to eight 50 foot shipping containers, or up to a 100 of these small modular type containers. They're normally four foot by four foot by eight foot tall containers.

Jay Sadler: 
These containers will feed underground to an inverter. Then it'll go through a step up transformer through the switch gear and out to the distribution line.
 

Jay Sadler: 
On these sites there's also a site control center that houses all the communication equipment and the UPS system. We also have an auxiliary transformer that powers HVAC for the containers in the site control center.

Jay Sadler: 
So our sites a small site. You may find them out in the middle of a rural area, or you may find them in city center somewhere around local city. But all of our sites are distribution tied.

Jason Price: 
All right. You describe them as small but these are pretty acid intense and sophisticated technologies. So share with our audience, what are the inherent risks of such batteries?

Jay Sadler: 
Well, we're using different forms of lithium-ion batteries. We've been using what they call a NMC battery, which is a nickel manganese cobalt.

Jay Sadler: 
We're also starting to use iron phosphorus batteries, lithium-ion batteries, both of them are lithium-ion. Either way they're still the same risk. It's a thermal runaway.

Jay Sadler: 
A thermal runaway is a fire inside of lithium-ion battery. And it cannot be put out. It's an exothermic reaction and so it will feed on the chemicals inside the battery until there's no fuel or no chemicals left inside the cell to burn.

Jay Sadler: 
To start this process, there has to be a fault. We need some fault to occur, either an overcharging event, an over heating event, or maybe even a short circuit.

Jay Sadler: 
As that fault's taking place, the battery will start heating up and start to build pressure internally. There's a vent on top of the battery cell and when it hits that predetermined value of pressure inside the cell, the vent will rupture and it'll actually spew gases.

Jay Sadler: 
These are not the gases you want in an enclosure. These gases are going to be mainly hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, propane, a lot of the gases that you don't want inside an enclosed area.

Jay Sadler: 
These gases can reach their explosive ranges very quickly. That next stage after the gas generation is going to be what we go into is thermal runaway.

Jay Sadler: 
Again, that's a chemical reaction inside the cell. It can't be stopped and the fire cannot be extinguished. Even if we avoid thermal runaway with the safety systems to stop that fault, you still could have potential or large amounts of explosive gases inside this container. So that's what we're concerned about.

Jason Price: 
Talk to baseline safety procedures, the protocols, or even the technologies that you use to address these areas of concern?

Jay Sadler: 
Sure. So our number one rule with our battery site is we always preach, do not enter the vent, the site vent. If there's a safety strobe or an audible alarm that's activated. That's our number one protocol.

Jay Sadler: 
And I can promise you, any fireman's who's attended any of my trainings can tell you that rule, I say it so many times. So let's go through the safety systems that we utilize.

Jay Sadler: 
First line of defense is going to be our battery management system. We only use the BMS, brand matching, the brand of batteries we use.

Jay Sadler: 
Next we're going to use the Li-ion Tamer product. We thoroughly believe in this product. It was developed by the Navy for use on subs with lithium-ion batteries.

Jay Sadler: 
They realized this inherent danger, and you can imagine on a submarine, they wanted to make sure they tried to avoid thermal runaway on subs.

Jay Sadler: 
So they developed this product as an early detection system. And what it's doing is it's looking for venting cells, that gas coming out of the cells.

Jay Sadler: 
The next safety systems we have, we always use a network fire alarm control panel, thermal detectors. We actually utilize a hydrogen and carbon monoxide gas detection system.

Jay Sadler: 
And we also utilize a dry chem suppression system. For anybody that caught that, I did say a suppression system. That's not to put out a thermal runaway, but there's a lot of electrical components inside of these containers.

Jay Sadler: 
And you could just have a basic electrical fire. You don't want that electrical fire to in turn cause a thermal runaway with your battery.

Jay Sadler: 
So if you had a basic electrical fire, you want to have a way to put out that fire so it doesn't lead into a battery thermal runaway fire.

Jay Sadler: 
We also utilize ventilation systems. So we talked about a lot of gas generation from these cells as they're faulting, we want a way to purge those gases from the container.

Jay Sadler: 
We utilize deflagration or blast panels on the roof of the container. If we did have a blast, say our safety systems failed and we started building pressure inside one of these containers, we don't want the blast to go outward toward our vent and our first responders.

Jay Sadler: 
We want it to go upward and keep our first responders safe. One of the other things we use as a fire department connection to flood the container in a worst case scenario.

Jay Sadler: 
Flooding is not going to put out a thermal runaway, but it is going cool all of the other battery modules or cells around, the one that isn't thermal runaway. And that's the whole purpose of it is to cool everything down.

Jay Sadler: 
One of the biggest things I'm most proud of is probably our first responders station. It came from several industry events where we realized, hey, we're telling the first responders to stay outside the vent.

Jay Sadler: 
Our first rule is, do not enter the vents for fire response. Well, if we're telling them that, we need to provide them some tools that they can use outside the vent

Jay Sadler: 
What we offer is a weatherproof box and that houses your main fire alarm control panels, E-stops for each unit, ventilation controls. And then the fire department connection hookups are right beside this first responder station.

Jay Sadler: 
So we want to give them that right outside the vent. And it also has warning strobes on the outside of the box. We standardized all our warning strobes across all Duke sites.

Jay Sadler: 
So my group operates the distribution pad. There's another group in Duke that operates t-pad and even our unregulated sites, we're all standardizing our strobes.

Jay Sadler: 
We use a white strobes for a general fire alarm. A blue stroke means that we've actually had suppression agent released inside a container. And then a amber strobe means that we have high gas.

Jay Sadler: 
And that's standardized across our whole fleet. And it also is located on all the signage around the site as well. It's something that we're very, very proud of.
 

Jason Price: 
Jay, you alluded to some of what I was about to ask, and I'd like you to elaborate, really it's around the safety of the emergency responders who are going to be addressing this.

Jason Price: 
So you gave a detailed and thorough response a moment ago about the technology. Can you share with us what is the education process like on your end? And are such trainings taking place across the country as well or is this really initiatives more local to you?

Jay Sadler: 
Well, the safety training is taking place in a lot of areas, but there's a lot of utilities that they're deploying this technology and they still don't understand the hazards. So I'm not going to quit spreading the word on how important this training is to everyone in the fire industry.

Jay Sadler: 
We have a multilayer approach. So we hold an initial meeting on site during the construction and it's usually right after the major components have been set on the site.

Jay Sadler: 
During this meeting, we're going to invite all the first responders, anybody that may respond to our site for a fire emergency, we're going to have them there on site.

Jay Sadler: 
We're going to introduce them to lithium-ion technology. How does a battery energy storage system work? We're going to start talking about the hazards of the battery.

Jay Sadler: 
We'll give them our first responder safety brochure. That's something we've developed inside. It has pictures of site components, describes what is the best facility. It talks about the hazards of lithium-ion.

Jay Sadler: 
It gives them some really good generic on arrival instructions. In other words, what do they do when they get to the site if they're coming or responding to an event?

Jay Sadler: 
Talks about some of the unique challenges of fire response to our BESS systems. Again, we talked about water doesn't put out a thermal runaway event. So they need to understand that theory and then gives a warning strobe descriptions and our contact information.

Jay Sadler: 
We always want to make sure they know how to get ahold of us. We ask them to put one of these brochures up on their visor of every one of their trucks.

Jay Sadler: 
And believe it or not, they show up to the second training, probably about 50% of them standing there holding their brochures. So we know it's getting to them. They're understanding this is very important.

Jay Sadler: 
We also discuss a 911 message. This is something we do for every one of our sites. And we actually contact the local 911 center.

Jay Sadler: 
And what we're trying to do or what we do is get a message put into their CAD system. So when someone comes by and sees that something may have happened at our site and they call in and give our site address, a pre-canned message pops up for the 911 operator to give to the first responders.

Jay Sadler: 
It's very important they know what they're responding to. That's been lessons learned from some of these events. The first responders didn't even know they were responding to a BESS facility.

Jay Sadler: 
So our message states, it's got five bullets. First one is warning. You're responding to a Duke Energy large scale battery energy storage facility.

Jay Sadler: 
That's going to give a code for our first responders station. We have to keep that locked, so somebody just walking by can't start hitting E-stops on our equipment. So it's going to give them that code for that first responder station.

Jay Sadler: 
Next thing it's going to give them a contact information for our control room. Warning site will remain energized even when disconnected from the grid.

Jay Sadler: 
And the last thing is our number one rule, do not enter the site for fire response. So that's what we're going through in the first session.

Jay Sadler: 
So second session, we're going to have the first responders back right before we take operational control of this facility.

Jay Sadler: 
So during this session, we're going to actually do a lot of hands on training. We're going to review safety data sheets, emergency action plans, hazard mitigation plans.

Jay Sadler: 
We're also going to train the first responders on how to use the components in that first responders station. It doesn't do any good if we provide something, but we don't train them on how to use it.

Jay Sadler: 
And then we'll do a full site tour. We'll talk all about the safety systems. We'll actually open up all the containers. We want to make sure they're comfortable understanding what we're doing there.

Jay Sadler: 
Last thing we do is we provide a PowerPoint. This is something we actually got from a lessons learned from one of our first sites.

Jay Sadler: 
One of the fire departments said, "Hey, we need something to put into our training program." We didn't think about it right off the bat, but a lot of these fire departments are volunteer fire departments. They have a high turnover rate. And so we need to have a way for them to incorporate our system and our hazards into their training program.

Jay Sadler: 
So we actually give a PowerPoint that is site specific. It's usually about 20 slides, but it just goes through all the component. Everything we discussed in training, it's in that PowerPoint. So it's been very well received.

Jason Price: 
Yeah, absolutely. You're taking us into the weeds. It is a very sophisticated and dangerous environment that you work in. And this level of detail that you're describing is just you could say mind boggling.

Jason Price: 
There's so much here that we have to be aware of when dealing with this technology, which leads me to my next question, which is it continues to rapidly evolve. There's new types of technology, new types of batteries, there's a lot under exploration, captures a lot of the popular press.

Jason Price: 
So there seems to be a lot of money being poured in to looking at battery storage and variety of ways and makeup. So how do you keep track and how do you stay ahead of this so that your protocols meet what's coming on the market?

Jay Sadler: 
Well, that's the million dollar question. It's extremely difficult to keep up with the emerging technologies. Everything's changing every day.

Jay Sadler: 
We think we have something ready for deployment into construction and into operation, and then you turn around and everything's changed.

Jay Sadler: 
One of the first things that's changing is the battery containers. Battery containers are getting smaller, which is a really, really good thing.

Jay Sadler: 
Like I mentioned earlier, old typical site would have shipping containers sized enclosures for our batteries. Now what we're seeing is small containers instead of a shipping container that has 50 racks of batteries and may have up to 10,000 cells inside. We've got a container that has one rack of batteries and it may have only 400 cells.

Jay Sadler: 
Why is that important or why is that good? This reduces the amount of battery in each container and that reduces the potential thermal runaway event.

Jay Sadler: 
Also in these smaller containers, there's not as much free air space inside for the accumulation of explosive gases. Less gas build up the better. So these small containers, I think they're a great thing for the industry.

Jay Sadler: 
I think you're going to see not many utilities utilizing the larger containers as we go forward. Most everybody is shifting over to those small containers.

Jay Sadler: 
Another thing that's very important is some container manufacturers have realized the dangers and they're actually incorporating a lot of the systems we require on large containers in these small designs.

Jay Sadler: 
That's great. That's really big for a manufacturer to realize, hey, this is a inherent danger and we need to incorporate these safety systems. That helps us with the integration of our requirements.

Jay Sadler: 
On the flip side of that, though, you do have some manufacturers who are still fighting some of the, I won't say they were fighting the hazards, because they do understand the hazards, they not understand all the safety systems and how they all work together.

Jay Sadler: 
And so some manufacturers are reluctant to put in all the safety systems we want. Well, the problem with that is we have specifications to what we want in our system to be safe.

Jay Sadler: 
Well, some of these manufacturers have actually said, "Hey, you'll void warranties if you go in and add the safety system." So that poses a challenge. You have to balance your long term OEM versus your safety. So it's been a big challenge for us.

Jay Sadler: 
We do thoroughly believe in the container flooding option for a last resort. I want to make sure I keep the first responders outside the vent if there's a fire, but I give them a way to fight the fire so that they're not trying to stand outside the vent and squirt water into a little tiny hole where a fire may be coming out.

Jay Sadler: 
We had to get creative. We're really having to get creative on some of these things. We actually had a site that could not put a flooding option to actually flood the inside of container.

Jay Sadler: 
So what we did is we put big fire headers above the containers with sprinkler heads. And literally when the fire department hooks up, it just rains down on these small modular containers. It keeps the ones that are beside it, the adjacent containers, cool.

Jay Sadler: 
And they're outdoor containers. If it rains on the other ones that aren't in a thermal runaway, it's not going to hurt them at all. It really did accomplish the task we needed do.

Jay Sadler: 
And like I said, we're having to get really creative with some of this stuff. NFPA 855 is our national fire protection code, as for battery energy storage fire safety.

Jay Sadler: 
It was just passed for the utilities this summer. It's got a lot of good information in it. We're still trying to get a good firm grip on what that means for our future sites. And maybe even for our operational sites that may not meet that code.

Jay Sadler: 
So you've got code requirements that are changing. You've got designs that are changing. We're even looking at new battery technologies that may not be lithium-ion.

Jay Sadler: 
So it's constantly evolving industry and it takes a lot of focus to make sure you keep an eye on what's going on.

Jason Price: 
Yeah, I would say so. And as I mentioned in the beginning of the introduction, in terms of your background, you come with nuclear energy and firefighting.

Jason Price: 
I'd love if you could share a bit about how you found yourself in each of those areas and what was that light bulb moment for you in putting this together in the utility sector to help define your career path?

Jay Sadler: 
Sure, sure. I started out as a volunteer fireman in my small hometown, I believe I was age 16 when I started. It was love at first time being a fireman, I really did enjoy being a fireman.

Jay Sadler: 
I served for many years. But like with a lot of things, got married, started to have kids and I just didn't have the time to be a volunteer fireman day to day. So I did have to leave.

Jay Sadler: 
After a couple years, I was invited back to serve on the board of directors for our local fire department and that's a position I still hold today. I really enjoy being around the fire service, being on the fire department as a board of director. It's just a position I really like to have.

Jay Sadler: 
I graduated from UNC Charlotte with a major in civil engineering. And I spent the majority of my time after college actually in the construction industry.

Jay Sadler: 
Then 2008 hit. Everybody knows what happened in 2008. Construction slowed down. So I was looking for a change of career. I was able to get a job with Duke at McGuire Nuclear Station as an operator.

Jay Sadler: 
So I started that multi-year training program to be an operator. I worked at McGuire for six years. This was probably one of the best building blocks for my career. It provided me with such an understanding of procedures, like how they're written, how they're used.

Jay Sadler: 
And so this is one of the best things for my career was actually starting out in nuclear, because it really gave me a good foundation.

Jay Sadler: 
One of the things that I did love about working at McGuire was I was able to serve as a member of the station fire brigade. So I was around the fire service even though I was still at work or just kept me involved with firefighting.

Jay Sadler: 
After McGuire, let's see, I went to the regulated renewables operation center. This is our transmission tied renewables control room. There we operated all of the hydro fleet, the pump storage asset, all of our regulated transmission tied solar assets.

Jay Sadler: 
I worked there for three years and that's when it started dawning on me that there's a lot more to our company than nuclear.

Jay Sadler: 
You work in nuclear and you get in your little bubble and you think that's all the company is is nuclear. And when I come out I realized theres so much more and I really realized how much renewables is starting to play a portion into our company strategy.

Jay Sadler: 
And there's a lot of nuances to operating these facilities. So that was a great learning experience working in that control room.

Jay Sadler: 
After that, I was invited to start our battery storage operations for Duke, distribution. At that time, we only had one BESS facility in our unregulated branch.

Jay Sadler: 
And I really quickly learned about the hazards of lithium-ion technology. At that time, when I started, there was an explosion about two weeks in after I started, there was an explosion at a BESS facility out west.

Jay Sadler: 
So I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what had happened and how could Duke prevent this from happening at our site. We had two sites in construction at the time.

Jay Sadler: 
It was a really challenging time. There was only one other Duke employee who had any experience actively operating a battery.

Jay Sadler: 
So he and I become really, really good friends, but we started looking at lessons learned, especially for operations, lessons learned for fire safety.

Jay Sadler: 
And so we started creating operational procedures, fire safety specifications, emergency response plan. We just wanted to learn on how to operate these sites safely day to day.

Jay Sadler: 
Have created a control room that we now operate all of our sites and we operate sites in all our regulated jurisdiction, which is six states.

Jay Sadler: 
And it's been a challenge. We love the challenge. We like running this technology. There's a lot of safety systems for it. There is a hazard with it, but there's a lot of safety systems that we deploy and we feel like we're providing the safest product we can to the public and to our first responders.

Jason Price: 
That's quite a journey. No doubt you have the background to really fit that this role, so it's amazing the match. And you started out a firefighter, so you must be in great shape. Were you ever on a calendar?

Jay Sadler: 
I was not on the calendar. My wife would really get a kick out that one.

Jason Price: 
From New York City, the firefighter calendars, it's more popular than the New York Times let's put it that way. All right. This is a great conversation.

Jason Price: 
And we're give you the last word, but first we have something called the lightning round where we pivot to a set of questions to learn more about Jay Sadler the person, not Jay Sadler the Duke Energy fire safety leader.

Jason Price: 
So are you ready, Jay? Because the questions I'm going to ask you require either one word or phrase. Are you ready?

Jay Sadler: 
Absolutely. Let's do it.

Jason Price: 
Okay. What's your go to movie snack?

Jay Sadler: 
Milk duds.

Jason Price: 
Best vacation you've ever taken?

Jay Sadler: 
Seven Mile Beach at Jamaica.

Jason Price: 
What historical figure would you invite your dream dinner party?

Jay Sadler: 
George Washington.

Jason Price: 
What would be an alternative career path if you hadn't found yourself in the energy industry?

Jay Sadler: 
Site development, doing grading work. I love that.

Jason Price: 
Who you most passionate about?

Jay Sadler: 
First responder safety.

Jason Price: 
That's great. Well done. It was such a smooth performance in the lightning round. You've earned the traditional final word. So you're a man who's obviously passionate about safety and you're often giving advice.

Jason Price: 
So if there was a single, tangible piece of advice each utility professional listening in today should heed. What would you like it to be

Jay Sadler: 
Rule number one, don't enter a energy storage facility vent if there's any alarm going off. Smoke, fire, do not enter the vent.

Jay Sadler: 
Stay outside, size up the situation, get a good game plan. These events are a long event. They're not a real short event. So you need to get a really good game plan, establish roles.

Jay Sadler: 
You want to adjust that game plan based on the change in parameters. Things are going to change. I can't come up with every parameter that might change during an event. There's so many.

Jay Sadler: 
So look at what's going on and change your game plan based on what's changing in the event at the time. And number one thing, stay safe. That's the number one goal every day.

Jay Sadler: 
It's number one goal for all of our employees, but it's the number one goal for anyone that comes to our site, make sure you go home safe. We want you to come and go the exact same way, 100% safe. And if everybody's stay safe, then we've done what we're supposed to do.

Jason Price: 
Great words and thank you for sharing this. As these systems continue to proliferate, I have to imagine that this is going to be just a ever increasing issue that every utility is going to really need to pay attention to.

Jason Price: 
And Jay, I think that your words today and your leadership you're providing at Duke I'm sure will work its way throughout the industry in every corner of every utility that has a power system.

Jason Price: 
So thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on today's episode and podcast.

Jay Sadler: 
Thank you very much for having me. It's been great.

Jason Price: 
You can always reach Jay through the Energy Central platform where he welcomes your questions and comments. We also want to give a shout out of thanks to our sponsor of today's episodes for making it possible. Thanks to West Monroe.

Jason Price: 
West Monroe works with the nation's largest electric gas and water utilities in their telecommunication, grid modernization and digital and workforce transformations.

Jason Price: 
West Monroe brings a multidisciplinary team that blends utility, operations and technology expertise to address modernizing aging infrastructure, advisory on transportation electrification, ADMs deployments, data and analytics and cyber security.

Jason Price: 
And once again, I'm your host Jason Price. So say once again, I'm your host Jason Price. So plug in and stay fully charged in the discussion by hopping into the community at energycentral.com and see you next time at the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast.

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