Risk Prevention and Control and Public Trust Construction

Fire safety remains a core challenge for the development of the battery energy storage industry, especially when a fire event spreads to residential areas or triggers media focus, which can easily distort public perception of the technology. The formation of this cognitive bias is closely related to the superposition of two kinds of phenomena: on the one hand, community residents often contact or spread unconfirmed misinformation through social platforms such as Facebook after learning about the energy storage project planning, which aggravates group anxiety; on the other hand, although the incidence of extreme accidents continues to decline, the serious consequences of a single event will still cause widespread concern.

Although the consequences of fire accidents in energy storage systems are serious, they are relatively rare, and the incidence of failure events is declining. To date, there appears to be only one incident that has resulted in U.S. firefighters being seriously injured in a battery storage system fire. In 2019, while firefighters were dealing with a 2.16MWh McMicken battery energy storage system fire in Thurprith, Arizona, the energy storage system suddenly exploded, injuring one firefighter. Although the number of battery storage system failures has decreased since 2020, some recent fire incidents have attracted media attention, which has amplified public concerns.

Faced with the double test of safety challenges and public trust, the regulatory level continues to strengthen standard support-the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) released the latest edition of NFPA 855 standard in September 2025, which has improved the installation spacing and fire extinguishing system configuration requirements of energy storage facilities in residential areas in regular updates every three years. The standard has been adopted by all states in the United States and has become the core basis for risk assessment of financial institutions.

From the perspective of actual safety protection, energy storage fire protection is the core line of defense against the risk of battery energy storage system, and its importance is particularly prominent in all kinds of accident disposal. Whether it is the injuries of firefighters caused by insufficient fire response in the McMicken energy storage fire in Arizona in 2019 or the occasional fire of energy storage facilities in residential areas in recent years, it is proved that energy storage fire fighting is not a simple "fire fighting" link-it not only needs accurate thermal out-of-control early warning system to avoid the risk from "budding" to fire, but also needs to rely on fire fighting technology adapted to energy storage characteristics, solve the problem that the traditional fire fighting method is helpless for the continuous heat release of the battery.

It can be said that the lack of a sound energy storage fire protection system, even if the battery technology iteration, system failure rate decreased, energy storage projects will still be due to the lack of risk disposal capacity, so that the security line of defense gap. As a professional service provider in the field of deep-cultivated energy storage and fire fighting, Shengsida has developed a full-process energy storage and fire fighting solution covering "thermal runaway early warning-combustible gas detection-targeted fire fighting-post-disaster cooling" relying on in-depth interpretation and localization adaptation of NFPA 855 and other international standards. The compliance scheme will escort customers' energy storage projects and help the energy storage industry to develop safely and on a large scale.