Stephen Whitaker
The first electric summit Texas A&M University held in November 2023 focused exclusively on electric vehicles, but a reboot Wednesday provided an opportunity for summit coordinators to expand knowledge to other forms of stored energy and learn the best ways to prevent and respond to stored energy incidents.
The Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service in College Station welcomed 267 attendees Wednesday in the first of a two-day stored energy summit.
TEEX Agency Director David Coatney said it was important to expand on the first summit.
"What beyond the EV issue do we need to be aware of -- energy storage systems, cutoffs, codes that affect this," Coatney said. "Then the types of energy storage systems that you're going to see pretty prolific across Texas, which are solar farms. With the solar farms, how are they energized and how do we de-energize them. These are all the discussions that are taking place now."
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On Wednesday morning, Chris Greene, a retired captain of the Seattle Fire Department who now operates energy hazard response training for first responders, gave a presentation. Greene has studied the way different materials in lithium-ion batteries and other electrical components burn and has written several books on fighting those fires.
Greene spent 29 years with the Seattle Fire Department before retiring in 2023. He has been working with TEEX on learning more about how to protect firefighters when battling fires in lithium-ion batteries and stored energy systems.
"This is something that TEEX has really spearheaded over the last few years. It's something they jumped into before COVID, there was a little bit of a pause but now they're back into it heavy," Greene said. "Trying to better understand this issue, better understand the hazards but also offer solutions for tactical boots on the ground for this stuff as well as answer some of the questions that they may have and ascertain what are crews seeing out there."
Between summits, TEEX worked on understanding what effect fires in lithium-ion batteries and stored energy systems have on the personal protection equipment (PPE) of firefighters and first responders as well as how to decontaminate PPE after it's been involved in fighting these kinds of fires.
TEEX partnered with the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio last year to conduct testing on the PPE. They found that most of the contamination comes from the smoke and fumes from certain materials in the batteries and storage systems. The results of that study were presented during Wednesday's summit.
"There's a lot of very hazardous materials that burn off when these go into thermal runaway and they start to burn up," Coatney said. "It's basically like a hazardous material event. There are exclusionary zones where we want to keep people out of and we have to think about where the wind is going and what products are in that combustion. Most of the time when they are burning, they are burning off so they don't really present the hazard. We evaluated how can we decontaminate the gear and then what do we need to be aware of for health risks, current and future risks for those who have been exposed to the products of combustion."
Other topics discussed included David Brannon, the fire marshal from Pasadena, Texas, sharing a presentation on that city's energy codes and enforcement along with a presentation from Tompall Glaser of Jupiter Power on the installation, safety and plans in event of battery energy storage system failure.
The summit also provided attendees a chance to learn more about other types of batteries -- not just lithium-ion ones -- and how to handle different types of battery emergencies.
"When you talk about lithium-ion batteries, you have to remember that that's one type of chemistry. You've got nickel metal hydride, you've got Nicam (nickel-cadmium), you've got lead acid, you've got alkaline batteries," Greene said. "Lithium-ion batteries are simply one of a big spectrum of batteries that are finally getting the attention of the fire service because of the thermal properties and failures of lithium-ion batteries. There are toxins associated with lithium-ion batteries, but again it's part of a spectrum of toxins that we need to better understand."
This year's summit wraps up Thursday with sessions on lithium-ion battery safety and a presentation on how the Texas A&M Transportation Institute conducts crash tests on electric vehicles.
Even before the finish of this year's summit, work has already begun on planning the next summit which is scheduled in the summer of 2026 and will be held on the A&M campus in College Station.
"One of the nice things about working with TEEX on these projects is that everybody is welcome. I've been blessed enough to work with TEEX for the last few years on these projects and my expectation is that I'll continue to work with them," Greene said. "There is something here (at Texas A&M) that frankly the rest of the nation should take a look at. There is a thoughtfulness here, there is a courtesy here, there is an intelligence here that is open to really hear real discourse and listen to other people."
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