Background

Chinese authority issued an exposure draft of amended version of 25 Requirements on Preventing Electrical Production Accident. The Chinese National Energy Administration made this amendment by arranging discussion with electrical organizations and experts to conclude the experience and accidents happened since 2014, in order to conduct more effective supervise and prevent hazards from happening.

Requirements on Electrochemistry Energy Storage.

In the exposure draft 2.12 mentions several requirements on lithium-ion batteries in order to prevent fire happening at electrochemistry energy storage station:

1.Mid-large electrochemistry energy storage shall not use ternary lithium-ion batteries or sodium-sulfer batteries. Echelon traction batteries are not applicable, and should be taken safety analysis based on traceable data.

2.Lithium-ion batteries equipment room shall not be established in assembly occupancies nor should be set in buildings with residents or basement area. Equipment rooms shall be established in one layer, and shall be pre-fabricated. For one fire compartment the capacity of batteries shall be no more than 6MW`H. For equipment rooms with capacity larger than 6MW`H, there should be automatic fire extinguish system. The specification of the system shall follow 2.12.6 of the exposure draft.

3.Equipment rooms shall set up detectors for flammable air. When hydrogen or carbon monoxide is detected as larger than 50×10^-6 (volume concentration), the equipment room shall active breakers, ventilation system and alarm system.

4.Equipment room shall set up anti-explosion ventilation system. There should be at least one air out let for each end, and air exhausting per minute shall no less than the volume of equipment rooms. Air inlets and outlets shall be set up appropriately, and airflow short circuit is not allowed. Airflow system should always in operation.

Notice:

1.There is no definition on Mid-large size of electrochemistry energy storage station yet (If dear readers have found any evidence of existence of the definition, please kindly inform us), therefore it is still blurry. But from our understanding, electrochemistry energy storage system will be defined as mid-large scale energy station, therefore we can draw the conclusion that ternary lithium-ion batteries are banned in energy storage station.

2.Few years ago there are discussions that those decommission traction batteries may be taken usage in energy storage system, and many companies worked on researching and testing. However, since echelon usage batteries are listed as not applicable materials, the reuse of traction batteries in energy storage system may be inconsiderable.