Calderdale Inside Out podcast speaks to a fire safety expert who condemns plans to green light one of the UK's biggest battery storage plants in Calderdale
People are over exaggerating the risk of battery fires.
With vehicles, the chance of battery fires is less with EV's than with petrol cars. Forecourt fires happen more than BESS fires, Oil tankers are a constant ecological risk.
Converting oil to petrol causes huge amounts of environmental damage.
If you look at the aftermath of the Liverpool fire, you'll see that the fire was contained to just one container.
Arnold Tarling’s point is that when they go up, they really go up. The California and Liverpool case studies show that. And because of that risk the fire service should be a statutory consultee in the planning process. Also, not having full plans in place for this site ahead of granting planning permission is not good practice.
The fire service in Liverpool said that the fire reduced within a couple of hours, and required less attention over the remainder of the fire. They have also suggested that after the initial conflgration, fires like this could be left to burn themselves out.
There are 120 BESS sites in the UK, and there's been one bad fire. There are similar numbers in the USA. With improvements, Failure rates are expected to drop from 9.2 failures/GW to 0.2 failures/GW. The chance of fires on sites could be 1/50 of what it was 5 years ago.
Meanwhile, due in no small part to climate change, we've had a spate of moorland fires in Calderdale and the damage to lungs from particulate matter from these fires affects many, many more people than that of a 60ft lithium filled container.
Arnold Tarling is an important fire safety voice, but he has a tendency to catastrophize and what he says needs to be tempered with opinions from other experts.
Does all this mean that the fire service should not be statutory consultee? And that future schemes should be passed without full safety plans in place? Arnold Tarling warned about high rise safety well ahead of Grenfell. He was accused of catastrophising back then as well.
Personally, I believe not. Infrastructure planning in this country is ridiculous. Hinckley point C is the most expensive nuclear power station ever built, partly because excessive planning. The planning document for the lower Thames Crossing cost more than it cost Norway to build the longest underground tunnel. Anything that reduces planning cycles in this country will have an upstream effect. Mixenden hub took 20 years to plan & build (there's a story for you). Imagine how many people it could have helped if it had only taken the expected 3-4 years.
If the government want to add statutory fire assessments to BESS plans, then that law has to be passed in parliament. Until then, I think Calderdale is right not to require them.
As I say in the podcast - a house requires statutory consultation. Seems like 400+ lithium battery plant should require the same. And there is a private members bill heading through parliament dealing with this issue (on its second reading). A full plan from the developers, fires service looks at plan, goes to planning committee for 'yay' or 'nay' - that would seem sensible and the onus would be on developers to get their plans together for approval.
A house requires statutory consultation because people sleep in them.
As I said, the amount of extra bureaucracy required in planning applications is too high. Without solid evidence that it's needed and the upstream risk is too high, we shouldn't be making it harder to build / do things in this country.
As the BBC article you shared states, and this podcast, the Liverpool fire took 59 hours to bring under control. The way the fire service fight these fires is to let the affected battery burnout whilst using water to cool the surrounding batteries to prevent the fire spreading. In the case of the Liverpool site this required 1.9 million litres of water. As Arnold says that water is then contaminated. The plans for the Holmfield site have collection tanks that can hold upto 230,000 litres, so what happens to the remaining 1.5million litres? Strines Beck is just 30 meters from the site and flows directly into the River Calder. It would be an ecological disaster, and that's before the you look at the toxic fumes from the burn itself. Residents in the area surrounding Moss Landing site in California (December 2024) were told to stay indoors for upto 48 hours during the fire itself and five months later are still being advised to take precautions, even when dusting their homes.
You end your comment saying that the units are a fire risk. As a local business owner I'm interested to know what you would consider to be an acceptable risk at a site like Holmfield which is 10 times the size of Liverpool and 5 x the size of Moss Landing, and is in the immediate vicinity of thousands of homes, businesses and five schools?
The podcast uses the example of the Grenfell disaster to highlight the importance of the correct safety legislation being applied when considering planning applications, emergency response and the risk to the public. There were 481 buildings in the UK that were covered with the same cladding as Grenfell, despite the warnings from experts like Arnold. Only one of those building caught fire - and everyone knows what that lead to. It's the same issue here. Experts are warning about the risks, government and councils are ignoring them. There is legislation on the way specifically aimed at dealing with these risks at BESS sites. If the local councils and the developers really cared about public safety why not wait until that legislation has been passed? The Holmfield BESS site has a connection date of 2029 so they've got the time....
I would like to hear from Calderdale, in writing, who will take the final responsibility for safety of local residents and schoolchildren
So if when it happens you're prepared to take full responsibility are you?
Seeing as you knew the risks and decided to ignore them.
People are over exaggerating the risk of battery fires.
With vehicles, the chance of battery fires is less with EV's than with petrol cars. Forecourt fires happen more than BESS fires, Oil tankers are a constant ecological risk.
Converting oil to petrol causes huge amounts of environmental damage.
If you look at the aftermath of the Liverpool fire, you'll see that the fire was contained to just one container.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-66584335
These units are a fire risk, but that risk is not large.
Arnold Tarling’s point is that when they go up, they really go up. The California and Liverpool case studies show that. And because of that risk the fire service should be a statutory consultee in the planning process. Also, not having full plans in place for this site ahead of granting planning permission is not good practice.
The fire service in Liverpool said that the fire reduced within a couple of hours, and required less attention over the remainder of the fire. They have also suggested that after the initial conflgration, fires like this could be left to burn themselves out.
There are 120 BESS sites in the UK, and there's been one bad fire. There are similar numbers in the USA. With improvements, Failure rates are expected to drop from 9.2 failures/GW to 0.2 failures/GW. The chance of fires on sites could be 1/50 of what it was 5 years ago.
Meanwhile, due in no small part to climate change, we've had a spate of moorland fires in Calderdale and the damage to lungs from particulate matter from these fires affects many, many more people than that of a 60ft lithium filled container.
Arnold Tarling is an important fire safety voice, but he has a tendency to catastrophize and what he says needs to be tempered with opinions from other experts.
Does all this mean that the fire service should not be statutory consultee? And that future schemes should be passed without full safety plans in place? Arnold Tarling warned about high rise safety well ahead of Grenfell. He was accused of catastrophising back then as well.
Personally, I believe not. Infrastructure planning in this country is ridiculous. Hinckley point C is the most expensive nuclear power station ever built, partly because excessive planning. The planning document for the lower Thames Crossing cost more than it cost Norway to build the longest underground tunnel. Anything that reduces planning cycles in this country will have an upstream effect. Mixenden hub took 20 years to plan & build (there's a story for you). Imagine how many people it could have helped if it had only taken the expected 3-4 years.
If the government want to add statutory fire assessments to BESS plans, then that law has to be passed in parliament. Until then, I think Calderdale is right not to require them.
As I say in the podcast - a house requires statutory consultation. Seems like 400+ lithium battery plant should require the same. And there is a private members bill heading through parliament dealing with this issue (on its second reading). A full plan from the developers, fires service looks at plan, goes to planning committee for 'yay' or 'nay' - that would seem sensible and the onus would be on developers to get their plans together for approval.
A house requires statutory consultation because people sleep in them.
As I said, the amount of extra bureaucracy required in planning applications is too high. Without solid evidence that it's needed and the upstream risk is too high, we shouldn't be making it harder to build / do things in this country.
As the BBC article you shared states, and this podcast, the Liverpool fire took 59 hours to bring under control. The way the fire service fight these fires is to let the affected battery burnout whilst using water to cool the surrounding batteries to prevent the fire spreading. In the case of the Liverpool site this required 1.9 million litres of water. As Arnold says that water is then contaminated. The plans for the Holmfield site have collection tanks that can hold upto 230,000 litres, so what happens to the remaining 1.5million litres? Strines Beck is just 30 meters from the site and flows directly into the River Calder. It would be an ecological disaster, and that's before the you look at the toxic fumes from the burn itself. Residents in the area surrounding Moss Landing site in California (December 2024) were told to stay indoors for upto 48 hours during the fire itself and five months later are still being advised to take precautions, even when dusting their homes.
You end your comment saying that the units are a fire risk. As a local business owner I'm interested to know what you would consider to be an acceptable risk at a site like Holmfield which is 10 times the size of Liverpool and 5 x the size of Moss Landing, and is in the immediate vicinity of thousands of homes, businesses and five schools?
The podcast uses the example of the Grenfell disaster to highlight the importance of the correct safety legislation being applied when considering planning applications, emergency response and the risk to the public. There were 481 buildings in the UK that were covered with the same cladding as Grenfell, despite the warnings from experts like Arnold. Only one of those building caught fire - and everyone knows what that lead to. It's the same issue here. Experts are warning about the risks, government and councils are ignoring them. There is legislation on the way specifically aimed at dealing with these risks at BESS sites. If the local councils and the developers really cared about public safety why not wait until that legislation has been passed? The Holmfield BESS site has a connection date of 2029 so they've got the time....