World Energy Storage Day 2020: How We're Working Toward a Safe, Secure, Sustainable Ecosystem

The global energy storage market is set to grow at an exponential rate. Worldwide, energy storage deployment in emerging markets is expected to increase by over 40% each year until 2025. This increase has been driven by the falling costs of battery storage technology, due to the growing consumer market and the development of electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid EVs (PHEVs), along with the deployment of distributed renewable energy storage and generation and the development of smart grids.1

To advance our electrochemical safety science research expertise for a safe, secure and sustainable energy storage ecosystem globally, Underwriters Laboratories was a sponsor for the World Energy Storage Day (WESD) Virtual Conference 2020 on September 22, 2020. Along with key experts and scientists in the battery/energy storage area, Underwriters Laboratories’ battery safety expert, Dr. Judy Jeevarajan, spoke about the safety aspects of stationary energy storage systems.

Dr. Jeevarajan, who is the vice president and executive director of the Electrochemical Safety Research Institute (ESRI) at Underwriters Laboratories, spoke about the trends and growth in ESS's and showed data on fire and thermal runaway that her team and UL's Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI) gathered. She also discussed the pertinent UL standards for the installation, testing and certification of ESS batteries. She concluded her speech with recommendations on the areas that need to be further studied and optimized for the safe deployment of these large ESS. Over 200 participants joined this session.

Underwriters Laboratories also organized a dedicated virtual booth showcasing the work of ESRI, FSRI, the Chemical Insights Research Institute, Education and Outreach, and UL Standards teams:

About World Energy Storage Day

To celebrate the growing importance of energy storage, Global Energy Storage Alliance (GESA) started celebrating Sept. 22 as World Energy Storage Day (WESD) in 2017. WESD 2020 witnessed the participation of more than 7,500 delegates and 78 global thought leaders and experts in the field of energy storage from across the world. Along with Underwriters Laboratories, research organizations, governments and associations such as the Indo German Energy Forum, Alliance for Rural Electrification, Australian Energy Storage Alliance, Innovation Norway, South Africa Energy Storage Alliance, European Association for Storage of Energy, European Battery Alliance, International Solar Alliance, World Bank and the Government of India joined the event. For more details, visit https://www.energystorageday.org/.

• 1International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), 2020