Nico Johnson 00:00

As many of you know, battery storage is becoming thebackbone of the grid. When one of these systems fails, it's not just a blackeye for that Ipp or developer, it's a black eye for the whole industry. So Isat down with two people who work very hard to make sure that doesn't happen.Jeff Sweejack is the Associate Director of Energy Storage at Clean EnergyAssociates, CEA, an intertech company. Kathleen McCaffrey is a retired firebattalion chief and Tesla's former global fire liaison. We've had Kathleen on afew episodes, and you all have just enjoyed so much her breadth and depth ofexperience, then it made perfect sense to include her in our webinar. Now, aquick heads up, because this was live, you'll catch some of the occasionalreferences that we make to the audience, or to the chat, as well as there werea few technical issues in the broadcast, so I just ask you to roll with it. Thecontent is truly too good to miss. Two real fires actually anchor the entireconversation, including one in Fredericktown, Missouri, where Kathleen workedas the expert witness. We'll say more about that when it comes up. Just knowthat factors in pretty heavily. A lot of conversation has been had around howto prevent the proverbial black eye from rooftop solar fires to mega packedfires out in Australia, and some closer to home, all the way back, I think,2019 the surprise fire in Arizona, where four firefighters are injured. This isa situation where we kind of thought at one point that we had battery safety,in particular fire safety around lithium ion and other chemistry batteries,kind of figured out, and it was exactly that incident in Surprise Arizona thatsurprised the industry and caused a lot more conversation, as was pointed outin last year's EPRI fire incident report. Then we're going to talk to someexperts who have a lot more to say about how we can avoid this proverbial blackeye, but you know, these, these accidents are not just freak accidents, theirsignals are broader pattern in storage safety and quality, and we want to pullback the curtain on how our industry is actively addressing the very realconcerns, and where we can do an even better job, because I think we all agreethat safety is number one priority, and if we do have a battery fire, it's ablack eye for all of us. Today we're going to talk about some cautionary talesof real-world cases where the quality assurance required for the industry wouldhave prevented catastrophe, third-party data from hundreds of factoryinspections point to things that we can improve in our supply relationships,and we've got concrete steps to prevent failures before they make it to thefield. Joining me to help provide some substance to my suppositions are twoexperts in the field of battery energy storage and fire prevention. I'd like tofirst welcome up Kathleen McCaffrey. Kathleen McCaffrey is retired battalionchief and former global fire liaison for Tesla. Kathleen, so good to see you.

Kathleen McCaffery 03:15

Thank you. Nice to be here.

Nico Johnson 03:18

And Jeff Zweig, Jack is the associate director of energystorage at Clean Energy Associates. Jeff, always good to share the stage. Jeff,

Jeff Zwijack 03:25

great to be here

Nico Johnson 03:26

in the live session. I played a couple of news clips righthere at this point in the webinar, local coverage of a battery fire in SanDiego County, and also that big lithium ion plant explosion in Fredericktown,Missouri, that I mentioned in the intro. We've left the clips out, copyrightbeing what it is on YouTube and other places, and it's just not the same foryou to listen to the clip, but that Fredericktown fire is exactly whereKathleen takes us next. So, keep it in mind: 225,000 square foot facility, avolunteer fire department, and a permit whose safety condition never really gotfollowed. We'll also link to that video down in the comments. These kinds ofincidents, while thankfully not increasing, causing an outsized amount ofattention to what is by all accounts the very technology that we in therenewables industry rely on to ensure that clean energy is the technology ofchoice, and that we do become the preferred choice for firm capacity and poweron our electric grids moving into the coming decades. Kathleen, I'd like tostart with you. You actually brought this Fredericktown clip to to light forme. I had not heard about this, so can we just discuss from your perspective assomeone who is serving as expert witness on this project on that on that fire?What went wrong? What were the mistakes made there?

Kathleen McCaffery 04:53

Well, thanks, Nico. I really appreciate it. I would like touse this as a cautionary tale, as, as we know. Of human nature, and as we sawlast week, with the mistakes that some people have made, people tend to learnquite a bit from other people's mistakes, even more so from their ownsuccesses, and this one I'd like to use as a cautionary tale for that. This wasa recycling center, but it doesn't matter what process of lithium ion batterieswere going on in this factory. It was 225,000 square feet, and had all thecomponents of a lithium ion battery. So, it could have been building them, itcould have been transporting them, packaging them, or recycling them. It couldhappen at any facility. When I was diving into this and looking for the afteraction, because I wanted to know the root cause of the fire, what could havehappened. I stumbled upon a temporary hazmat permit that gave the companytemporary availability to house explosives and hazmats, and in that permit Ifound two things that struck me as absolutely wonderful, that the environmentalagency put as a condition of getting this temporary permit. One was that thefactory that the company had to maintain direct contact with the firedepartment and consistent contact with the fire department. The second bulletpoint that was fabulous was that every single person that worked in thatfacility had to have specialized training in the handling of lithium ionbattery and its materials. Now those are two fantastic quality assurance bulletpoints that should be incorporated into everybody's plan. Unfortunately, theywere not followed through by the company itself, and because of that, this firethat may have been gone unnoticed by the media turned into a catastrophic firefor several ways. They did not work with the local fire department. The localfire department is a volunteer department that had at the time of the fire 1717volunteers to fight a fire like that. They didn't coordinate with that firedepartment. They also told the fire department that there was a stagnant watersupply that they could use when they arrived on scene. What they didn'tcoordinate with the fire department is if the sprinkler systems were utilizedin the building, all of that water was utilized in the sprinkler system. So thefire department rolled up on scene to this massive explosion, and hadabsolutely no water, and the company working with them, who should have beenworking with them and should have had consistent communication with them, didnot inform them of this, did not tell them that it wasn't hydrated, that therewas no water supply, never gave a walk through the building, so thefirefighters were going into this massive factory, completely blind, full ofhazards. It took them over an hour and 15 minutes to establish a water supply.At that point, the factory burned to the ground.

Nico Johnson 07:54

Yeah,

Kathleen McCaffery 07:55

so some of the things that they could have done leading upto it, and this was only 10 months later, they got the permit in January 202410 months later, this complete company was burnt to the ground. Had theyincorporated the fire department, they would have been able to discuss thewater supply. They would have had a proper response to the facility, and theother thing they would have done is the fire department would have recognizedthat there was no containment for the fire water runoff after hundreds of 1000sof gallons were put onto this building with toxic chemicals in it. It all raninto their streams. They had a 100% fish kill in the entire town. Not a singlefish survived. So not only is this a fiscal loss for the company, it's a, it'sa PR loss, not only for the company, but for all of the energy, and it couldhave been easily avoided by just coordinating with the local department to givethem a leg up and a view into what was going on at this factory.

Nico Johnson 09:00

Kathleen, thank you so much for what insight you have beenable to provide. You know, I want to point out that when I posted this to myLinkedIn, I got a bunch of comments, among them, you know, this isn't a bestfire, this is a recycling plant, and also doesn't seem like there's a realscenario. This should have been caught by the permitting process before thebuilding was built, can you just make some distinctions here around fireinspection and fire operations for people who want to better understand thatprocess.

Kathleen McCaffery 09:29

Absolutely, and I think it's an innocent mistake, because Ihear it all over the country, it's like, hey, we were working with the firedepartment to get permits. What people have to understand is the inspectionsprocess is a totally different branch of the fire department than what iscalled operations. Operations is your firefighters who live in that firehouseand respond at every call that you call out to them. In small jurisdictions,where a lot of these factories are being built, small towns, small firedepartments, they don't. Have the bandwidth to sustain an inspectionsdepartment, so a lot of times it's contracted out to the local state firemarshal, or it goes into building and zoning, which have the codes in front ofthem, but that have no experience whatsoever with fire, and so you will get afire permit issued by somebody who has absolutely no experience with the fireservice, so when you're looking at communicating with your local firedepartment, know the difference between your inspectors and then those who aregoing to be responding to your building. You want to develop a relationshipwith those who are going to be intimately involved with your survival at thatbuilding.

Nico Johnson 10:40

Kathleen, I've mentioned that you were battalion chief, andI think it's interesting that you're a retired battalion chief who also hasexperience now in the battery energy storage sector. For those who are perhapsunfamiliar, to just establish a little bit of credibility around your globalexpertise on this subject. How did you get pulled out of retirement back intothe battery sector.

Kathleen McCaffery 11:01

Oh, that's a, that's a whole nother podcast. Give me

Nico Johnson 11:05

the 32nd

Kathleen McCaffery 11:07

I was enjoying my retirement, and Tesla cold called me, andI thought it was a prank. I thought I was being punked by one of my, my fireteam, you know. Oh, yeah, right, good work for Tesla. And Tesla hired me tobuild their fire team out at their Giga factory in in San Francisco, and sothat was 1,000,005 million square foot factory that I built the fire team to.After building the fire team, my boss had the wherewithal to notice that therewas a large gap between the knowledge that the energy industry holds and thatthe fire department doesn't understand,

Nico Johnson 11:39

and then

Kathleen McCaffery 11:39

there was a huge misconception from the industry about whatthe fire department's capable of when handling these lithium ion batteries, sohe created a position specifically for me called the Global Fire Liaison. So Iwent around the world, I did the great Australian fire tour, went taught firedepartments how to deal with these, and then I also worked with the energyindustry on how to better connect with the fire service, so I was just fillingthat gap. If you were, I was kind of translating green energy into fire speakand fire speak into green energy, so we could communicate and work togetherbetter.

Nico Johnson 12:15

Well, well, put one of the things I learned from you is thatbattery fires just kind of defy traditional training for fire departments, socan you help understand from that global tour as liaison? Why are battery firesso hard for fire departments to manage?

Kathleen McCaffery 12:29

Excellent. So, from day one, we go into the academy, we havea phrase: it's big fire, big water, and it just makes sense. The bigger thefire, put more water on it, because of these lithium ion batteries chemistries,and because these lithium ion batteries have all of the components to a firetriangle, they produce their own oxygen, so traditional strategies and tacticsto firefighting don't necessarily work with them. If we put the fire out, whatwe do is we strand energy inside that component, and because they make theirown oxygen, it causes it to reignite and rekindle, and that extends theoperation of the fire. So, the fire department has to completely change itsmindset from big fire, big water to big fire, as little water as possible. Weneed to take our master streams and dial them back and just put a mistingstream on them. This helps cool the unit. It allows the best unit to burn itsenergy out without stranding energy, and it decreases the amount of a hazmatthat you're going to have to contain in the aftermath of one of these fires. Soit's a win, win, win for everybody involved, as long as we learn the propertactics and techniques.

Nico Johnson 13:40

I want to, Jeff, bring you into the discussion. Here, youhave been in the industry for a long time, all the way back to managing morethan a million square feet of manufacturing for SNC Electric, one of the mostrespected electricians here in the United States. So, I'd love for you to takejust 30 seconds and help the audience better understand how you work withdevelopers to avoid these costly mistakes in the field just sort of set thestage for us. And then I've got a question for you.

Jeff Zwijack 14:07

Yeah, sure. First, thanks for having me. So I'm a CEA EnergyStorage. We provide quality assurance support all throughout, from marketintelligence all the way to the O and M asset management, quality assurance isvery much needed in energy storage, and, and we're, you saw the videos of what,what can happen, just on, just on the fire side of things, not just talk aboutthe financial implications of a quality of a poor quality plan to me to see aquality starts from the very beginnings of a of a full dedicated AVL all theway up to supplier selection to contracts to procurement of the energy storageequipment. It that could be balance of systems that doesn't have to be just DCblock that could be the inverter, the transformer, and everything else thatgoes with the energy storage system all the way to commissioning to O and M toasset management, so quality assurance doesn't just have to be with theproduct, it's the entire project project scope of from beginning to very end.Here at CA, we've developed a quality plan, you know, many stages, includingcoming up with ABL all the way to that, that, that quality assurance boots onthe ground in China, or wherever the wherever the product is being being made,that could be factory factor acceptance testing all the way to factory audits.

Nico Johnson 15:46

You've done hundreds of factory inspections. We'll talkabout the data that you guys have gleaned from those a little later in thisconversation, but if you'd gone back and asked battery experts in the industryin 2019 and this was uncovered in the in a report that EPRI did last year, aswell, you know, most folks thought that we had this, you know, battery safetyissue well covered, except for some notable battery fires that were happeningin South Korea, and after the surprise Arizona battery fire, you know, Imentioned earlier, we started to see a whole lot more critical focus on it, butit seems may seem to most to folks lately that these photos are happening morehere in the US than elsewhere. So, I'm curious, is that accurate? And if so,what do you deem to be the root cause as someone who's had time to actually diginto kind of what's happening at the factory level?

Jeff Zwijack 16:37

Yeah, it is. It does happen more in the, in the US, mainlybecause the growth of the market in the US has has been more so in the US thanany than anywhere else, also with that supply chains, everyone wants to getinto the market, so you have a lot of supply chain, lot of lot of companiescoming in and developing a track equipment, come in, doing batteries, firesuppression systems, fire detection containers, balance of systems, so thatsupply chain is very grand. Also, social media, folks like yourself, you know,the if a fire incident were to occur, it's gonna be part of a podcast, it'sgonna be part of a newscast, so it's difficult to run away from where we see alot of defects is mostly on the system level side of things. One pro, onegreat, wonderful thing that's happening is we're seeing cell level defects godown year over year over year, and the reason for that is because ofautomation. Most of, most of the automation, most of the battery cells are donein China, and they've been doing this for a long time, and they've been there,and they're doing, they're doing such a good job at it over decades of work,you know, taking from the battery cell, from the anode cathode material,putting it, putting it together. Now, where we are seeing problems are is thesystem, so that system level, that could be fire suppression, that could bedetection, that could be the battery container that itself, which comes from adifferent supplier, could be HVAC, so we're seeing a lot of issues on the onthe supply side of things, rather than just the sell, and that comes from thesupply chain. Again, a lot of companies are coming in and wanting to to getinto the better, better energy storage market, and we're seeing that we'resuggesting a lot of complications with that, a lot of lack of ownership. So, ifyou're not vertically integrated, there's a lack of ownership there. So, youhave a lot of manufacturing facilities in the US and China that are taking onthis manufacturing part of part of the business where they don't really have anownership, they just build the container and give it to the integrator and say,hey, it's your product now. So, where's the ownership in that?

Nico Johnson 19:08

Certainly, if you watch the news, it could look like we'rehaving more battery fires, and certainly, like on a number basis, we are. But Ithink one interesting piece that I came across, I want to give a hat to afriend, Drew Liebowitz from Power Switch, he pointed out to me, said,"Nico, you know, one of the things I think you may be folks may be missingis that on a per gigawatt deployed scale, the numbers are going down. I said,"Give me proof, I want some data, and he pointed to this report, thereport that EPRI published late last year on incidents per gigawatt deployed,and it's just staggering to see just how aggressively we have actually beenable to reduce and address, thanks to the work of folks like CEA and folks likeKathleen and Tesla, the number of incidents, and I would argue, Kathleen,probably argue the. Sheer the impact and the duration of these fires. Some Ihad a question. Does this suggest that the industry has actually gotten abetter grip on the critical issues than the news would suggest?

Jeff Zwijack 20:11

Difficult question, because we're, we're seeing more andmore failures at the factory than ever, and then never before, and the data maycome from top tier ones that are more vertically integrated than others,because we're seeing the exact opposite. We're seeing an increase. Looking atmy notes here, so 72% of the defects that we see are system level. I'm lookingat my notes, because I don't want to get the numbers wrong. 48% increase fromthe year from the year previous, so that just goes to show we're having morefindings than ever, than ever before. So it's all, it's all about where you,where you know, you pull your data from.

Nico Johnson 21:00

Yeah,

Jeff Zwijack 21:00

but we're seeing defects at the system level that may bethat what you're seeing there may be cell only, it may be for EVs, but forenergy storage we're seeing more and more of this, so again, where we come intoplay, start at the very beginning, select that right supplier all the way tothe very end, so

Nico Johnson 21:26

you are referring, of course, to a 2024 inspection report,the most common bez manufacturing defects that you all published based on datathat was born from hundreds of inspections of factories across your customerbase, and on behalf of developers who want very much to avoid costly PR andproperty damage issues, you mentioned some of the key statistics. Are thereothers that you see as key commonly missed QA steps observed in the system, orlike, missed in the system, or, or from your inspection report, that's thatare, were alarming findings.

Jeff Zwijack 22:05

Yeah, and the data wants to, you know, once you look at thedata, you're thinking, oh, go to the factory, this is what you're finding, arewhat we're seeing more and more of is gaps in the manufacturer's factoryacceptance test, so what they, what, so what they do, so when you're, whenyou're signing your contract, a lot of developers just call buyers of energystorage equipment, may, may just blanket trust the, the integrator ormanufacturer of their factory acceptance testing protocol. Yeah, what you wantto do is have that third party CA review that factory acceptance test protocol,and then go from there. We have decades of experience both on the solar andenergy storage side of what should be in a factory acceptance test, because alot of these manufacturers, either they're skipping steps, doing minimal effortwith minimal quality inspection, or they're offloading it to the SAT, the siteacceptance test. So, if you were to find a have a finding in the field duringthe SAT, so what do you do? Do you rework that in the field? Do you ship itback? How does that all work? So we want to find everything in the factorybefore it's being shipped, and it all starts from the very beginning again.What that's that selecting that right supplier, what one thing that's most,that that's mostly missed is that gap analysis of your factory acceptance testand your quality quality plan.

Nico Johnson 23:39

You know, something occurred to me when I was thinking aboutthis, there are folks that are vertically integrated manufacturers. There arefamously white labeled systems in the marketplace as well, apart from maybeincluding in what's being lost between the factory and the field. How do youspot these differences between, if I'm a developer and I'm trying to figure outwhere potential issues arise. How do I spot the difference between verticallyintegrated manufacturers and, you know, very reputable integrators that arewhite labeling systems?

Jeff Zwijack 24:10

So it's all about asking the right questions, and you know,during that supplier selection process, a white label integrator is going tocall it their product, you know, regardless of who makes it, they're going tocall it their product. Yeah, they're going to, they're going to say they own,they completely own it, completely manufacture it. They, they're responsiblefor it all. But trust with verify, are they really responsible for that? Andyou want to understand what's in their contracts, what's in their warrantiesand guarantees to that to that manufacturer that's actually building thatequipment. What, what ownership do they have? We've seen it where themanufacturing outfit that's that's assembling or manufacturing this piece ofequipment washes their hands. As soon as the product is being made, so it maybe on the integrator to do rework. Do they have that capability of doing therework first, first and second? And where do the spare parts come from? Theyprobably come from that manufacturing outfit, and that integrator may have tobuy spare parts. This all comes back to delays, quality work thermal events,heaven forbid, and you know, getting into energy trading gets into performanceissues. There's a lot of things that happen with with poor quality and not, andnot understanding your supply chain,

Nico Johnson 25:38

and I wonder, as you know, your key area of focus is qualityassurance. Do you see the same level of quality assurance across the board fromintegrators versus these sort of third-party suppliers versus the verticallyintegrated manufacturers? And I want to be clear that we're not advocating forone versus the other. Oh, yes, no, yeah, yeah,

Jeff Zwijack 25:57

no, yeah. I'm simply trying

Nico Johnson 25:58

to pull the thread here. If I'm, if I'm a buyer, I'm gonna,I'm asking these questions of myself.

Jeff Zwijack 26:03

Yeah, I mean, no, yeah, to know it's a good, good point.We're not here to point fingers at the white labelers, the ones who aren'tvertically integrated, they're just as great as the ones who are verticallyintegrated. It's just whatever business model works well for

Nico Johnson 26:22

them,

Jeff Zwijack 26:22

so you know, with, with that, with the folks that do whitelabel, there's just, again, saying the word quality a lot, it goes, it goesback to understanding where your equipment is coming from, and who owns it,who's assembling it, what the training process looks like. So that factoryaudits is very important. So, if you're, if you're going to go hire someonethat has a business model of hiring out a manufacturing firm, well, you maywant to look into that factory before they're getting, they're going to be partof your AVL list, because essentially they are that integrator.

Nico Johnson 27:09

Kathleen, you've seen fire approached from a lot ofdifferent angles. A lot of folks look at the failures in the field as somethingrelated to, you know, like a sale, a cell catching on fire, but what else cango wrong? And I welcome both you and Jeff to answer this question, but whereelse, besides just like, you know, cell exploding and there being thermalrunaway, are we seeing issues from manufacturing all the way to deployment ofthese systems?

Kathleen McCaffery 27:36

We can see it at any stage, just because of composition. Ithink a lot of it goes back to training, also, and I found this at Tesla, isthat people aren't recognizing the early signs of thermal runaway, and they'renot recognizing what to do with it, and they just get processed down the line.So, a lot of it has to be that specific training that we talked about inFredericktown, also, that they didn't do. We still don't know the root cause ofthat fire, but training is very important, and then also having, I think, we'rechanging the industry there. It's more than just putting the fire out. Now wehave to get it to a safe isolation area, and that's all part of your qualityassurance, you know. It's there's the reactionary part when there's a fire, butthen there's the planning part to what to do to ensure that that thermalrunaway is removed from the building, that it can catch on fire and is put intoa safe isolation plate. So, there's, there's four, I think everybody on hereknows there's four ways that these, these batteries can short circuit, and theycan short circuit under several different environments. So, as we start lookingat those, and we start looking at ways to prevent those short circuits anddamage from happening? I'm hoping to see that the cell level, at least damageand fires, is going to go down. Jeff, I'd love to hear your.. yeah, no,

Jeff Zwijack 28:51

I'm glad you brought that up, because I forgot to discussthat in the beginning. So, I mentioned cells, the cell production, actually,our findings have dropped, wonderful, but we're seeing an increase of thesystem level, but that doesn't mean that you're not going to have a thermalrunway of your battery cell. We have HVAC issues, we have fire detection andsuppression. Detection is very important, the HVAC equipment, if you have abattery cell, battery module, battery rack, get out of tolerance with yourbattery temperature, and the BMS does not shut the rack down, shut the moduledown, shut that, shut that battery container down. If, if an HVAC were to fail,you can get into a thermal runaway issue, and even, even before that, let'sjust call it a performance issue, even before the thermal runaway issue, andeven other, even, even after that, let's, let's get into warranties andguarantees, so, so, if that battery rack container module were to fail, you'regoing to go back to the manufacturing. And say, hey, I need, I need a new, newmodule, new rack, new container. You know what they're going to do, they'regoing to go to their BMS, they're going to go to their EMS, and say, oh, thatwasn't our module of fail, we did exactly what was supposed to be done, it wasyour HVAC that failed.

Kathleen McCaffery 30:17

But I would also not rely on the mechanical detection 100%Either there's something to be said, but teaching about your employees and yourassociates how to recognize this. Also, because things do slip by, those, thosewe can't rely 100% on mechanical detection. It, you know, it is. It istraining. Also, is teach your people what to expect. Also,

Nico Johnson 30:41

Jeff, I know you all have a very thorough, detailed approachto quality assurance, and in part of the approach that we want to submit hereto viewers is that there might, there might be reason to have a more keen focuson quality assurance across the value chain. Can you talk about the phasedapproach that,

Jeff Zwijack 31:04

yeah, you know, I hinted on earlier, and I don't want togive it away. So, so we have a, we have a, we have a perfected phased approach.Phase number one, let's start off with that AVL list, that supplier selection,that that longer, that longer list. Let's get down to that short list throughan RFP or maybe an RFI. You can write an RFP, but you really want to know whatquestions to ask, and that's why you want to reach out to a third-party qualitytransfer to know what questions to ask during that RFP. That tender process,you're going to receive bids, you want to levelize those bids, whether that bethe five suppliers, seven suppliers, two suppliers, whatever it may be. Onceyou get to that supplier selection, you want to get your best and final offer,and during that best and final offer, you're really looking more into thatsupplier, that could be factory audits, that could be chain of custody reports,where you're getting your raw materials from, you want to understand fully ofwhat is the responsibility of that supplier, that could be early divisions ofresponsibility. Kathleen, understanding who's going to be doing the training ofthe of the system or on the system for the O and M providers, LTSAs, so allthat is included into that BAFTO, that final supply supplier selection, thenafter that gets into contracts, you want to have your third-party qualityassurance firm, as well as a law firm, corporate council, renewable energyfirm, look at it from the legal side of things, but you also want to look at itfrom the technical side of things as well, capacity guarantees, warranties,everything that's going to be around technical that the lawyers do not fullyunderstand, that division responsibility, everything that goes around anythingtechnical, then after the contracts, then your product is going to be, is goingto be made. You may want to your factor audits again, then you go in there forinline production monitoring. You want to view that, you know, monitor that,that production being made, that could be at the beginning, that could be atthe middle, that that could be at the end, and that does a couple things. Notonly are we looking at the quality processes through the line, which isextremely important, when it also does something else with the manufacturer, itsays, "Oh, wow, our buyer is really looking into our quality, so we reallyneed to do a better job than what we did on the past one, because we have thisthis quality inspector. Finally, we'll get to that factor acceptance testfirst. We want to review those protocols, process, and procedures, as Imentioned earlier, and then go in there doing the factor acceptance test. So,what we do recommend is using AQL tables. They're done by statisticians.Typically, it's right around 10% sampling size. And this comes from, like, youcan, you do factory substance testing on a car, on a TV, it doesn't matter whatit is, it's going to be using that AQL sampling table. So we typicallyrecommend 10% it could be higher, could be lower, depending on what we, what wehave past seen from that manufacturer, but if it's a new product, we'll domore. If it's an existing product out of a new factory, we'll do more, becausewe don't know what that factory looks like. Could be new people, could be newprocesses, could be new machines could be new calibration, there's a lot ofthings involved with building something out of a new factory that is our fourstage process, we can go into further down the road into O and M assetmanagement, which is extremely critical, but that is our four, our four phaseapproach to to our. Quality assurance plan.

Nico Johnson 35:02

I think I captured them all. So, phase ones, AVL, phase twois levelized bids, BAFO, phase three contracts, phase four assure insuremanufacturing quality.

Jeff Zwijack 35:10

Yep, yep, you got it.

Nico Johnson 35:11

Okay, yeah, sweet. I was taking notes there, man. I've heardyou tell it before, but not to that detail. So, thank you. So, Peter K asked,are there any fire water requirements or specifications you can point to, bothsupply and containment? Kathleen, I'm guessing that's probably closer to yourexpertise.

Kathleen McCaffery 35:31

That is probably closer to mine, and it's a great question,but as for right now, as far as NFPA and for the fire international firechiefs, we do not have a ratio of fire water versus a gigawatt, and things likethat. We are coming up with just a touch here. People have to know that firecodes are usually three to six years behind the actual technology, and withthis technology accelerating as fast as it is, the fire codes are way behind.We are coming up with standard strategies and tactics to addressing these,especially best fires. So, I think we've got that down in the fire department,but not specifically. We are still going with there are lots of agents that aremaking grand claims about putting out lithium ion battery fires, and they needmore research to them. So, as of right now, we are still going with water, andwe are avoiding foam. Foam has not shown to extinguish the fire faster. Itmakes a far greater hazmat cleanup. So, the current recommendations right noware water, and water in a misting stream, which is a very low volume of water,as opposed to massive amounts of water. Sorry, that, that doesn't, Peter, thatdoesn't directly answer it, but that's where we are with our, with ourstrategies right now.

Nico Johnson 36:48

I think something that you said, I think you mentionedearlier as well, that I learned in one of our earlier calls, Kathleen, is thisidea of containment just making sort of a curtain of water around the facilityrather than dousing it with water, because again, instead of big fire, bigwater, you just kind of have to let it burn out.

Kathleen McCaffery 37:05

You were listening, so it's called a water curtain, and whenwe're looking at that San Diego thing about having a best in a neighborhood,that's one of the things the fire department will have to practice, is puttinga water curtain be hot between the best and the neighborhood, because that's asafety issue, so more learning to be had as these are deployed behind shoppingmalls, behind hospitals, and things like that.

Nico Johnson 37:26

Yeah, I think this is probably another, and it's probablyrelatively quick. Kathleen, was there release of HF gas an issue in the fireevents that you've observed?

Kathleen McCaffery 37:34

This is a huge question, because HF can actually penetrateour gear and can be absorbed into our skin, so we follow it quite a bit inevery study that I've seen, the amount of HF that gets into the air and thathas been monitored by the EAP in Australia, and then on many of the UnitedStates fires is negli negligible, it is so small that it is inconsequential tothe gas that's going up there, and it dissipates as it goes up, so HF is not asof right now, as the testing has shown at this point, is not a hazard factorthat we're looking at for these events. Thank you, Philip.

Nico Johnson 38:14

And for anyone not familiar, HF is hydrogen fluoride, I hadto look it up. ChatGPT will help you as well.

Kathleen McCaffery 38:20

Sorry, that's quite all right. Very dangerous tofirefighters, because it does penetrate our gear. That's one thing we look for.

Nico Johnson 38:26

Yeah, so now I am going down in order, because then now it'seasy, much more easy there. So, Leon asked, any cyber security concerns? Jeff,I'll throw that one to you.

Jeff Zwijack 38:35

Absolutely, so we follow, we follow the local codes, so whenwe're doing our reviews of contracts, even before that, we're talking about theuse case of of the project during the RFP phase. We look to the local codes,state codes, codes for the transmission authority for cybersecurity. When werelease that RFP that tender, we ask those right questions. Who is who isproviding hardware? Who is providing the software for the energy managementsystem, for your battery management system, for your power plant controllers toall align with what's the requirements for the project for the use case.

Nico Johnson 39:19

Mallory wants to know, what's your take on sites havingthermal cameras, monitoring the beds for thermal runaway? Maybe Kathleen willhave some thoughts on this as well. Jeff, let you first

Jeff Zwijack 39:27

know it's a great idea. We've seen them before. I was a..I've been to China many times, viewing these, viewing these energy storagesystems being being built. There are there are companies out there that havecameras, have thermal cameras. There are containers out there that actuallyhave security cameras on them as well, but it's becoming a thing. I haven'tseen it. I haven't seen it take off for the majority. It's maybe the minorityright now, but I do see it beneficial. Just another layer that you can put inthere for monitoring, besides off-gas detection, or whatever that may be, butagain, it's just another thing to ask during that RFP process. And then also,what cost does it add to the system as well? Does the insurance providerrequire it. Does your financier require something like that? Always good to askall those questions at the top end and at the bottom end.

Nico Johnson 40:28

Yeah, I don't know if Jason Kaminsky is on, he couldprobably comment in the on the insurance piece. We were going back and forth onone of my posts about, you know, what are the insurers requiring, what are thewhat should utilities require, and I'm seeing I've been having conversationswith companies like FLIR and Onsite Technologies, two companies I'm aware ofthat have smoke detection technology that's being installed not just at thebattery level but at the system and building level that will at least giveearly detection warnings. I would wager, I would wager that this is going tobecome more prevalent, and it's going to become including more required andregulated as we go forward, because this technology is on a cost basisrelatively low, given what it can help avoid.

Kathleen McCaffery 41:14

I know you guys are talking about systems of thermal imagingcamera, but from a handheld perspective, that is the go-to device to use,because it will catch thermal runaway in the smaller settings before anythingwas done. So, when I'm doing my consulting, I always encourage everybody,because they're so cheap and they're handheld, they're easy to use, notraining, and they can catch

Nico Johnson 41:38

it. So, I don't know what this means, so you have tointerpret it for me. What's your experience on associated costs with a revisedfat protocol? Ryan Hunt asks this question. Jeff or Kathleen,

Kathleen McCaffery 41:50

I don't know what a fat is.

Jeff Zwijack 41:51

So fat is that factory acceptance test. There you go. Yeah,you

Nico Johnson 41:57

have somebody in here that's factory acceptance expert.

Jeff Zwijack 42:00

Great question on the costs, so first we depends on dependson the project size for 100% of capacity testing. If you're talking 100containers, I know I wouldn't do 100% of 100 containers doing a completecharge, complete discharge for capacity testing. You may want to do 10% that'swhat we typically see now, 100% you may do that if you're only buying five ortwo for a local CNI project or community solar. Now the costs of that, we, wetypically put in our contracts when we review them, that all the costs are tobe on the factory, on the integrator, on the seller, and it's to be done in thefactory. We have seen where, if in the contracts, and it can be, it can bemissed. That's why it's very important to have a third party take a look at thecontracts. We've had, we've had the capacity testing. They want to do thecapacity testing in the field. So, guess what? If it's done on the field, ifthere's a finding, then it needs to be reworked. But also, Who's going to dothe cost? Well, well, that utility, that meter is probably owned by thedeveloper or owned by the asset owner. So, now all the costs for charging anddischarging are on you, can you even discharge? Can do you even have thatinterconnection agreement? Do you have to have a load bank for that? Who'sresponsible for that load bank? So, first we want to have it done, done on thefactory, and we want all the costs to be done by the integrator. It should bepart of that complete package. Hope that answers your question.

Nico Johnson 43:37

Yeah, there was another question. Also, is there a goldenfat standard? I'd argue the one that CEA offers. Yeah,

Jeff Zwijack 43:47

I did not.. I did not mention the word, the actual servicename, Golden, but that is.. but that is our service name is our Golden FactorAcceptance Test, Golden Fat.

Nico Johnson 43:58

Amazing,

Jeff Zwijack 44:00

and that's where we, that's where we review those, thosegaps in that, in that protocol.

Nico Johnson 44:04

Yeah, Kathleen, there's a question for you. Like to hearKathleen's take on NFPA 70 B.

Kathleen McCaffery 44:09

I was working on that NFP standard when I was with Tesla,and like I said before, things were accelerating so fast. It's a long processto upgrade NFPA, so I would say that NFPA and the IFC are doing tremendous,tremendous work on getting these out, but I would also like to caution they arethe best they have at the time, and to go with on Jeff's quality assurance, youneed to be looking at best practices beyond Fire Code and beyond NFPA, becausethe technologies already advanced behind

Nico Johnson 44:50

them.

Kathleen McCaffery 44:50

So, working with, like, Jeff and the Quality Assurance, andtheir Golding Fat Test, that I've now learned is your best way to get the mostaccurate and the most up. To date, NFPA are our regulations that theyencourage, but it's a long, arduous process to get these out. So,

Jeff Zwijack 45:08

yeah, it's a minimum. It sets a bar. Yeah, it is. We want togo, we want to go, we want to go about that.

Kathleen McCaffery 45:14

Absolutely. So, you want to look beyond that for your safestof your safety.

Nico Johnson 45:20

Yeah, to that end, Jeff, besides QA and fat, Joseph wants toknow, do you encounter design issues? Do you provide design reviews, not reallyon the hardware side, but rather on system sizing and O and M in the plants? We

Jeff Zwijack 45:34

do. We do so quality assurance is not just going into thefactories, you know, doing the factory acceptance test, factory audits, it alsogoes to engineering design of the of the product, making sure it's it goes tostandards, but also best best practices as well, making sure that the batteryDC block is is compliant with the inverter with the EMS with the transformer,and if those, if those combinations of equipment has not been done before,let's do an integration test, both a hardware in the loop software softwaretest, and then do one on the factory. Let's bring all the parties together, andlet's make sure that inverter talks to that talk to talks with the DC block,and so on and so forth. Talks to the power plant controller, because where youwant to find issues is in a controlled factory environment, or maybe hardwarein the loop, not in the field. You want to, as soon as you get everything inthe field, you want to commission and rock and roll with getting our energystorage system online, not deal with problems.

Nico Johnson 46:48

This is probably for you, Kathleen. We've only got two morequestions here that I see, but I'll let you read it here. Will you read it forme? I've never done that.

Kathleen McCaffery 46:55

Tesla Mega Pack uses a sparking device to burn offcombustible gas before it gets a chance to explode. Do you recommend water? Isthere anything more to that?

Nico Johnson 47:05

Oh, it says, do you recommend the water curtain instead?This is Christine Grundbaum.

Kathleen McCaffery 47:09

Okay, so that's those are two separate things. So, thesparking sparking device is designed to prevent deflagration. Deflagration iswhat happened at Surprise Arizona when there was too much buildup of gas and itexploded. So, the sparking device in the Tesla Mega Pack kind of when it sparksit burns off that gas and so it happens every 15 to 12 seconds and so there'snot deflagration so these are two different strategies and tactics so yes evenat if if you need a water curtain that sparking device is no longer functioningor it has gotten well beyond the past. You only need a water curtain if you areact if it actually has gone into thermal runaway, and you see fire, the watercurtain helps stopping it from propagating to anything around it, whether it'scombustible or another mega pack.

Nico Johnson 47:55

And this is the final one that was submitted that I didn't,okay, in the public it says, So, what is the main RC for fires is careless.What prevented that the person's name is Careless? Now I'm not saying this isCareless. Okay, sorry. What preventative action could be implemented in theproject execution stage to reduce these risks to minimum?

Kathleen McCaffery 48:13

Do you think that that's probably you, Jeff? Then

Jeff Zwijack 48:15

yeah, a lot of the root causes that,

Kathleen McCaffery 48:18

yeah,

Jeff Zwijack 48:19

that we have have seen both from CA into tech and publishedarticles, a lot of it comes back to the product itself, which is more thanlikely system defects, but also the design as well, so it kind of all comesback to that, that that quality assurance piece, that that risk mitigation, 10%sample size, we're not going to see everything, it would be egregious to beable to see everything. 10% sample size is what is recommended by statisticiansout there, but as far as what we've seen from thermal, from thermal runawayevents, a lot of it could have been mitigated with a, with a quality control,either at the factory or at the design of the system.

Nico Johnson 49:17

Nice, and just like that, an hour has blazed past us. Wehave more questions like red flags and blind spots, and I'm gonna have to haveKathleen and Jeff join me on another podcast episode, so that we can hear allof the further deep dives. I'd love to hear, though, from Kathleen and Jeff,we'll start with Jeff, and then to Kathleen. Jeff, from all that we've talkedabout today, what do you hope is the biggest takeaway for folks who've stuckaround all the way to the end?

Jeff Zwijack 49:51

My biggest takeaway is don't don't take the word qualityassurance as just looking at the project. It you want to take a look at theentire system supplier selection bankability of that supplier, so for example,we've, we recently saw an exit in terms of bankruptcy with with an integrator,so I wonder what those those bankability reports that that the buyers saw fromthat supplier? I wonder, what I wonder, how that read. So bank ability goes farbeyond just just a piece of paper that the financiers or the insurance arms maywant to see or need to see. It goes to supplier selection product quality assetmanagement, so you're gonna have to live with that, that product for 20 years,so you want to be able to audit that asset management, so quality is not justthe product, it's it's the entire package, including including speaking to yourlocal local fire department.

Kathleen McCaffery 51:01

Yeah, segue, Jeff.

Jeff Zwijack 51:03

So, yeah, you mentioned you mentioned earlier there wasdisconnects.

Nico Johnson 51:07

Yeah,

Jeff Zwijack 51:07

well, a lot of developers, asset owners may say, well,that's not I, me, that's on the fire department to talk to each other. Well,aren't you the asset owner? Aren't you the one responsible? So, if you look ata D or is that R next to your name?

Kathleen McCaffery 51:22

Yeah, perfect.

Jeff Zwijack 51:23

Luckily, yes. Yeah,

Nico Johnson 51:24

yeah, Kathleen.

Kathleen McCaffery 51:26

And that segues into mine, is that you know, include thefire department in your Q and A, because when you ask them to come take a lookat your factory, do a walk through, you have an entire cadre of experts thatare looking at things in a totally different optic than you are, use theirexpertise, and Nico, the hook is they're free. Call the fire department, it'sfree, and you're going to get something out of it. So don't cut your Q and Ashort by that. So that's that's what I want to end on. And thank you.

Nico Johnson 51:55

Yeah, thank you as well. And I'll note that you can downloadthe report we referred to, the most common best manufacturing defects of 2024that CEAs team of quality assurance and field investigators have gleaned fromliterally hundreds of factory inspections around the world. My biggest takeawaytoday is fires are preventable when quality assurance is taken seriously fromthe start. Well, that's where we'll leave it today. I want to give a huge shoutout and thank you to Jeff Swejack and the Clean Energy Associates team, as wellas our good friend Kathleen McCaffrey. If you want to go deeper, you can grabCEAs report, the most common Bez manufacturing defects, and you'll find linksto Jeff, Kathleen, CEA, and all the things that we talked about here in theshow notes. I hope that if this was useful, not only will you follow Sun Castwherever you listen, but you'll share it out to your network on whatever yoursocial media platform of choice is. For me, that's LinkedIn. I hope to catchyou over on LinkedIn and hear your thoughts about how this episode resonated.And remember, this show is supported by our sponsors. They pay the bills, soyou pay attention. That's all I'll ask of you for now. I do hope that you willjoin us again soon. Remember, you are what you listen to. Thanks again forshowing up, Solo Warrior. It's half the battle.

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