Fire Suppression Simulation and Risk Assessment for a Lithium-Ion Battery Energy Storage Station

Abstract

Lithium-ion battery energy storage stations are being rapidly deployed for peak regulation, renewable energy integration, and emergency power supply in power systems. Their fire risk is governed by interacting factors, including cell thermal runaway, equipment failure, operating environment, personnel behavior, management systems, and information systems, and is characterized by coupling, dynamic evolution, and confined-space fire spread. Existing static risk assessment methods cannot fully represent feedback among multiple risk factors or connect risk assessment results with the physical-field evolution of fires in energy storage compartments. This study develops an integrated grey relational analysis, system dynamics, and FDS framework. Personnel, equipment, environmental, management, and information risk factors are first established, and their weights are calculated using grey relational analysis. A system dynamics model is then used to analyze the temporal evolution of overall risk and subsystem risk responses. Finally, FDS is applied to simulate fire spread in a 30 ft containerized lithium-ion battery energy storage compartment under no-suppression and water-mist suppression conditions. The results show that the central fire-source region and battery module layer are key areas of gas-phase high-temperature accumulation and potential fire spread. In the no-suppression scenario, the high-temperature region remains localized near the fire source at 3.0 s, expands along the module layer from 30.0 to 50.0 s, and approaches a relatively stable distribution after 70.0 s. Under the investigated simulation conditions, water mist reduces near-source heating, weakens smoke-layer development, and slows spatial fire spread through evaporative cooling, reduced thermal radiation feedback, and disturbance of the hot smoke layer. These findings provide a methodological reference for fire risk assessment and fire suppression design in containerized battery energy storage stations.