Probabilistic Analysis for the Safety of Battery Based Energy Storage Systems

The adoption of lithium ion batteries in multi megawatt systems for grid use or vehicles on the road around us leads to an ever increasing need for assessing the safety in these systems. Furthermore, the industry has great interest in preventing any such event in deployed systems to maintain a positive public opinion of the hugely needed technology, and facilitate rapid deployment. This paper presents a framework for representing and assessing these aspects. Fundamentally, the work focuses on development of a probabilistic framework for analyzing risk, populated with laboratory data. This allows comparisons of relative risks, areas of key interest, and a more intuitive understanding of how these probabilities proliferate. We can thus aggregate risks into useful categories to help define requisite design criteria and performance thresholds. The paper concludes with initial suggestions of metrics that can be used to better illustrate battery system safety issues, and help customers select systems that best meet their needs.