Energy storage experts from organizations such as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the New York State Office of Fire Prevention and Control gathered Thursday at Binghamton University to discuss the future of American-based battery innovation and safety.
Today, batteries power some of the most important aspects of our lives - from mobile phones and laptops to medical devices. As progress continues to be made in adopting clean technology, battery safety and reliability is a major priority.
The Battery Safety Symposium, held as part of Battery Week events organized by New Energy New York, brought together industry leaders to highlight developments in the sector, discuss potential challenges and solutions, and raise awareness of the best practices when it comes to operating batteries. Around 100 people registered for the symposium.
"It's exciting to be a leader in not just the manufacturing and development of lithium batteries, but also to be a leader in helping people understand how they work and how to maintain them safely," Binghamton University President Harvey Stenger said. "Today's focus is on fire safety, related to batteries for large storage systems, and we have some of the world's experts talking to a large group of people who want to understand what the safety issues we have to worry about for lithium batteries are, and how we manage them."
Three Binghamton-led initiatives - New Energy New York, the NENY Tech Hub and the NSF Energy Storage Engine in Upstate New York - work together across multiple sectors to bolster U.S. leadership and competitiveness in energy storage.
"When you think about cars, you think of Detroit. We want that in the future," said Ziang "John" Zhang, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and workshop organizer. "When people think about batteries, they think of Binghamton and upstate New York's ecosystem. That's our goal."
Attendees on Thursday learned about ways in which New York's fire department is updating its fire safety codes in response to the increasing deployment of batteries. They also heard statistics on battery-related emergencies and how to prevent them.
"Dealing with battery emergencies in the fire service has been a passion of mine now for a couple years, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that I realized a lot of the firefighters across New York state didn't have any knowledge on what to do with this," said Victor Graves, a fire protection specialist with the NYS Office of Fire Prevention and Control. "The goal with this [workshop] is to make sure that they have the knowledge and they don't get hurt."
The workshop also brought in companies such as Viridi and Intertek, which are working to strengthen grid resiliency and test new technology to ensure safety, respectively. Speakers also detailed energy-storage related projects, including the MTA's initiative to bring electric, zero-emission buses to New York City.
As a joint effort of the S3IP Center of Excellence, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Binghamton University's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and New Energy New York, the symposium was open not just to engineers and academics, but also to anyone who was interested in learning more about the industry, including students.
Binghamton senior Ashley Reed is a member of the student-run Binghamton Venture Fund, which offers real-world practice when it comes to investing in early-stage, private companies. She said she attended the safety symposium in order to better understand the energy storage industry at large, as well as potential opportunities within it.
"If there's a strong need for battery storage, or the safety systems beyond it, that's something we might look more into," she said. "Just becoming more enlightened about the industry itself was interesting, because I've always heard about some of these problems just from the news - but being able to hear firsthand from the fire department and getting additional insights was all very interesting."
The day also included live demonstrations of Viridi's new energy storage system, as well as the opportunity to view a student-made electric racing car by Binghamton Motorsports. Attendees could also explore different modes of manufacturing through the SUNY Schenectady Mobile Learning Lab.
Indranil Bhattacharya, chair of Binghamton University's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, closed the day by highlighting faculty research in clean energy and opportunities for potential collaborations.
As Binghamton University remains a nexus between academia and industry to boost battery production in upstate New York, S3IP Project Staff Associate Caroline Pasquale said including safety in the discussion is critical.
"It's very important that we continue to talk about it, especially with the initiatives that we have going on with NENY, the Tech Hub and the NSF Energy Storage Engine. They all blend together, and everybody's working toward the same goal of battery manufacturing here in New York state," she said. "Along with that, a huge component of that is battery safety."
As school districts, fire stations and transportation authorities adopt clean energy storage, Pasquale hopes to keep offering opportunities for stakeholders from all corners of industry to get together and raise awareness on how to do it correctly and responsibly.
"This way, we're getting more and more information out to people, especially about this really important topic of battery safety," she said. "It's only going to keep getting bigger."
