Electricity Storage Health and Safety Standards Gap Analysis

A gap analysis to identify whether there are any gaps in health and safety standards as well as how accessible and easy to navigate the current standards framework is. This piece of work will provide a view on whether the current health and safety standards framework enables the safe installation, maintenance and decommissioning of storage devices and subsequent protection of those interacting with these devices, such as consumers in the home. This work is for the expected increases in deployment of electricity storage at grid scale, as well as in commercial and domestic properties.

Overall research question: Is the current health and safety standards framework for electricity storage appropriate, robust and future proofed for the expected increase in deployment and as the technologies develop? If not, how should this be addressed?

We ask organisations to undertake an in-depth review of health and safety standards that are applicable to electricity storage technologies that are being deployed or at pre-deployment (Technology Readiness levels of 8 or higher) at domestic, commercial and industrial, and grid scales. For each of these scales we would like the high-risk safety areas to be identified and a review of the contents of standards (both current and in development) to see whether each area has been adequately covered. This piece of work will provide analysis on whether the current health and safety standards framework enables the safe installation, maintenance, operation and decommissioning of storage devices and subsequent protection of those interacting with these devices, such as consumers in the home. Finally, a set of recommendations for how to address any issues identified should be made.

We are inviting organisations to propose their own methodologies to deliver this work and additional information will be available when the HELGA competition launches (details below).

Additional information: Heat Networks and Electricity Generation Assets (HELGA)

This research project will be procured through the Heat Networks and Electricity Generation Assets (HELGA) dynamic purchasing system which is run by the Crown Commercial Service. This will be run through HELGA Service - Energy Storage and DSR.

Full details of this requirement will be shared with appointed HELGA suppliers when the competition launches. To be eligible to bid into this project, you will have to be an appointed supplier on HELGA, which we recommend doing by the middle of January 2020. If you are interested in this project, we encourage you to sign up to HELGA as soon as possible as it can take up to 15 working days for the CCS to process your application.

Instructions on how to register on HELGA are included in the attachments here.