Time flies when you discuss battery safety
On May 19, close to 70 people were gathered on Teams for the first MBF member meeting of the year. The topic was battery safety.
There is no doubt that the meeting involved good discussions and sharing of knowledge & experience.
As usual the meeting started with a ‘round the table’, where the new members and attendees introduced themselves.
The managing director gave an update from the forum and the current ongoing activities, as well as a brief sneak peek into the upcoming update of the ship register.
The main part of the meeting involved the three presentation with focus on battery safety:
Roman Stoiber is leader for product management for all Corvus products at Corvus Energy. He gave a presentation ‘Driving safety further’, where he illustrated and touched on aspects related to battery risk and safety. Two risk scenarios from the MF Ytterøyningen and MS Brim incidents were used as examples. To conclude his presentation he informed the listeners that 2300 litres of fuel had been saved and 6 tons of CO2.
Arne Fortun is Nautical Advisor at Fjord1. He gave a presentation ‘Battery ferry operation - how is safety ensured on board?’. During his presentation he talked about how they as a company work with risk assessment, do competence and training to ensure the crew is aware of the risks and are prepared if an incident may occur, as well as shipboard operation and emergency preparedness.
Sverre Eriksen is Senior Principal Approval Engineer at DNV Maritime, Electrical Systems. The title of his presentation was ‘Is maritime battery installation safe enough?’, which he left as an open question to begin with. He showed some incident analysis as the basis for his presentation, indicating that the majority of the incidents are caused by insulation breakdown. After going through, level by level, he presented a dilemma - "battery system vs battery space”. He concluded his presentation by sharing his thoughts on where it may be wise to have the current focus regarding maritime battery safety. Finally, he asked the question he started with - is maritime battery installation safe enough?
The attendees of the meeting asked the speakers questions. “Time flies when you are having fun and discuss battery safety” - definitely applicable for this meeting. As all MBF meetings a screen shot of some of the smiling faces at the meeting was taken (see picture below).
Thank you to all participants and speakers - hope you enjoyed it!
To our members, the slides and minutes are included on the member platform (link).
