Wind turbine fires - are they an issue, or are they not? In this episode, I am joined by Prof. Guillermo Rein of the Imperial College London, who raised this issue 10 years ago at the IAFSS conference, and I believe we still do not have a clear answer.

In this episode, we discuss the fire safety of wind turbines using the layers of protection framework - from suppression, detection, and prevention to firefighting. We have discussed the challenges with evacuation and the subsequent fires triggered by "firebrands" flying out of the burning wind turbine.

I try to show this discussion also as a great example case study for fire safety engineering. Having this sharp cost of the fire (loss of turbine, loss of income), pretty much binary outcomes of fires (if there is a fire the turbine is most likely lost) and a cost of safety features, we can truly put a number on how much monetary value the fire safety features of a wind turbine bring.

If you would like to learn more about wind turbine fires, I highly recommend the more recent article in SFPE Fire Protection Engineering magazine and the IAFSS paper on the topic (from 2013).

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The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.

CROSS UK is Collaborative Reporting for Safer Structures in UK. CROSS is a confidential reporting system which allows professionals working in the built environment to report on fire and structural safety issues. These are then published anonymously to share lessons learned, create positive change, and improve safety. Find out more about the safety information we provide below.

This initiative in the space of fire safety is lead by Neil Gibbins and Peter Wilkinson, who are my guests today. We go through the ideas behind the institution and the reasons why we need it. We discuss the confidentiality and all the layers of protection of the reports, and the bias of the issues brought up. This includes the strict “no blame policy”. We also go in deep into some more interesting, representative reports published by cross (out of 99 published on fire so far!).

Please join CROSS UK newsletter and check their repository here: https://www.cross-safety.org/uk

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The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.

In this episode of the Fire Science Show we go in depth on the Building Integrated Photo-Voltaic systems (BIPV). It is a topic relevant to many fire engineers, and one on which it is very difficult to find a lot of information about. For this purpose I’ve invited Reidar Stølen from RISE and a PhD candidate at Norwegian University of Science and Technology – NTNU.

Reidar has hands-on experience with fire testing BIPV façade, as he has performed such experiments with the Swedish test method for a commercial project. The results of the first experiments can be found in this research paper: Large- and small-scale fire test of a building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) façade system. We go in depth into description of the test sample, the rig and the outcomes of the experiment. Make sure to check the paper for the before and after pictures of the façade!

Another paper worth highlighting is the investigation into the Factors Affecting the Fire Safety Design of Photovoltaic Installations Under Performance-Based Regulations in Norway. Related to this we have an in depth discussion on the factors that play role in PV fires, especially connectors as one of the main sources of the fire.

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The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.