“A recent EPRI report plots global failures of commercial and grid-scale batteries — including arc flash, fire, and explosion events — and shows that the annual rate of failure has fallen precipitously as installations have grown exponentially. New safety standards have taken effect since the first big batteries were installed, and the batteries themselves, as well as project layouts, have grown more sophisticated and safe over the years.

That’s a great sign for an emerging technology: Even as a lot more of it enters the world, far fewer fiery failures are happening. But there’s a lot of variance from country to country in terms of rules around energy development and safety standards. To see how the data looks for the U.S. in particular, we plotted EPRI’s failure data alongside a tally of commercial- and utility-scale battery installations from the Solar Energy Industries Association in partnership with Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

By 2025, the annual failure rate fell by more than 97% from the 2016 rate, while cumulative deployments rose 250-fold. For three different years over the last decade, the failure rate was zero, because no known failures occurred those years. That looks like a gap in the downward trend, but it’s indicative of uneventful operations.”

From Canary Media.