In short
A warehouse gives a battery fire everything it needs: combustible stock, a large uninterrupted floor plate and racking that carries fire upwards. It also gives you the one control nobody else can afford — space. Separation is usually the cheapest and most effective measure available.
Where the exposure actually sits
Three distinct populations, usually managed by different people, which is why they get missed:
- Materials handling equipment. Lithium-ion forklift and pallet truck batteries are the largest single energy stores on site, and they are charged on a fixed cycle in a fixed place. That predictability is an advantage: it is a location you can design.
- Hand-held equipment. Scanners, printers, power tools. Individually small, collectively substantial, and charged wherever a socket happens to be.
- Stock. If you hold battery-containing goods, your fire load includes them whether or not anyone has assessed it. A pallet of e-bikes or power tools is a different proposition from a pallet of textiles.
Add staff e-bikes and e-scooters brought in and charged at a bench, and you have a fourth population nobody has counted.
What to do, in order
- Count the watt-hours, by location. Not the batteries — the energy. A charging bay handling MHE batteries can hold more energy than everything else on site combined. How to work it out.
- Use the space you have. Move charging away from racking, away from the packing area, and out of the path between the floor and the final exits. In a warehouse this usually costs floor space rather than money.
- Separate battery-containing stock from the general fire load where volumes justify it, and tell the fire service it is there.
- Give staff a permitted charging point for personal e-mobility, away from stock and escape routes. A prohibition with no alternative moves charging behind a pallet.
- Then consider containment. A tested cabinet for the hand-held population and any damaged packs. See battery cabinets.
Sprinklers are not the answer here
Most warehouses of any size are sprinklered, and it is tempting to treat that as the control. Sprinklers protect the building and limit spread to surrounding stock, which is genuinely valuable. They do not stop the reaction inside a cell that is already in thermal runaway. Design storage so that one pack failing does not reach the rest — see lithium battery fires.
Insurance
Warehousing is where insurers have moved fastest. Expect questions before renewal about where charging happens, what is stored, how damaged cells are handled and what containment is in place. Policy conditions can be stricter than the legal minimum and are contractually binding on you even where the law is silent — worth reading before you specify anything. The legal baseline is on regulations.
Frequently asked questions
How far should battery charging be from racking?
No UK regulation sets a distance, and any number quoted without a source is someone’s rule of thumb. What a fire risk assessment can justify is a separation that reflects your fire load, your detection and your evacuation arrangements. In practice the useful question is not how many metres but what is in the path: an aisle is separation, a stack of packaging is not.
Do we need a cabinet if we already have a dedicated charging room?
Often not for the MHE batteries — a properly sited, ventilated and detected charging room is a stronger control than a cabinet. Cabinets earn their place for the hand-held population, for packs in the main building, and for quarantining damaged cells. The two solve different problems.
What about batteries inside stock we are only storing briefly?
Transit stock still contributes to the fire load while it is on site, and cells damaged in handling are the ones most likely to fail. Inspect on receipt, keep battery-containing pallets identifiable, and have somewhere to put a damaged one. Once a pack is waste, the Waste Batteries and Accumulators Regulations 2009 apply.