Firetrace International has opened facilities in India and China, bringing its fire safety support to these rapidly expanding renewable energy markets. It means that the fire suppression technology supplier now has operations across 35 countries in five continents, with a service that aims to protect assets, communities, and investments if fire occurs in renewable energy assets.

China is targeting 1,200GW of wind and solar energy by the end of 2030, with a current capacity of 687GW at the end of 2021, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, while also hosting seven of the top ten wind turbine manufacturers in the world.

India is targeting 500GW of non-fossil power generation by the end of the decade with having 152.9 GW of renewable capacity installed in February 2022, generating the fourth-largest wind sector globally, Bloomberg NEF estimates. Surrounding regions in Asia Pacific harbour similar ambitions for renewable energy production.

Firetrace says that fires – which for the wind sector result in the total destruction of a turbine 90% of the time – can cost up to US$9 million in the most serious cases. The company’s new facility in India will consist of a management team, more than 50 engineers, and 10 sales, technical, administration and finance team members. The Chinese hub is co-located in a facility with eight other companies all under Halma plc, Firetrace’s parent company, with shared office space housing up to 150 staff.

Angela Krcmar, global sales manager at Firetrace International, said: “We are delighted to have opened facilities in India and China, which are staffed with proven industry experts and years of experience. We are well placed to work with stakeholders as the wind industry in both regions rapidly scale up, to mitigate against the risk fire poses to wind turbines.

“Our systems – which are installed in 300,000 applications in more than 75 countries around the world – detect fire at the source, activate automatically and suppress fires before they cause damage which can be costly to the safety of personnel working on wind farms, to the reputation of the industry, as well as to the balance sheets of owners and operators.”

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