Biomass fuels in large storage units are prone to self-heating and ignition causing smoldering fires. Here, the susceptibility of such ignition processes to parameters is explored through small-scale experiments. In a silo geometry, wood pellets samples of size 0.75 to 1.5 kg were heated from below to initiate smoldering, while the top was open, allowing convective exchange of gases between the porous sample and the surroundings. The thermally insulated sidewalls reduce the heat flow in lateral direction in a similar way that additional pellets material would do in a larger set-up. Thus, the present experimental set-up mimics a much larger system in lateral direction. After heating was terminated, the procedure led to self-sustaining smoldering or spontaneous cooling, depending on parameters. The transition zone between smoldering and non-smoldering was explored under variation in sample size, imposed heating, pellets type, and height of sample container. Logistic regression was applied to fit the experimental data to a model. The model predicted the probability of an experiment to result in either smoldering or non-smoldering under variation in parameters – and the parameters were sorted according to importance. The duration of the external heating was found to be the most influential parameter. For risk assessments in connection with large biomass fuel storage units, this result indicates that the temperature increase could be more important than the size and geometry of the storage unit and the stored material type. © 2020 The Authors