Fire Chief Warns Against Battery Charging At Night
June 30, 2023
By Paul Homewood
Thanks heaven the family is safe.
But where does this leave the government strategy of forcing us to charge our EVs up at night?
And should not Beth Hayman be banging her drum and vigorously opposing the government’s EV agenda on the grounds of safety?
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
House fire in Lancaster last week. https://www.beyondradio.co.uk/news/local-news/fundraiser-organised-for-lancaster-family-after-devastating-house-fire/ “It’s believed that it was caused by an electric bike charger.”
Home owner should know what the laptop was — more info about what
it was and likely other similar models of the same machine could be
lurking in people’s homes — or flying on planes with them…. Fire
Chief was derelict in NOT providing that information to the public.
“Home owner should know what the laptop was — more info about what
it was and likely other similar models of the same machine…”
Not just homeowners but anyone with a similar model laptop.
Laptops / lithium battery … If only it was that simple. I have been working with lithium batteries for some years. There is a lot of irresponsible, dangerous manufacturing going on. I wonder if the battery that caught fire was an OEM battery or an el-cheepo item bought online. Amazon are particularly bad in flogging naff batteries and eBay sellers are a “mixed bunch”.
I’m seeing some absolutely frightful design decisions taken by replacement (and some OEM) battery makers. Cells are not properly individually monitored during charge and and safety devices are compromised (thermal sensors inoperative d/t not actually touching the cells is depressingly common) ‘orribly crude charger circuitry is also common.
The phone manufacturers in some cases are pushing the chemistry beyond its limits – hello! Samsung!
Professor Paul Christensen of Newcastle University (UK), professor of pure and applied electrochemistry, believes that all Li-ion batteries are dangerous. These batteries do not have to undergo physical abuse to cause an explosive fire, it can just happen through exposure to high humidity and Common Mode Voltage (Noise) and the vapour cloud of a runaway fire can contain hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen chloride and hydrogen cyanide, all very nasty.
Watch this Australian video of Professor Christensen warning of the dangers :
Start at 1:01:45
Emeritus Prof. & strong nuclear advocate Wade Allison tweeted this a couple of hours ago:
Electric airplanes eh?
No aircraft that has a fire in the cabin has ever stayed airborne for more than ten mins.
https://www.flyingmag.com/news-ups-747-crash-highlights-lithium-battery-danger/
No passenger aircraft is now allowed to carry Li ion batteries as freight. Electric ‘planes will never be viable for 1000 other reasons never mind fire risk.
I reckon this is exactly why a Norwegian Ferry company has banned all EVs from their ferries reported on non MSM earlier this year; it was stated that the enormously high temperatures and toxic substances an EV battery fire emit cannot be tackled without specialist equipment ferries do not carry and which would need to be helicoptered in – thus the ship would be very compromised in poor weather/heavy seas in the event of an EV battery fire. That appeared to me to be non water based fire extinguishing devices requiring specialist expertise ( and very possibly an additional expense they do not want to take on).
The only way to deal with lithium car battery fires is to cool them for hours with water. Scuttling the ferry would probably work! 🙂
“Whitehaven house fire: Warning after e-bike battery failure”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-63877115
“A “concerning” rise in fires involving e-scooters and e-bikes in Cumbria has prompted firefighters to warn people about their safety at home.
It follows a blaze in Whitehaven on Saturday which saw two people taken to hospital and property severely damaged.
An investigation found the cause was accidental due to a failure of an e-bike’s lithium-ion battery.
Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service said the fires can develop “so rapidly” they can quickly become serious.
People who have the bikes are being warned to have working smoke alarms and to have a clear escape route out of their home.”
They’ve just installed some new EV only parking bays on the coast near me. Several times when I’ve driven past the charging cable has been looped over a car and down the flank by the live traffic, protruding much further than the wing mirrors. This must be the same all over. There is an obvious entanglement/collision hazard with passing traffic, especially in the dark/filthy weather. At best there will be minor damage, at worst a cyclist or motorcyclist could be killed.
And another e-scooter rider serious injury.
https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/23625359.brighton-e-scooter-rider-taken-hospital-crash/
Hmm…pick a winner: scooter or Range Rover? Looks like there is no hire scheme in Brighton so he was breaking the law. Oh, well.
A house across the street from me had it’s first floor go up in flames due to a laptop being left to charge on a bed. What damage would a car do?
That is a bit different as when charging they can get quite warm verging on hot, so being left on a bed was not a good idea.
“I urge everyone not to continuously charge electrical devices and to ensure they are switched off at the wall socket overnight.”
Not going to happen. People are going to charge stuff.
Bit of a hasty generalization – the article doesn’t tell us how many other millions were successfully charged.
I wouldn’t have an EV near my house, but we all have rechargeable devices (such as laptops, hedge trimmers, drills etc). They are all potential fire and explosion hazards. The biggest worry is these massive Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS)which are springing up everywhere developers can get a grid connection. There are currently applications in Devon for two 500MW schemes, which consist of hundreds of industrial containers, each containing tens of thousands of individual Li-ion cells. The risks are enormous, with the potential for release of clouds of toxic vapours following thermal runaway leading to fire or explosion. And of course, trying to control a fire needs vast quantities of water, which can lead to ground-water contamination. The government doesn’t care as BESS are part of NetZero and it has clearly instructed HSE to ignore these dangerous facilities.
Yes Phillip, over in Kent we are being threatened with this.
https://www.favershameye.co.uk/post/project-fortress-previously-known-as-cleve-hill
If these types of battery sites were Small Modular Nuclear Reactors every protestor under the sun would be flocking for a day out jolly and media coverage would be wall to wall. But really seriously dangerous batteries will be readily accepted! Madness.
I have been following Cleve Hill with great interest.
Having spent a long time working alongside the explosives industry, I’d wonder why the planners aren’t enforcing the same sort of safety protocols for large scale Lithium Battery installations. Through physical separation and the use of blast-deflecting walls, an explosives plant or storage installation is designed on the basis that the failure of a single manufacturing unit should have no impact on any adjacent units. It shouldn’t be too difficult to introduce similar concepts in the design of a battery storage facility, i.e. to insist on a minimum distance between individual storage cells.
The problem is that decision makers (such as LPA planning officers, planning committees and planning inspectors) have little to no understanding of the risks and what should be done to minimise them. But very recently Fire and Rescue Services have started to get involved in the decision-making process, which is good news.
What about the toxic smoke when they burn? That is not something the explosives industry has to deal with.
Gezza – Toxic smoke is a very real issue within the explosives industry which is why it isn’t advisable for magazines and production facilities to be sited upwind of built-up areas. In the event of a fire, it’s generally regarded as being preferable to let the fires burn themselves out, venting any toxic emissions to atmosphere. (I remember a visit to the Nitroglycerine facilities at the former Royal Ordnance Factory at Bishopton, near Glasgow. The Nitroglycerine production cells themselves were regarded as expendable and several had been competely destroyed over the years. The huge area of the site and the distance from any residential developments meant that the general public was probably not even aware that there had been “incidents”.) Perhaps the old ordnance sites would have been appropriate places to site the battery storage installations, though it’s now too late, as almost all have now been sold for residental and commercial use.
There must be millions of laptops being charged in rooms while no one is there.
I’ve heard with e-bikes a problem is the lack of coordination of design, so builders are assembling bikes with poor components.
If I had a car or a bike (not) the charging would be 20 or 30 m. from any building.
Further, I will watch for EVs in parking lots and not park next to them.
Yes, but what about when you have parked and two minutes later an EV comes and parks next to you? I believe in Germany (I think) it was stated that one should not park closer than 50feet to an EV but what if the above happens? Maybe you should stand by your vehicle when it is parked to ensure it doesn’t happen …?!!!
4 million Teslas have been sold.
3,999,999 being charged doesn’t make the news.
Burn 1, and it makes the news, oh boy.
Spreadsheet of 194 Tesla fires:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17xWHOdeNnMhUSK9wiOoB_ELGO8uKnX9nkI80PkN2-wA/edit#gid=0
Three years ago, A small LI battery was on charge. We were out. When we returned it was to two fire engines and the house is a total mess – black soot everywhere. We might have lost the whole house had not a quick witted neighbour phoned the Fire Brigade. It cost our insurers nearly £200,000. They were very good about it I will say!
It would be helpful to have some stats on the causes of domestic fires to put the risk from batteries into some sort of context. Given the vast number of widgets which are now part of our lives and need recharging, the risks may be relatively low compared to, say, smoking, open fires, overloaded sockets, kitchen accidents, etc..
That said, I do try to avoid leaving anything on charge if I am not in the house – with small items it’s just a very small risk which can be managed. However, as posted above, I would not charge an EV anywhere near my house because of the impossibility of extinguishing a fire, were one to start.