It looks like you can't trust Lithium batteries

3

3CATSAILOR

Well-Known Member
I am seeing more and more reports of how dangerous lithium batteries are. This makes me wonder if battery powered cars which people park in the house garage are any better. I certainly don't charge any lithium batteries in my house. I charge it in a shed away from my house.

Just one report of many:
- Charging lithium-ion batteries sparked a house fire in Montgomery County that caused more than $500,000 in damage, according to investigators.
 
L

limblips

Well-Known Member
PREMO Member
It is only a matter of time before insurance companies will charge a premium for EV owners on their homeowners policy. Rightfully so too.
 
KingFish

KingFish

Nothing to see here
I saw a AA lithium battery rigged to short and blew the door off on a heavy environmental chamber during testing. Lithium packs a punch and once thermal runaway starts, things heat up.
 
Clem72

Clem72

Well-Known Member
3CATSAILOR said:
I am seeing more and more reports of how dangerous lithium batteries are. This makes me wonder if battery powered cars which people park in the house garage are any better. I certainly don't charge any lithium batteries in my house. I charge it in a shed away from my house.

Just one report of many:
- Charging lithium-ion batteries sparked a house fire in Montgomery County that caused more than $500,000 in damage, according to investigators.
Click to expand...
You don't charge your laptop, electric toothbrush, or phone in the house? How inconvenient.
 
glhs837

glhs837

Power with Control
3CATSAILOR said:
I am seeing more and more reports of how dangerous lithium batteries are. This makes me wonder if battery powered cars which people park in the house garage are any better. I certainly don't charge any lithium batteries in my house. I charge it in a shed away from my house.

Just one report of many:
- Charging lithium-ion batteries sparked a house fire in Montgomery County that caused more than $500,000 in damage, according to investigators.
Click to expand...
Usually the safety systems built into the chargers are pretty damn good. I'd like to know a bit more about what batteries they were charging and how they were charging them.

What I see lately is a lot of very cheap Chinese products. It might not have the same safety systems or safety systems that are as robust as ours.

Virtually every car battery fire in a house that I've ever been aware of has been caused by something wrong with the charging setup itself and not the car
 
Clem72

Clem72

Well-Known Member
glhs837 said:
Usually the safety systems built into the chargers are pretty damn good. I'd like to know a bit more about what batteries they were charging and how they were charging them.

What I see lately is a lot of very cheap Chinese products. It might not have the same safety systems or safety systems that are as robust as ours.

Virtually every car battery fire in a house that I've ever been aware of has been caused by something wrong with the charging setup itself and not the car
Click to expand...
There are lots of lithium batteries. Not like 1 or 2 for every person, but like several hundred or even thousands for every single person in this country. We imported from China more than half a million tons of LiON batteries from China last year alone, and domestically we produced about 1/3 that much.

All that to say, it's not surprising in the least to have some stories of fires. I would bet it's basically impossible to import half a million tons of anything from China without some of it exploding.
 
Tech

Tech

Well-Known Member
glhs837 said:
Usually the safety systems built into the chargers are pretty damn good. I'd like to know a bit more about what batteries they were charging and how they were charging them.

What I see lately is a lot of very cheap Chinese products. It might not have the same safety systems or safety systems that are as robust as ours.

Virtually every car battery fire in a house that I've ever been aware of has been caused by something wrong with the charging setup itself and not the car
Click to expand...
Remember a problem with the NMCI laptops when first issued and how many fire stations were damaged by the shore line chargers.
 
glhs837

glhs837

Power with Control
I wonder how many homes and lives are lost to the other popular energy storage method, gas cans?

I recently took apart a Kobalt 80v battery that I got used. Wouldn't charge on any of the three chargers I have, read only about 13 or 14 volts. Some of the cells were in pretty bad shape. But the internal safety mechanisms kept them from catching on fire. And the chargers themselves refused to charge that battery.

Had one of those small lithium battery jump packs, first generation. Refused to charge. Noticed the case was not tight in one corner, took it apart. The internal battery was bulging.

If you take care and buy decent stuff, it shouldn't be a problem.
 
PrchJrkr

PrchJrkr

Long Haired Country Boy
Ad Free Experience
Patron
Tech said:
Remember a problem with the NMCI laptops when first issued and how many fire stations were damaged by the shore line chargers.
Click to expand...
Yes and it was a cheap Chinese made off brand battery that the customer had installed. NMCI sucked, but not because of the equipment, but because of the upper management, especially when HP took over the contract.
 
RoseRed

RoseRed

American Beauty
PREMO Member
PrchJrkr said:
Yes and it was a cheap Chinese made off brand battery that the customer had installed. NMCI sucked, but not because of the equipment, but because of the upper management, especially when HP took over the contract.
Click to expand...
I had a battery replaced before it exploded. It had expanded and about to burst. The tech told me I was lucky.
 
PeoplesElbow

PeoplesElbow

Well-Known Member
PrchJrkr said:
Yes and it was a cheap Chinese made off brand battery that the customer had installed. NMCI sucked, but not because of the equipment, but because of the upper management, especially when HP took over the contract.
Click to expand...
It was due to the constant software pushes it overheated the laptops from the constant hard drive running, the batteries went into thermal runaway. The hard drives failing within 6 months were certainly not installed by the users.

It wasn't just a single laptop this happened to, out of 30 or so in my office about half of them had issues. This was when they were Dell btw. From a user perspective since they went HP the hardware improved.
 
Clem72

Clem72

Well-Known Member
PrchJrkr said:
Yes and it was a cheap Chinese made off brand battery that the customer had installed. NMCI sucked, but not because of the equipment, but because of the upper management, especially when HP took over the contract.
Click to expand...
I remember when that boondoggle first came online. With only 3 days notice before a long weekend they came and took every computer, printer, and all our networking equipment from our workplace and replaced only a few with shared NMCI seats (maybe 1 for 3).

The worst part, they took specialized test equipment. Computers with bespoke software to run our benches (manufacturer was happy to replace it at 700k per bench), analyzers with years of data we used for forensics, which we backed up off-site on a computer that they also took.

When we complained, they recommended we contact the company they were going to use to resell or scrap the equipment and that company never got back to us.
 
PeoplesElbow

PeoplesElbow

Well-Known Member
Clem72 said:
I remember when that boondoggle first came online. With only 3 days notice before a long weekend they came and took every computer, printer, and all our networking equipment from our workplace and replaced only a few with shared NMCI seats (maybe 1 for 3).

The worst part, they took specialized test equipment. Computers with bespoke software to run our benches (manufacturer was happy to replace it at 700k per bench), analyzers with years of data we used for forensics, which we backed up off-site on a computer that they also took.

When we complained, they recommended we contact the company they were going to use to resell or scrap the equipment and that company never got back to us.
Click to expand...
That was your organization's own fault, they failed to plan. We kept our legacy computers printers etc and had two computers on our desks for years. We actually still have some very old machines for such test equipment.
 
PrchJrkr

PrchJrkr

Long Haired Country Boy
Ad Free Experience
Patron
PeoplesElbow said:
It was due to the constant software pushes it overheated the laptops from the constant hard drive running, the batteries went into thermal runaway. The hard drives failing within 6 months were certainly not installed by the users.

It wasn't just a single laptop this happened to, out of 30 or so in my office about half of them had issues. This was when they were Dell btw. From a user perspective since they went HP the hardware improved.
Click to expand...
That's not hard to believe at all. The whole push for converting everything to NMCI bit my ass a few times when I managed the P3 software development lab. We fought tooth and nail to stay legacy and finally had both in the end. I had somehow cobbled together our own little network until NMCI took over the infrastructure and we had to go clandestine to get our work done. We basically used them for email and nothing else.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top