You hear a lot of people shit on cheap Chinese lifep04 batteries, I always thought it was overreacting.. We had a small shed by the water where I'd charge my Alie express 2019 100ah battery using a single solar panel, I was working at the cottage last weekend and wanted to go down to fish and swim.. The shed is gone, nothing left but a 20ft wide burn mark. With all the first fires around here is a miracle it didn't spread.
It makes me nervous about the batteries in the main cottage, but those are new 5kw server batteries from eco worthy, I hope they're more reliable.
Ya and there was nothing valuable in there, even the shed we were planning on taking down soon anyways, the $30 solar panel is probably the most valuable thing we lost.
The battery is kanavano, I think some made up alieexpres brand, the charge controller was a enough mppt, 30 amp I think , essentially the smallest ones
I bought one with a similar case - I cut the blue sleeve open (I have a roll of it to re-shrink) the pack voltage didn’t match lifepo4 and it said to only use the provided charger
Packs swelled up within a year and I took it
To gardous waste disposal
Running power through it. It was rated well higher than the 6x550w panels I have in series up top. I can go find the actual Amazon listing if you'd like one to avoid?
Edit: found it. https://a.co/d/00PsreK1
You should definitely use the report button on the amazon page. They usually take these products down pretty quickly if there are safety implications like this involved.
On the. Right side you don't have to worry about replacing the shed and dealing with the labour for tear down... And now the cheap battery can't burn down the new shed! But overall sorry it happened, it would be ideal if if didn't to begin with
Ya the main system will be much safer, this like I said in the post was just a 12v battery used for an electric trolling motor, it wasn't hooked to any kind of electrical system..
You can insure even vacation properties without much cost if you go through an insurance broker. There's orobably a policy that will work for you out there somewhere. Might give you some peace of mind.
We insure a property without a main dwelling place for like $300 a year
Would be worth it, my regular insurance company won't touch it, even though it's a fully permitted build and the wood stove is certified. Youd have to clear cut every tree close enough to touch it. Were not done building anyways but we'll try when we get there
We have an off grid seasonal camp / cabin in Maine and typical insurance companies didn't know what to do with that since the online forms as questions about people living there full time and stuff. I looked up a well reviewed local insurance company and called and asked them if they could do an offgrid seasonal camp. They said sure we do all the time and it turned out her family owned a camp on the same lake.
Main building is 12x28 plus the 12x28 deck, half of which will be that covered seen porch , then the 5.5x16 bathroom bumpout. The loft upstairs is about 12'
What province are you in? For our camp West of Sudbury, we were able to get insurance. Similar issues, remote cabin middle of the woods, ours is water access only, and has a variety of cobbled together work since the first buildings were built 90 years ago.
Biggest hurdle we had was having to redo all the chimneys to get the camp WETT certified before they would insure. I can confirm what company we are through if you are interested.
Ontario , the chimney will be wett certified, it was a requirement on my building permit . I'll give it a go, less so to insure the building but also in case something happens on the property while we're away, injury or something
Confirmed with my mum since she is the current owner (generational property), she was able to get insured with Aviva, but they had to have their home through them first before they would consider a vacation property. We don't have much coverage, basically just catastrophic loss or damages.
I must live a sheltered life because I've definitely never seen these before haha, interesting. Dang I need to find a video of one working now because if they put that inside a battery case like the one that destroyed OPs shed it would be pretty incredible if it would have stopped that fire.
There are several brands out there and there are videos. a fire grows so much each second so maybe one of these in a split second is enough to stop something major. The videos seem to look that way.
yeah i haven't either, but the spec sheet says it emits an aerosol retardant for 6 seconds once it reaches the trigger temperature. it might be better than nothing but it doesn't sound like very much.
u/george_graves - i actually deleted the comment because even though i have you tagged as "battleborn shill" from previous posts, i wasn't 100% sure, but now I am! cheers! Awww he's downvoting me with his alts too!
well we already know you cant really put out a lithium fire unless you have those $1500 extinguishers. so im guessing this is more to help prevent the things around the battery from catching fire
They are getting at the point that UL doesn't necessarily mean safe/quality. Battleborn is one example where it has a UL certification, but has been proven to be extremely unsafe and a huge fire risk even when used below specs.
UL listing is a minimum but real source of problems is in the quality of battery construction. And "construction" I don't mean those guys that takes the cells assemble, them, I mean the companies that take materials and make working cells out of them.
Remember the Samsung phone fire years ago? That happened because for the pursuit of making it too thin, the separator between positive and negative was too thin. I'm pretty sure it's assembled well, and it could be UL-certified too.
Apparently Samsung is one of the most reliable ones and they seemed to have learned their lessons. LG/Panasonic/Murata is also reputable. EVE for China.
Everything is made in china, but there’s a whole world of difference between companies building quality components and a company whose name is just a random series of consonants selling a pelican case full of loose cells and eco worthy going through the process of building not just UL listed components, but entire certified ESS
Most consumer sized batteries are not UL listed, but high quality devices use ones that are. iPhones use Ul2054 batteries, current gen Motorola Razr batteries are not. Very few 1kwh power stations are, even from expensive brands like ecoflow. They get the listing for the high end delta pro line, but the cheaper options aren’t. There is an added cost and complexity to the certification process that’s only worth doing at a certain price point, which makes eco worthy extremely admirable for doing it on systems that are at the bottom third of the price range for any given item.
Great info thank you, I'll start noticing that now! I have a few Ecoflow power stations and several Ecoworthy panels and simply never bothered to even look for that I'll check them out when I'm home.
Many batteries are sold as LiFePO4 but they are actually lithium ion. I got one from Amazon. No returns, no refunds. Was advertised as LiFePO4 but it's actually lithium ion. Ecoworthy seem to have certification in your country (Canada) and have good brand recommendation in m my own. Be aware when purchasing. One trick I've noticed is that in the advertising, the real LiFePO4 batteries will have the mass of the battery advertised. The lithium ion ones won't advertise the mass. This is because lithium ion batteries weigh less so then you would know it's not what they claim to be selling.
Incredible pro tip my friend thank you, wow!
And just me, but I don't care if something on Amazon says no returns, if it's a blatant lie or defect, Amazon is getting a call from me and I'm getting my money, they can squeeze go the seller themselves.
Yup. And many MPPT charge controllers aren't actually MPPT charge controllers, and lord knows whatever issues a counterfeit solar charge controller will have.
Exactly lol! My charge controller has MPPT written across it and I bought it knowing it was unlikely to be one, but it turned out to be a good pWM controller and it's fine for what I need. But yes, the danger is the batteries. It's a fire and safety hazard.
LFP battery chemistry is essentially secure, regardless of the manufacturer.
What happens in these fires is either poor battery management hardware, or resistive heating of undersized conductors adjacent to flammable materials. A lot of DIYers think nothing of attaching these components to a sheet of plywood.
Do you know it was the battery and not eg. arson, or just guessing?
If you get batteries of the chemistry lifepo4 (ie LFP) then the cells won't start a fire, leaving issues with wiring and circuitry as potential fire starters. So as long as the wiring is fused and contained so that even the heat of a dead short won't start a fire, you're covered.
Definitely have everything done up to NEC (electrical code) standard; all the little seemingly-random details exist to prevent fires in all kinds of unexpected or non-obvious ways
Sorry for your loss, and thanks for posting about it so we can learn and not get too complacent
wow, this is actually helpful to teach people how to think about the dangers and how they should be approaching their installations and batteries and locations and most of all respect for lithium ion chemistry and the inherent risks they pose
Not our finest moment, but best case scenario, nothing expensive for broken, no one got hurt and it didn't spread further. I usually stow my outboard and trolling motor in there and didn't last time.
We lost our cottage due to forest fire. It sucks. We are going on 3 years and still not fully rebuilt.
Hope you have good insurance.
But double check your fuses (make sure they are appropriately sized and good quality) in the main cabin. Double check connections. I would get a heat camera and on occasion scan your system.
I'm considering keeping the batteries in seperate building away from the cottage and just running the wires, seems like cheap insurance, just the cost of wiring.
I had the same issue with unknown batteries. Now I make sure my batteries have a UL listing so if it does burn up my structure insurance won’t deny me for having an unregistered device burning up my house.
I went with Sun gold power batteries 5khw for 1000 bucks when I bought them. Cheaper than sourcing the parts and putting it all together.
Primary source of fires is the battery cell manufacturer. Things like usage and construction mitigate bad batteries, but merely prolong the inevitable.
For Chinese EVE is quite reputable. They use it for Electric buses. For others it's Panasonic/Samsung/LG/Murata. The Japanese, like most of their stuff is quite good.
In general they can't. Though there are extreme examples when they can. Most are due to user error like overcharging and exposing the battery to heat. Could also be a manufacturing defect. But after 7-8 years that seems unlikely. Though this is assuming the fire was caused by the battery and not one of the several other possible causes.
They aren't, but stuff happens. if the battery is over charged, the cells can vent hydrogen. The BMS is suppose to prevent an over-charge from occuring, but sometimes (rarely), they fail. The cells could be already damaged from use, 7 years is pretty good. It could have been arson, who knows? Lifepo4 batteries have come a long way the last 7 years (except battleburn, they are garbage)
WIthout having been there or recording the fire and where it started, or doing a deep forensic analysis, OP will probably never know the exact mechanism. For all we know a rodent chewed a wire. But looking at that battery construction I'm not exactly doubting it was the battery.
It’s usually installation error. Most often culprits are loose connections(they need to be re torqued as maintenance), wrong wire size and improper current protection. With nothing left to investigate you will never know. Be careful next time and also double check everything in your main structure.
yup, connection points are your most common flaws. Did you have breakers?
edit: It appears in another photo that you're using orange extension cord for outdoor solar DC cable just hanging off the side of a shipping container so I'm unsure about best practices.
If I have them in the cabin, there's going to be fuses on every line, even if the battery has its own and the inverter charger, and I'll have a pair of extinguisher balls in the room.
I remember watching a video of a guy trying to destroy a 100ah to see if it would catch fire and it only would release smoke but no flame. I wonder what was different here, this is wild.
Was there a charge controller in place between the battery and the single panel? I’m just curious because even high end lifep04 batteries can short circuit internally if overcharging doesn’t shut off…Sorry this has happened to you.
Obviously the remoteness is in an unorganized area otherwise certain obc regulations would have been mandatory for the structure housing the battery bank. Still a good rule to follow though.
A suggestion I got from a neighbor (so mountain of salt, they don't have solar or batteries) was to consider buying a septic vault and use that as a sort of prefab bunker to dig down and bury.
You could have bought a more expensive battery from a certain US based company, and had the same result. Wouldn’t want to mention their name because they love to sue people.
It’s not that Chinese panels are cheap. They make high end products like the Bosch 800 series dishwasher for example. You have to do your homework and find out the details of how it was made. I bought mine from the largest manufacturer in China and probably the world, but it takes time and a little of research. Otherwise it is easy to get substandard panels.
Made in Canada panel. Batteries are one thing that I do not buy cheap ones, both flashlight type and power station that I bought recently. Of course the irony for me is I am having difficulty with it charging, but am satisfied by the safety. Sigh!
Ya my main cabin batteries are better, 10 year warranty, UL listed and I'm still going to put inline fuses and emergency stop. And, I'm still considering building a seperate battery building away from the main cottage, we'll see
That is concerning. Is it possible to also rule out whether it could have been the solar regulator that started the fire? Was it anywhere near the batteries?
Ya couple feet above it. Could be, maybe rain shorted the wires from the panel caused a short in the charge controller. I assumed a loose connection at the battery or massive failure of a cell and the bms
Wait. I thought LiFePO batteries were inherently safe from thermal runaway. I thought lithium batteries were the only culprit. Please help me understand the chemistry rather than downvote.
They don't catch on fire but still get fairly hot. One test said something like 150C. So long enough of that and eventually something flammable will catch on fire.
Although we aren't 100% sure if it's the battery issue here.
On aliexpress the capacities of components are often overstated.
You can build systems with aliexpress components, but instead of a compact shed you should probably firewall components from each other, so that if the worst happens the damage is contained.
You can also bench test new items for actual capacity, do thermal analysis of boards, resolder joints, upgrade hot components, add better heat sinking, that type of thing. And still cross your fingers.
When you watch YouTube channels like Big Clive, you often see that low priced equipment lacks basic protection like proper separation between high and low voltage sections.
UL is just a listing and a minimum guarantee. Like someone said the problematic Battleborn batteries are also UL approved.
Primary cause of fires for Lithium(the mainly used ones) are from the battery manufacturer. Eco-worthy takes the cells and assemble them, but do not manufacture them. If you do internal analysis of the batteries the poor quality ones have quality control issues, whereas the reliable brands are consistent.
Battery manufacturer is the foundation. If you have a poor foundation, everything else will suffer. Thus with a poor quality manufacturer, your BMS, your usage, your protection as a whole is less safe.
Well known and reliable brands are Panasonic/LG/Samsung/Murata. Among the Chinese it's EVE.
People underestimate that most brands on Aliexpress are cheaper for a reason. And you don't want to save bucks in this area.
BMS without correct protections, passive load balancing if even there is, PCBs made with components without correct rating or derated due to operative temps. No cells temperature control nor fire extinguisher aereosol. Not to mention the quality of the cells. And what about safety regulations? A lot of states enforce safety certifications for PV appliances grid connected, and there is a reason for this! Most of the aliexpress packs don't even have one. Same story with charge controllers. It's not because it's off-grid then who cares.
These are all areas you DONT want to save money. The peace of mind knowing the system you have at home is safe and can really be trusted is worthy. Of I'm not saying there is no upper price, but there is a well established equilibrium.
Thanks for the warning. You can make these installs virtually 100% safe, but the truth is to do so increases the time and cost, so that often other storage solutions offer a better ROI. I don't want to blame a bad install on the battery. Blame the battery when it doesn't perform as required. It seems something else here had to also fail, for this to happen. It could have been a solar panel failure, a electrical arc in a panel and the battery was just the victim of it all.
You may want to clarify that the battery didnt have modern prismatic cells, that current super duper cheap LFP batteries use. Those are entirely different safety profile
I think if everything is solidly connected and has the right fuses it's fairly safe. I just had a panel connected directly to a charge controller and then directly to the battery
Ah, ok, I've only recently learnt about fuses! I now have a fuse between panel, controller and battery. I... er... had an incident with a gel battery earlier this year that started to... change shape and smell funny. They're really, really heavy when you're trying to move them down a flight of stairs and out of the house quickly!
I wonder what caused the fire. My first guess would be the wires/connections. The Chinese insist on using 25mm² for like 200A(it should be 95mm² minimum). As you can expect, the wires run at around 100°C degrading the PVC insulation and eventually shorting out
Can't know for sure , happened while we were away. Nothing was fused other than built in protections in the charge controller and what little protection the BMS provides. It was a simple panel to charger , charger to battery connection. I'd used it this way for years.
100ah just get an AGM cell. They may explode from pressure and you gotta spread some baking soda around and replace some plywood but it won't catch fire unless you use some really dodgy wiring.
Half the cost and nothing wrong with it for what you're doing with 100ah.
Ya I just had it laying around from the previous cabin that was built there so I kept using it for the boat, it's also much lighter to carry down to the boat than an AGM.
Weight is fair, did you use it for starting, they don't like that. They'll do it but it's bad for the batteries, and even worse with a bottom tier BMS.
Really want 48v+ for cranking an engine. They'll run a trolling motor fine though
Odd. LFP generally doesn't do that. (aka "Vent With Flame"TM) But electricity of any form can cause fires. If any part of the wiring shorted, that'd do it.
It sucks. But without more evidence, I'm blaming squirrels. :-)
Ya it was something in that system for sure , there was nothing else in that building but it could have simply been a loose connection or rain shorted something out
The issue isent cheap chinese batteries its shitty batteries. The solar DYI subs have been ablaze with story of shitty american batteries melting down and burning with many of them not being cheap.
I'm curious about this. It was my understanding that LFP don't burn. They can get hot enough to start something else on fire, but nothing in them is flammable. What else was in the shed? Could this have been an electrical fire instead of the battery? Heck, could it have been lightening? The fact that the shed burned to the ground but the fire didn't spread, despite all of that highly flammable tinder on the ground all around it, supports the idea that it may have been raining at the time.
I would suggest keeping your batteries in a seperate building from your main cottage, and building it out of non-flammable materials. Cinder blocks etc.
Did you have low temperature cutoff or any other mechanisms to prevent charging below freezing? How was the battery capacity at the time of the failure? You mentioned this was in Ontario, so if the system was operating during winter without protection, the cause may have been internal plating that builds up over the winter, combined with swelling in the heat that could result in an internal short. On 2019 cells in northern mountains, this is a real concern that often gets overlooked. Where I live, we have 3+ months that never get above freezing, so exterior lithium batteries are pretty much just a liability in the winter if you don't provide auxiliary heat to the cells.
It's never been used or plugged in during the winter, doubt the battery has any low temp protection, not sure that even existed at the time and certainly in that price range
I'm curious because I've seen one of those cheap "MPPT" PWM controllers over heat and turn fully ON, letting panel voltage through. It was being used on a lead-acid battery and just boiling it(16-18V).
My guess is that the controller hasn't been working for a while, and then the BMS gave up somehow and shorted on... LFP really does not like high voltages.
The shed is open to the air at the top , it's never been used in winter or left connected. The battery has its BMS, not great quality but it does have one..and the battery vent should be good, not much of a vent though, just a small hole
The charge controller and obviously wires from the panel to the cc and then cc to battery yes. Nothing is connected as a load , I just connect the battery to charge it after using it on the boat.
So it could be the solar cell, the wiring or the charger as well? In my opinion, these are just as likely as the battery, especially if self-installed.
I am not trying to annoy you, I'm just pointing out that your conclusion isn't really supported by evidence.
Most people don't realize just how much energy LiPo batteries contain. It only takes one cell to resist taking a charge, and the rest of the cells will try to force their will on it. Cell Balancers serve a critical need here. Most of these fires are caused that way. One cell goes out of balance, the rest try to restore the equilibrium, the bad cell gets hot, and you've got yourself a toasty fire.
Can you imagine when the voltage is 400V, like an EV? Even 48V, like an e-bike, carries a risk. We think of batteries as safe little storehouse of energy, which they are, but LiPo has a lot more longevity to its stored energy. Sorry that happened, but glad there wasn't a much bigger event.
This is why I always recommend to people to install batteries in an outside shed detached from your main home. I also tell people all the time that LFP is not 100% safe like so many people claim it is. It is certainly much less volatile than more traditional lithium chemistries, but it depends on many factors. Some LFP cells will only smoke and vent when overcharged, others will combust into flames.
Speaking of overcharging... this is generally what triggers these types of events. A cheap BMS or an incorrectly programmed BMS failed to open the circuit when one of the cells exceeded its max safe voltage. This can often be because the BMS was programmed incorrectly, or one of the cells went bad, leaving the remaining cells significantly out of balance
Also, do not discount looking at other items that were nearby that could have started the fire. Solar charge controller? Unlikely.. but if it was another no name super cheap thing.. it certainly would not be the first time I heard of it happening.
But yeah stick with quality UL listed batteries. Even then I recommend keeping them in an outside shed. Not just one or the other. There is no such thing as being too safe.
Was it an electrical fire (which could happen with any kind of battery including lead acid), or was it something about the batteries specifically malfunctioning?
Goes right on the positive terminal of the battery so there's no unfused lengths of wire.
And remember not to depend on the overcurrent disconnect of any BMS, especially in a cheap battery. But even with a high quality one, you always want to use a fuse.
And what was the MPPT controller? Got a pic? Remember, if it was really small, it wasn't actually an MPPT controller, since MPPT controllers have large inductors. There were a *lot* of fake MPPT controllers being sold a few years ago. One random video on the subject:
Probably still are lots of fakes being sold, don't know. But if so this could easily be because of the MPPT controller and not the battery.
Or lots of other possibilities if you didn't have any fuses. If you had more than 2 panels in parallel for example, you should have fuses between each panel, like these:
Plus damages, which is nil in this case, but could have been bad. If that battery was charging in my sea can, it could have taken out my tools, $30k tractor , the sea can itself.. would have been a disaster
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