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Fire risk of solar, battery installation


Deeos

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Hi all, 

I currently have the following installing in my garage situated below the primary residence which is directly below my lounge.

 

12kw Deye inverter 

10 hubble am2 5.5kw batteries 

22 panels on the roof. 

 

My concern is fire loading and risk of an uncontrollable fire. 

 

When I park my car in the garage, their is alot of heat from the cars engine and worried it would cause issues with the installation 

 

I was thinking of buying a steel shed and placing it 30m away from the house and installing to install the batteries inside it. But the dc cable thickness is really big and not going to be feasible. 

I was thinking to then rather install everything in the shed. 

 

Is my concern warranted or not. 

 

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Don't think heat from the car engine going to be a big issue not good but not an big issue .

You have to worry when people continue to use lithium batterys with a bad cell and this lithium is located in the house and you have spoken a number of times to them about fire . 

Edited by GMAC
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42 minutes ago, madness_za said:

Well it was bound to happen. Batteries in the neighborhood started to burn and this has set off panic in the community WhatsApp group. My money is on a poor install and lack of battery monitoring but who knows…

Well I think I don't see any disconnect between the inverter and the battery, but would they have stopped a fire? That would only trip/pop if there was excessive current draw.

Does look like a job that is done down to a price rather than up to a specification, but if a battery is going to pop then what's to stop that happening?

Thinking about the certification I did with the City of Johannesburg, they were not the least bit interested in fire extinguishers and such. But then a COC doesn't say that your house will not catch fire, just that the wiring meets the relevant standards.

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It's called thermal runaway and can happen to any instillation. These lithium have an built in BMS that provented over , under , charging and over loading so self protected from inverter going wrong . 

We see this often in the RC hobby were lipo battery  just decide to ignite just being held in the hand .  

But today there are now so many of these lithium in use that it's bound to happen to any instillation at some or othere time this the reason for smoke detectors to be installed in the room with the lithium battery . 

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On 2024/09/24 at 5:58 PM, GMAC said:

It's called thermal runaway and can happen to any instillation. These lithium have an built in BMS that provented over , under , charging and over loading so self protected from inverter going wrong . 

We see this often in the RC hobby were lipo battery  just decide to ignite just being held in the hand .  

But today there are now so many of these lithium in use that it's bound to happen to any instillation at some or othere time this the reason for smoke detectors to be installed in the room with the lithium battery . 

Mine is in my garage, did not think of the smoke detector. I will do. 

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@Deeos you have, I believe NMC based Lithium batteries, these can and do potentially start a fire, see various scenarios where Electric cars burnt out. Most stationary energy storage based Lithium batteries use LiFePO4 cells, no Cobalt or Manganese and I have yet to come across a report where these caught alight for whatever reason, but the NMC types, plenty of examples out there.

@madness_za the battery involved in the fire, any idea what it was? and curious where this happened?

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On 2024/09/25 at 8:58 PM, Kalahari Meerkat said:

@Deeos you have, I believe NMC based Lithium batteries, these can and do potentially start a fire, see various scenarios where Electric cars burnt out. Most stationary energy storage based Lithium batteries use LiFePO4 cells, no Cobalt or Manganese and I have yet to come across a report where these caught alight for whatever reason, but the NMC types, plenty of examples out there.

@madness_za the battery involved in the fire, any idea what it was? and curious where this happened?

Florida/Bergbron area, and I have no idea as to the specific make of batteries

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22 hours ago, madness_za said:

Florida/Bergbron area, and I have no idea as to the specific make of batteries

I wonder whether the "cave" where the battery and inverter were located were open to the outside, or not... low temperatures can be problematic, more so in NMC cells, but even LiFePO4's probably wouldn't be happy with close to freezing/below freezing temperatures, but I doubt LiFePO4's would display their displeasure by making a fire to get slightly higher temperatures...

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