Off Grid Fire Extinguishment

What do off grid folks typically do (or have on hand) to at least give them a chance of handling an electrical fire? This would be from the standpoint of a stand alone solar system using a Lithium Ion battery bank. Is there any hope if one of these large new lithium batteries go up?

Is there anything special to take into consideration simply due to the batteries being lithium verses a FLA or AGM?

For electronics, I have an Ansul CleanGuard extinguisher. Another variety is Halotron.
Those are non-corrosive, so computer/test equipment/inverters aren't destroyed.

Garage/kitchen, I have 2A, 10-BC dry chemical. Safe for electrical fires, but once power is shut off it isn't electrical any more.

AGM or FLA isn't going to burn. Only thing you might get is a one-time hydrogen explosion, but the fire will be out before you can blink. Need a shower, and hope you're wearing goggles.

Other lithium chemistries are more of a problem (takes 30,000 gallons to extinguish a Tesla), while LiFePO4 doesn't usually self-ignite but can burn. I don't know how much it takes to put out. Plan on water.

Would be nice to have a firewall between batteries and electronics, so you can treat each appropriately. I'd rather have lithium where they won't take out the house. We've seen a few pictures of cabins and vans incinerated.

I keep 2 medium sized fire extinguishers and a (linked) smoke detector right near my powerwall. In actuality, I plan to call the fire department pronto/first and only then make my way to the powerwall and if the smoke is minor try to use the fire extinguisher(s).

Personally, after almost 4 years of operation I'm not 'afraid' of a fire from the 18650 cells as they are tightly under monitor/control and operating in the middle 40% DOD of the voltage range. Never say never but it would take multiple pieces of equipment failure to reach an overcharge situation. First the Midnite Classic would have to fail and allow overcharge and then next the Batrium BMS would have to fail to monitor / fail to fire the shunt-trip. The cells are individually fused. The Batrium monitoring of each individual pack / pack history should give me plenty of warning before a castrohpic pack failure.

And as a last defense, I run the Batrium app on my desktop and see it every day all the time... and the battery bank large enough it would take 2 days for it to overcharge - so it shouldn't be a 'surprise' event with such close monitoring.

Danzig said:

Is there anything special to take into consideration simply due to the batteries being lithium verses a FLA or AGM?

Click to expand...

I simply would not use a Lithium Ion battery, I would always use an LFP battery.
There are lots of ways to help prevent an Lion battery explosion but if something does go wrong it is almost impossible to put out.

My system does not have an extinguishing system yet. Thanks @Danzig for starting the thread. I hope to learn about the proper extinguisher(s) to have on hand from this thread. It looks like some excellent suggestions are already here.
My 4 LiFePO4 batteries will live on 2 carts, 2 batteries per cart, in a utility closet right inside a door to outside the house. If the alarms go off I open the door and pull the carts outside.

Here are the components which make it possible to get rid of the batteries within seconds.

I had some of the same thoughts about fire suppression so started this thread a week ago

I use fuses.

Good point