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diy solar

House burned down

These are the types of events that keep me up at night. One thing that gives me a bit of peace of mind is having an automatic CO2 fire suppression system in the building where our batteries/inverters are. I don't want to just know there's an issue, I want the issue stopped ASAP to prevent further damage. CO2 also won't damage anything in an electrical fire like H2O would. It just removes the oxygen.

 
Cronix said:
These are the types of events that keep me up at night. One thing that gives me a bit of peace of mind is having an automatic CO2 fire suppression system in the building where our batteries/inverters are. I don't want to just know there's an issue, I want the issue stopped ASAP to prevent further damage. CO2 also won't damage anything in an electrical fire like H2O would. It just removes the oxygen.

Click to expand...
That's a pretty cool idea and more economically achievable than I thought. I have a vent to the outdoors so I could add one of these to blow into the case if the smoke alarm went off. PSSSHHHHHHHHHH.

But then I think I'd still have an ongoing venting event after it was done. They're a prolonged kind of problem.
 
Tulex said:
Some people still believe that. Reality is that it's not true anymore.
Click to expand...
I put my car's battery on top of a box in my garage to keep it off the floor because I had heard this tale and had no idea if there was any truth to it or not. It made no sense to me but I erred on the side of caution anyway (I've gone through too many batteries for this car from stupid mistakes killing them lol)
 
www.mcgill.ca

The Concrete Truth About Batteries Stored on Concrete

Have you heard the one about batteries discharging when stored on concrete? Apparently, some people have taken to storing 12V batteries—the kind used in electric wheel chairs and emergency lighting systems—on wooden shelves to maximize their life expectancy. Is there a spark of truth to this or...
www.mcgill.ca

“A hundred years ago, this rule-of-thumb was quite useful, as the case around the battery was made of wood and the electrical cells were glass. If the concrete floor underneath was wet, the wooden case would swell, causing the glass cells to break.”
 
So is the take away from this that we should all use appropriate sized T class fuses on the +ve of each battery, and after the bus bar they parallel to?
 
chilly2 said:
So is the take away from this that we should all use appropriate sized T class fuses on the +ve of each battery, and after the bus bar they parallel to?
Click to expand...
Personally I use midnite DC breakers but the t class takes less room. For the blue boy brigade the class t lynx power ins are the "seamless" option.
 
ricardocello said:
www.mcgill.ca

The Concrete Truth About Batteries Stored on Concrete

Have you heard the one about batteries discharging when stored on concrete? Apparently, some people have taken to storing 12V batteries—the kind used in electric wheel chairs and emergency lighting systems—on wooden shelves to maximize their life expectancy. Is there a spark of truth to this or...
www.mcgill.ca
Click to expand...
The picture in that article hurts me lol. Those are nice batteries too.
1714417338931.png
 
Wow, very Sorry for you loss. Glad to hear you and your family are safe!
This served to heighten my internal debate about diy'ing my own batteries even greater.

The CO2 fire suppression system that @Cronix posted is a phenomenal idea, it'll be added to my list of must haves.
 
Sparks-n-Splinters said:
The CO2 fire suppression system that @Cronix posted is a phenomenal idea, it'll be added to my list of must haves.
Click to expand...
Just remember that NMC chemistry creates oxygen during thermal runaway so CO2 or any form of fire suppression that relies on depriving the fire of oxygen will not be effective for that part of a fire if you are planning on using that type of Lithium Ion chemistry. The safer chemistry is LFP and most of the DIY packs described on this forum is the most used chemistry. CO2 or other fire suppression methods would have worked in the OP's case to put out the fire that apparently started in the wiring.
 
Sparks-n-Splinters said:
Wow, very Sorry for you loss. Glad to hear you and your family are safe!
This served to heighten my internal debate about diy'ing my own batteries even greater.

The CO2 fire suppression system that @Cronix posted is a phenomenal idea, it'll be added to my list of must haves.
Click to expand...
Cronix said:
These are the types of events that keep me up at night. One thing that gives me a bit of peace of mind is having an automatic CO2 fire suppression system in the building where our batteries/inverters are. I don't want to just know there's an issue, I want the issue stopped ASAP to prevent further damage. CO2 also won't damage anything in an electrical fire like H2O would. It just removes the oxygen.

Click to expand...


Don't get to excited about a CO2 extinguisher in the case of LFP batteries. You actually need a Class C extinguisher, for electrical fires. A CO2 extinguisher would need to be in an enclosed space and enough volume to actually cool the equipment without condensing conductive moisture all over the place. The condensate itself isn't the problem so much as what dust and other particles are on the surface. And then you have corrosion issues after cleanup. Actually you will have these issues after cleanup no matter what.

If you want to depend on a CO2 extinguisher its trigger should also do a rapid shutdown of all the power sources or it will re-flash as soon as the door is opened.

And in general CO2 extinguisher are forbidden anyplace people are working in a confined space because it will smother them too. There is a reason shipboard firefighting depends on water and/or foam - confined spaces the fire burns the O2 and kills the crew. Releasing CO2 in a confined space would do it faster.
 
chilly2 said:
So is the take away from this that we should all use appropriate sized T class fuses on the +ve of each battery, and after the bus bar they parallel to?
Click to expand...
That is the simplest option.
Brucey said:
Personally I use midnite DC breakers but the t class takes less room.
Click to expand...
Do you have pics of how you have them mounted? Trickiest part is having way to mount those panel mount breakers close to battery.
 
This thread makes me want to put my batteries in a damn bunker. Or a root cellar at minimum. I picked a shipping container to isolate any such event but man everything inside would be toast too
Looks like OP spent significant time trying to be “safe” and still got bit
 
With regard to fire extinguishers see this post which I thought is informative:
diysolarforum.com

LTO battery fire

I am an auto buff - by other addiction er hobby, and on the car forums I have seen quite a lot of chat about LTO - from Honda Plug-in hybrids IIRC. They have often talked about doing a manual balance a few times per year "if needed" or checking the balance every few months. This was why I...
diysolarforum.com diysolarforum.com
 
Ampster said:
Just remember that NMC chemistry creates oxygen during thermal runaway so CO2 or any form of fire suppression that relies on depriving the fire of oxygen will not be effective for that part of a fire if you are planning on using that type of Lithium Ion chemistry. The safer chemistry is LFP and most of the DIY packs described on this forum is the most used chemistry. CO2 or other fire suppression methods would have worked in the OP's case to put out the fire that apparently started in the wiring.
Click to expand...
Maybe, maybe not. Can only say, once it started, the fire departement put the fire out 3 times and it started again 3 times. They basicly had to drown it like they do with electric cars.
 
G00SE said:
This thread makes me want to put my batteries in a damn bunker.
Click to expand...
Well before this unfortunate incident I have worried about battery fires.
Years ago I worked on the Kiruna K1050E electric dump trucks.
They had two stacks of NiCad batteries under the cab with a piece of plywood between the floor and the top of the batteries ( for reasons not known to me )

NiCad is pretty safe technology but even then sometimes a cell would run dry or something would happen to turn one of them into a road flare.
Then you would watch the stack catch fire, the plywood .
You would hope the fire suppression system would stop it before the rest of the batteries would short and spread the fire/
I never saw one burn to the ground (6 foot tyres burning and all I mean ), but I saw a few scary fires.I have no idea what the solution is for a Lithium fire but an outbuilding made with 1 inch gyprock walls sounds like a good start to contain the fire as long as possible
 
@robbob2112 I can not disagree, and it is certainly worth extended research in my book.
Just glancing at the link, that extinguisher is not co2 based anyway. It uses Clean agent chemical: FK-5-1-12 Which is a cooling agent.
Better some clean up than total loss though.
I now have a new topic of research!
 
Jejochen said:
Maybe, maybe not. Can only say, once it started, the fire departement put the fire out 3 times and it started again 3 times. They basicly had to drown it like they do with electric cars.
Click to expand...

I wonder if the fire got hot enough to actually bring the LFP into thermal runaway condition.
 
rhino said:
That is the simplest option.

Do you have pics of how you have them mounted? Trickiest part is having way to mount those panel mount breakers close to battery.
Click to expand...
It ain't pretty at all...right now I just have one going back to a power in

Final solution I'll prob have one for each battery velcroed to to the side of them with industrial Velcro, prior to the power in.20240428_135401.jpg
 
Jejochen said:
Maybe, maybe not. Can only say, once it started, the fire departement put the fire out 3 times and it started again 3 times. They basicly had to drown it like they do with electric cars.
Click to expand...

Pure speculation but once everything was hot and various cells were venting you would have a steady supply of hydrogen as different ones vented. And anything electrical will continue to re-ignite so long as current flows. The LFP after they vent will still push current and once the fire burned away insulation you would have shorts in unpredictable places.
 
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