The one thing in this whole situation that worries me is the number of people not just here in our forum, but across the internet, that are giving newbies the false sense of security that "LifePo4 cells are 100% safe". First of all, there's no such thing as "100% safe". Drop a 16S pack on your head from 50 ft., lol. But secondly, the truth is that LifePo4 cells are "safer" and that's not the same thing as safe, especially in the DIY battery building realm. Maybe a few of these 'fire situations' would at the very least scare someone into taking a 2nd look at their grand plan, because in the Golf cart world, as an example, I'm seeing folks almost daily making statements like these; "So instead of buying new batteries for my cart, I've decided to build my own lithium set up. Is this AC clamp meter a good choice" to which someone answers "yes", lol. Not that we don't exist to promote the DIY world, but we all need to make sure we're supporting safety first as an ideology. Someone says, "My lifepo4 battery caught on fire" and there's 30 people who quickly jump in and say, "wasn't the cells fault...your cat did it".
So we just started this initiative:
DIY Battery Handbook Initiative
Considering the amount of users this site is seeing and the amount of people that are embarking on building their own battery (and the repeating issues we see), we thought it would be a good idea to compose a clear and concise recommended (best practices) document. This document would explicitly...
diysolarforum.com
Hopefully we can get to a basic set of rules and best practices that can at least alleviate some of the basic issues newbies face.