Warning about maintaining solar panel batteries after Adelaide house badly damaged in fire
A fire that started in a solar panel battery has badly damaged a house in Adelaide's northern suburbs, in what the Metropolitan Fire Service (MFS) says is a growing problem across Australia.
Burton resident Graham Burke woke up at 3am after hearing a smoke alarm and then bangs coming from his roof.
He alerted his wife and a friend staying over after seeing his house was on fire.
He also saved their two dogs and a cat.
"As much as it hurts, the important thing is our lives and our pets were saved," he said.
"What's behind me is not much left of what we had, but we can rebuild that and move forward."
The MFS estimated the damage at $200,000.
MFS northern operations commander Stuart Dawes said the fire started in a home battery storage system in the garage of the property.
Mr Dawes said battery fires required "copious amounts of water" to fully control.
"Lithium-ion storage systems are becoming more of an emerging hazard to fire services around the nation," he said.
"Fire services are developing policy and procedure to deal with the rise in these types of incidents."
He said it was important batteries were safely stored and maintained.
"These batteries, in general, if they become pierced or exposed to radiant heat or fire, a thermal runaway process may commence whereby the cells of the battery become heated and may cause fire," he said.
"This can lead to an explosive or volatile toxic situation which may result in a fire in a home, as it has in this case."
Investigators are still piecing together how the battery caught alight, including if a fault in the product was to blame.
The batteries store solar energy generated during the day for use at night, during cloudy periods and when there is a blackout.
There are 2 types common types of Lithium batteries One that catches fire one that does not.
The Lithium COBALT (itself a super nasty toxic chemical) is the fire catching battery.
The Lithium PHOSPHATE type battery does not ever catch fire!.
A Lithium Cobalt battery fire with its own self sustaining fire chemicals cannot be put out by any means.
There have been a few Tesla Electric Car fires as see on TV and web. They use lithium cobalt batteries!
All fire departments in the world know this fact!
Yet our governments and insurance companies do nothing about it. Typical.
An Australian owned battery company PowerPlus Energy uses only the Lithium Phosphate type.
Over 10000 batteries of their Lithium Phosphate type have already installed here with no fire incidents.
Time for the government to act and ban the import of all COBALT based products including batteries.
(I am not affiliated with any company)