Lithium-ion Battery and Wind Turbine Fires

An Overview

photo source: https://english.newstracklive.com/news/tesla-ev-electric-car-caught-fire-136000-liters-of-water-was-spent-to-extinguish-it-sc73-nu371-ta371-1307072-1.html

“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.” 2 Peter 3:10 the world will be burnt up, but not by global warming.

“Alabama firefighters needed 36,000 gallons of water to extinguish a flaming Tesla Model Y SUV that fully ignited on Christmas after its driver crashed on an interstate highway. The motorist, who authorities arrested following the crash for operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol, had his electric model burst into flames due to a thermal runaway reaction within the automobile's battery.” msn news

addendum to last week’s post on BEBs (battery electric buses)

I just saw this post by Tuco’s Child Monday 1/8 and decided to include it since ferries, like buses are public transportation. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as an electric ferry until today. Thankfully, this was a hybrid, so they can continue operating with diesel. The battery didn’t actually catch on fire (but it sounds like it was a close call):

“A hybrid electric ferry (in Scotland)…is now only running on polluting diesel because a £1.5million battery is taking 18 months to replace. The MV Hallaig was the first in the world to use a system which cut carbon emissions by 20 per cent when it was launched in 2012. But the battery broke (overheated, and passengers were evacuated) on the £10million vessel in September and bosses have admitted it could be April 2025 before it’s fixed because the replacement part is no longer available.”

part one - a composium of lithium ion battery fires.

Even though these fires are rare, lithium ion battery fires are creepy and scary because they mysteriously arise without an obvious cause. Fires in gas cars are usually easy to understand - most often cause by a short in the wiring system, or a major hwy crash. But lithium batteries are sealed in a black box - we can’t see in there to see what’s happening chemically. These battery fires give off toxic fumes often with a hissing noise, which is also scary, reminding us of the hissing of a poisonous snake. Then sometimes they explode. Fueled by that sealed box full of chemicals, it’s awfully hard to put the fire out. After thousands of gallons of water, there’s no guarantee they won’t flare up again hours later. It’s a sleeping monster that might wake up at any moment. After a lithium battery fire, the only safe thing to do is to park the culprit far away from anything it might put in danger later, until you’re sure it’s really out for good.

a follow up on last week’s post on BEBs (battery electric buses):

CTtransit operates 12 New Flyer battery electric transit buses, and as a precaution has taken the remaining ones out-of-service and parked them away from structures and other vehicles.

“On Saturday, July 23, 2022, about 3:39 a.m. eastern daylight time, a 2021 New Flyer Xcelsior battery electric 40-foot transit bus, operated by CTtransit, began emitting smoke from the rear compartment while parked inside a maintenance facility in Hamden, New Haven County, Connecticut. [1] The bus’s electric battery had previously been charged on Wednesday July 20th, but the bus had failed to power up the following day. The bus had been placed out-of-service and was being stored in the maintenance facility awaiting examination by the bus manufacturer. The event began when CTtransit maintenance personnel observed smoke and heard crackling and hissing coming from the rear of the bus. They called the Hamden Fire Department who responded to the scene. Upon their arrival, fire department personnel did not observe any visible flames, and the bus was pushed to the maintenance facility’s parking lot using a service truck, where the bus was isolated from other vehicles and structures.”

Here’s a short video about a fire caused by an eBike.

There was another video that apparently has been taken down, but here’s the BBC story:

all I could find now is a still shot - I guess the video was too “alarming”

“Alarming footage showing the moment a lithium battery exploded, sparking a house fire in West Yorkshire has been released to highlight their dangers. The video shows a homeowner in Halifax rushing downstairs after being woken by the sound of a re-charging battery popping before it explodes into flames. Five people were taken to hospital after the incident on 24 February. West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service (WYFRS) has warned people not to leave lithium batteries charging unattended.”

“Two men sustained potentially serious injuries in a fire at a house caused by a lithium-ion battery. Emergency services went to Wellesley Street, in Shelton, Stoke-on-Trent, at 22:25 GMT on Monday. Four men were seen by paramedics, with two taken to Royal Stoke University Hospital for further assessment, the ambulance service said. Staffordshire fire service confirmed the blaze had been started by the battery.”

fire chief Matthew Pegg shares tips - “A man suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the fire at Sheppard-Yonge subway station around 3 p.m. Sunday, which filled several subway cars with smoke. No one else was injured and trains were moving through the station again about an hour later….Pegg says fires started by lithium ion batteries increased significantly in 2023. In 2022, there were 29 fires in Toronto started by lithium ion batteries, in 2023 that number increased to 55 — a nearly 90 per cent increase. He noted the batteries are safe when used properly, but their failure can pose an immediate risk to people in the area. "We have already experienced both loss of life and critical injuries as a result of these fires here in Toronto," Pegg said. 

“The US Coast Guard has advised that a ship carrying around 800 tonnes of Lithium-Ion batteries – some of which caught fire – is out of danger after its crew handled the situation admirably.…This story starts when the good ship Genius Star XI left South Korea on December 17, bound for the United States. According to Maritime News, the voyage struck trouble on Christmas Day when some of the batteries caught fire. The vessel's crew reportedly used carbon dioxide to douse the blaze, but it spread a little before being contained.   …and “Arriving Friday, Genius Star XI was kept 2 miles from shore to mitigate the risks of toxic gases produced by the fire to the community and environment while responders worked to extinguish the flames, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Mike Salerno said in an email to The Associated Press.”  Anchorage Daily News

“Stellantis reported a fire at its Chrysler Tech Center in the Detroit area in November last year, but we’ve just now learned that it was related to an EV prototype. Automotive News reported that the November 19 fire came from a vehicle parked on a lift…Crosstown rival General Motors halted production at its Factory Zero in Detroit-Hamtramck in December due to a fire. The facility produces both forms of the GMC Hummer EV and the Chevrolet Silverado EV. That fire is still under investigation, but early reports lean toward a forklift puncturing a battery materials container as the cause. Early in 2023, Ford had to shutter production of the F-150 Lightning after the electric pickup caught fire in a holding lot. The Blue Oval worked with its battery supplier to revise cell production and fix the issue.”

“An explosion has sparked a fire at a Wolverhampton factory, which suffered another blaze just one day after officially opening last year. Fire crews are tackling the blaze at LiBatt Recycling Ltd on Lincoln Street, in the Heath Town area of the city. A spokesperson for the company said it was a "minor explosion" involving a battery, which happened in a "controlled area" of the factory. The industrial-scale electric car battery recycling plant suffered another fire on 5 July, 2023, just one day after the £10m facility opened. Six fire engines and an aerial platform are currently at the scene on Lincoln Street.”

“GLENDALE, Ariz. — A fire that destroyed a garage in Glendale is believed to have been caused by an electric scooter, according to the Glendale Fire Department.”

it’s not good for garbage trucks to crush EV scooters! Duh… "Just this week, we had two truck fires because of lithium batteries. They both started with electric scooters that happened to get crushed in the packer, and once they crush, they ignite, and there's no way to put them out, so we had to pour out both loads on the street, and the fire department needed to come and put it out."

the Fremantel ship fire last summer: “Of the 3,783 cars on board the ship, 498 were electric vehicles….The Dutch coast guard stressed the cause of the fire on the 11-deck ship was unknown and authorities were careful not to speculate. But an audio recording emerged of one rescue worker suggesting it had started in the battery of an electric vehicle and "it appears an electric vehicle exploded too".

“A Tesla Model S "spontaneously caught fire" while driving on the highway on Saturday, officials said. California firefighters had to use about 6,000 gallons of water to put out the flames… Pictures from the scene also show the fire department investigating the Tesla's undercarriage. The department said on Facebook that the fire started in the electric-car's battery compartment which had not sustained any previous damage ahead of the incident.”

Here’s a list of fires mentioned by cbs, bbc, nbc, cnn - “A residential fire earlier this week in Carlsbad, California, was suspected to be caused by an e-scooter lithium battery. On Tuesday, an alarming video (I mentioned this one earlier) surfaced of a Canadian homeowner running downstairs to find his electric bike battery exploding into flames. A fire at a multi-family home in Massachusetts last month is also under investigation for similar issues (they had to put it out twice after it flared up again) …In 2016, Samsung issued a global recall of the Galaxy Note 7 in 2016, citing “battery cell issues” that caused the device to catch fire and at times explode. HP and Sony later recalled lithium computer batteries for fire hazards, and about 500,000 hoverboards were recalled due to a risk of “catching fire and/or exploding,” according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.” cnn.com

Elon Musk’s Tesla attracts a lot of attention, so in a search for videos of Tesla fires, I was amazed to find this huge collection of youtube videos.

I’ll just select a sampling for you…

A Tesla fire in Plano Texas

fatal, fiery Tesla crash in West Hollywood

Tesla model S catches fire in Pennsylvania

Tesla Model S catches fire twice in one day!

Seen enough? At least if my gas fueled car catches fire, it can be put out a lot quicker. And once it’s out, it’s out.

Part 2 - wind turbine fires - also hard and dangerous to put out

In an earlier post on wind turbine problems, I quoted windsystems magazine “A wind-turbine fire can cost upwards of $8 million, according to insurance experts quoted in Firetrace’s recent report, “Reducing Fire Risk.” As most wind-turbine towers exceed 250 feet, they are often out-of-range for ground-based firefighting. Sending a team up to fight the fire presents a significant health and safety risk. Therefore, if no fire suppression system is in place, it will be left to burn out, irreparably damaging the turbine… Fire risk is not only a concern for the wind farm’s balance sheet. A wind-turbine fire can spread to the surrounding environment, sparking wildfires and potentially spreading into nearby communities…”

from Interesting Engineering “The main reason why there is such a large risk of a fire occurring in a wind turbine is because the wind turbine nacelle is a space in which there are highly flammable materials located in close proximity to machinery and electrical wiring. These materials include hydraulic oil and plastics. For example, a 1.5 MW wind turbine can typically contain 900 liters of lubricating and cooling oil, and 1.5 MW machines are now usually on the smaller side of the wind turbine product range due to increasing development and innovation in the last few years, leading to much larger turbine models. Meanwhile, the nacelle itself will almost certainly be made of flammable fibre-reinforced plastic (FRP) and will contain acoustic insulation material which is also flammable. If the mechanical or electrical components within the turbine nacelle overheat or develop a fault, they can ignite and start a fire. This can then be fanned by the high winds the turbines are designed to exploit. Once a fire starts in a wind turbine it is extremely difficult to put out, due largely to the remote location of the wind farm or individual wind turbine and the height of the turbine itself.”

…offshore wind turbine fire in UK. fortunately, this is rare - kudos to Azra Dale and his ‘Tango With Renewables” substack for this story. “The enclosure on top of these humungous wind towers contain the gear box, the generator, the controller, the low- and high-speed shafts, and the brake. By the way, the ‘brake’ is a mechanism for feathering the 165’ blades when hit by winds over 55 mph. So windmills not only produce nothing when the wind is less than 8 mph, but nothing [they automatically shut off] when it’s over 55 mph.” They also shut down if the temp gets down to -24F, so they’re not producing much power during winter in northern territories.

watch on youtube

Fortunately, wind turbine fires are rare, and more and more insurance companies are requiring fire suppression equipment to be installed in the nacelle, although that does increase the cost for each turbine - just one more reason why wind turbine farms are not economically feasible and would never get off the ground if it weren’t for massive subsidies.

next week or sooner - I hope to include some research on SSBs (Solid State Batteries), which once at commercial scale may be quite superior to lithium-ion batteries. Nio has a “semi” solid state battery on the road, and Toyota is testing a solid state battery. In the meantime, hybrids are a very good alternative with a good track record. More next week.