House burned down
- Thread starter Jejochen
- Start date
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.
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
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
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.
DPC
Solar Enthusiast
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
Sparks-n-Splinters
New Member
@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!
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!
I wonder if the fire got hot enough to actually bring the LFP into thermal runaway condition.
Brucey
Solar Wizard
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.
robbob2112
Doing more research, mosty harmless
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.
DPC
Solar Enthusiast
I used to hide Co2 fire extinguishers in the garages.
In the event of an electrical fire it was less mess to clean, but also if you have a run away diesel engine the best way to snuff it out is let it draw the Co2 into the engine and starve it of oxygen.
Both a fast way to stop a potential grenading engine fire and limit the damage and clean up after the fire.
robbob2112
Doing more research, mosty harmless
Seems like there is a better way to mount them. Especially since the adhesive on the back of your industrial velcro will probably turn loose if it gets to cold or hot.
Maybe mount bus bars firmly and bolt one end to them and the other to a cable hanging from it. Or a second stubby bus bar. Or possibly a surface mount breaker rather than trying to fudge something together. These are things I need to think about.
This incident along with others in this section make me think when I have the new house built there will be a 4'x8' cinder block bunker with concrete board and steel ceiling 6~10ft from the house. All the batteries and electrical housed in that and only the AC lines to a main house panel going into the dwelling. I might consider doing this below grade for some part depending on frost line and water table.
Would give a good place to mount everything and keep the temperature stable year round. And since we are planning a heat pump would also give a place to bring those lines together into a single plenum and on to the utility room in the house.
Have to lookup rules on distance from sump pump to electrical equipment and on installing electrical below grade. I assume there is a reason they don't put transformers in pits besides heat.
42OhmsPA
What's in a title?
I thought Schneider and Midnite had that covered, as well as DIN rail.
robbob2112
Doing more research, mosty harmless
I've seen a lot of the midnight solar breakers mounted by hanging them off a bus bar at one end. Seems like a sloppy way to do things.
@Hedges - you play with breakers a lot, any idea how these are supposed to be mounted?
42OhmsPA
What's in a title?
They have a lot of different options for breakers boxes and E panels for various equipment that I'm sure could be made to work.
100 amp breaker example.
I'm frugal and 'sloppy' so I hung them from a bus bar in a repurposed schneider box.
Brucey
Solar Wizard
The problem with that one is it's only recommended for max of 4AWG.
Midnite do make specific DC disconnect enclosures but they aren't cheap and not available naked without included breaker that I can find.
Brett V
Mad Scientist
Is there anything between that big Midnight breaker and the batteries? If not, it's really not doing anything.
hwy17
Anti-Solar Enthusiast
DC and breakers just don't mix imo. DC arcs are hard to extinguish and it's not a job to be done in ambient air. Class T's do it with sand, and contactors do it in nitrogen. So I built my system entirely with fuses and contactors, no breakers. Well apart from the one that came in my Lifepower4. I should really put a Class T on that now that I think about it.
robbob2112
Doing more research, mosty harmless
I see from poking around on the website - din rail is what is intended... When I get round to it I'll splurge and get the rails.
And now for a word from our sponser - or afternoon humor
Sloppy and frugal reminds me of my mother's second husband. They put a cheap 3ft tall 10ft round above ground pool on the back porch. He got it free from someplace. The heater/filter unit for it would have cost a hundred bucks.
So they had a few methods for heating it.
First was a garden hose thrown into the hot tub and attached to a circulation pump, just a closed loop heat transfer system. And it worked for a few months until the heater on the hot tub burned up from over use.
Next he took the hose and attached it to a coil of copper tubing and set that down into a metal 30 gallon trashcan. When the pool got a little chilly he would just build a fire in the trashcan and let the pump circulate water still in a closed loop. Problem with this is the hot water didn't loose enough heat on the loops and the little pump wasn't built for high temps and it died after a month.
So, what is a man to do? Well, he took the electric heating element out of an old junk waterheater that he intended to cut in half to make a smoker out of. Cut the ends off an extension cord. Wrap the naked wires around the back end of the element. Then he drilled a hole in a 2x4 an pushed the element through. Now toss that in the water face down and it did a fair job of heating the top 18 inches of the water. The board kept the element from sinking and the water kept the board from catching fire. Just have to remember to unplug before using the pool.
And they used it like that for 6 months until winter came along and the pool split its side because the little heater couldn't keep up.
