A warning!

[Robert Cracknell]

Any doubts about leaving batteries unattended when charging now answered.....

https://news.sky.com/video/share-12828227

 

[Jon H]

😲

[Paul De Tourtoulon]

Charging indoors, lucky that no one went up with it !.

[PatMc]

Since there's no details of what caused the incident I don't see what lesson is to be supposed to be learned from the video. 

[Don Fry]

17 minutes ago, PatMc said:

Since there's no details of what caused the incident I don't see what lesson is to be supposed to be learned from the video. 

I thought that, I assume lots of folk charge their car in the garage. It does say they were charging a motorbike. 

[Chris Walby]

Usual media hype, from the look of it the camera was right next to battery when it let go which makes it look and sound very dramatic.

 

So why was the camera filming at the exact time of the fire and who films their batteries being charged? I agree batteries should not be left unsupervised but taken out of context its just hype IMO

 

So how many battery fires are there compared to the 160 pa christmas tree fires in the US?

 

[Geoff S]

I charge my LiPos for model flying in the workshop sitting on a firebrick right next to the door and always under supervision (I even switch off if I'm going to the toilet 🙂 ).  The 10s Li-ion battery on my electrically assisted pedal cycle I charge in the garage during the day (when the solar panels are providing the energy) and not directly supervised.  I think the risk in either case is extremely low.

[GrumpyGnome]

Whilst we shouldn't be blase, this is a rare incident similar to many scare stories about 'hoverboards'.  I would assume that the charging equipment is of far inferior quality to that which we use, so although we should treat our batteries with respect, we don't need to panic.

 

 

[leccyflyer]

Nobody should need convincing of the risk of lipo fires and the need to mitigate that risk. The results can be catastrophic and I know a few folks personally who have had lipo fires, causing various degrees of damage. I know other folks, virtually, who have had completely catastrophic lipo fires, losing their workshop, garage and ever their entire house.

 

For the vast majority of my electric flying hobby I only charged at the flying field. Initially that was due to the fact that NiCds work best hot off the charger. When I transitioned to Lipos I continued to charge only at the field and was an early adopter of Mark Woods' original Lipo Sack for storage and charging. I really don't trust the knock-off lipo bags for charging- some of them have been shown to be pretty flammable themselves. Storage was in a combination of Sentry Fire Safes and pukka Lipo Sacks.

 

A couple of years ago I switched to mainly charging at home, as I now have a three hour round trip to the flying field and it's more important to hit the ground running on arrival. To allow that I've adopted a pair of BatSafes for attended charging on the bench. Lipos are stored in the Sentry Fire Safes, Lipo Sacks and latterly in a pair of carrying lipo bags, provided by the lipo manufacturer, which hold a large number of packs - all of which sit inside a vented steel cabinet in the workshop. I'm under no illusion that the manufacturer's lipo carrying bags would contain a lipo fire for the number of cells that they hold, but consider the risk of spontaneous combustion in storage and transport is much less than in charging or use.