LiPo (Lithium-ion Polymer) battery fires will happen. We must do everything possible to: a) minimise incidents from starting; and b) prevent any chain reaction of secondary fires. We draw on actual experiences on this site to reinforce the key messages and help plan steps to avoid catastrophes.
LiPo Batteries – When Things Go Wrong
Despite our best efforts incidents will happen and the consequences can be catastrophic. Here are details of some first hand experiences of fires and the dynamics of how they evolve.
LiPo Fires – What Can I Do?
Here is our thinking on some practical steps you can take to lower the risks of incidents in the first place, and mitigate the risk of secondary fires spreading into a fully blown disaster.
We also include ideas on practical Charging Ideas to help ISOLATE and CONTAIN LiPo battery charging fires
A little more context
LiPo’s are used extensively in applications where weight is a critical factor such as mobile devices, radio-control models and some electric vehicles.
We have had 2 serious LiPo battery initiated fires in our local modelling community down here in Victoria, Australia over the past couple of months. Both very scary and destroying complete workshops. That is the starting point for this site. We are also working through the experience from many more incidents we are aware of and will add them as we can.
The lessons are also highly relevant to anyone using lithium based batteries, whether in electric bikes or scooters, toys and models, cordless power tools, power banks, computers, appliances and beyond.
If you have relevant first hand experiences or contacts that can contribute to our knowledge base then please contact us through our contact from. We will do our best to respond!