Moss Landing Li battery fire. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2025, 10:11:29 pm
content: Four fires since 2019 seems like carelessness.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2025, 11:19:29 pm
content: Again?

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2025, 12:07:44 am
content: More LG Chem battery issues, LG really not having a good time here.LG also supplied the battery packs to the Jaguar i-Pace, Porsche Taycan, Chevy Bolt, some Audi and VW vehicles, and some Hyundai and Kia vehicles. All have been recalled for fire risk. Home batteries built by LG have also been recalled.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2025, 07:10:55 pm
content: This, apparently, is our future.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2025, 07:21:12 pm
content: It amuses me we I see another "we're going into the battery business in a big way" announcement by a company outside that industry, like they are a well understood commodity. The reality is results in terms of safety and longevity are still highly variable among people who have been making them for decades.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2025, 07:26:27 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on January 19, 2025, 07:21:12 pmLike any other tech innovation business, it's risk-taking. What I find amusing is that the potential gains are not that big, so the risk-benefit factor seems pretty crappy. I mean, payback for the investment is going to be long. It can end up making some money, but it's not going to be a like a goldmine with sudden diamonds popping out everywhere. And if anything goes wrong; product lifetime is shorter than anticipated, catastrophic failure, or simply the predictions about reserve markets end up wrong (e.g., by everybody else building batteries too and diluting the market), then it has potential to be a serious loss.Then again, it's good that we have innovation and risk-taking. Some succeed, some fail, it's evolution.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2025, 07:59:35 pm
content: The fire suppression system failed"There is a fire suppression system connected to each battery rack...""In this particular case, that system was not sufficient, it was overridden, and that led to fire overtaking the system and eventually overtaking the entire building,” {Fire Chief Joe} Mendoza said."One fire guy said over 80% of the structure and batteries has been destroyed.Vistrastockto the moon! Or maybe the ocean! Next week we'll see if this is a blip.Previous Moss Landing Power Plant fire 2022-09-20 was a Megapack at the Tesla Power Storage facility. Elon Musk on twitter clarifying this fire is not involving Tesla products.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2025, 09:33:32 pm
content: There are huge economic benefits to grid batteries which is why there's such a race to build them.For instance in the UK our normal wholesale electricity price is about £100/MWh however during times of constraint the price can rise up to £5000/MWh(source). This is because there are very few gas peaker power plants available that can come online to meet the last few hundred MW of capacity needed to balance the grid. These plants might be offline for 95% of the year, running in a reserve configuration ready to come online in a moment's notice.If you're a battery operator and you can buy electricity at £100/MWh and sell it back at £500/MWh (for instance, normal peak time pricing) with none of those painful issues that gas peaker plants have then it can make sense to throw a huge amount of money into this.Of course... you probably should avoid buying LG batteries.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2025, 11:31:52 pm
content: Maxi-profit means tight spacing, maximal land usage etc. these projects are not engineered decent.I wouldn't blame the batteries. Why should an exothermic cell take out an entire $1B facility? People are not only greedy but also too stupid for creating this much energy storage with a known volatile technology. Wall Street's agenda towards making a cash cow- followed by investors believing in unicorns and rainbows that the batteries will never light up.As a fire fighter, you don't have the tools or chemicals or manpower or funding for this. The strategy is to "let it burn". Such a high tech approachI find this whole thing another preventable recurring disaster that ends up costing consumers much more than simply adding additional power generation in the first place.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 20, 2025, 08:35:34 am
content: Quote from: floobydust on January 19, 2025, 11:31:52 pmReally good question...QuoteProbably not, though - we would need hard data to back this up. One issue with alarmist political forums like the "General Technical Chat" on Eevblog forum is that it causes selection and confirmation biases. How many successfully running grid batteries do we have, but do not recognize them being in use? They definitely should be making enough money to compensate for the failed; if not, then the situation is unsustainable.Still of course, that's not an excuse for stupid engineering. It's not like the batteries have to sit on specifically expensive land. Sounds like preventing large cascading failures should be pretty easy, and notthatexpensive. And then again, maybe it is easy, and we are just seeing normal evolution happening - poor designs burning, good designs surviving.Holding those who signed off that cost-cutting legally responsible for the public danger (and pollution) they caused would be the first step towards better safety culture.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 21, 2025, 08:52:51 pm
content: Quote from: floobydust on January 19, 2025, 11:31:52 pmin this case it was over estimating the uptime / reliability of a active control solution to get rid of a passive solution (distance).Wanna bet someone said there is no chance that anyone would turn off the safety? And no risk of there being a safety system malfunction at the time of fire?I think its big numbers that seem scary, but pale in comparison to the real thing. These people likely HATE HATE HATE the idea of having to extend long thick bus bars between batteries and rent more space. stuff like that.The solution involves cables, I think we seen from T&M that the MBA primary focus is to get rid of cables and compact things. I think we all have seen what happens when you integrate the power supply on the analog board and there is a problem that totally wrecks the pcb, because the alternative would be a cable lol. They always have a really tough time understanding that empty space and distance have very valid uses in engineering!!

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 21, 2025, 09:14:41 pm
content: Do we know what caused this fire? (My guess©®: no.)Was the cause due tocutting corners?poor design of the storage facility?unforseeable circumstance (lightning strike, etc.)?"human error" (someone doing something stupid)?the inevitable consequence of lithium batteries' propensity to catch on fire spontaneously?

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 21, 2025, 11:19:11 pm
content: I posted here yesterday but it vanishedGreat Fire of London1666 humanity learned (and today forgot) what happens with high density (fire) fuel.This thing called the "firewall" became a fire-code requirement.Tesla has high temp heat tiles for SpaceX, I can buy fire brick/cinder block at Home Depot - yet I see nothing like that used in these battery farmsPrevious Vistra fire here was apparently due to the fire suppression system leaking water onto electronics which then lit up.Water with... lithium batteries? - Vistra is too cheap and typical of green investment dollars focus is on flogging the engineers to get something together ASAP for profits to roll in. Safety cost money and let's not waste time with that. I don't see a basic effort put into fire engineering at all.It doesn't matter what started the fire. That it spread and was not suppressed, and the fire dept. could only let it burn- are more important failures I think.This pic seems to be the facility. Reusing some old building?I've never seen so much air conditioning before, wonder what the global warming and energy costs of cooling these battery packs is.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 21, 2025, 11:36:37 pm
content: Those aren't aircon units. These are ventilation systems to remove fumes from whatever process is inside the building. Also, Lithium batteries don't contain pure Lithium and water is the best way to put out a Lithium battery fire for the cooling effect to stop the batteries burning.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 21, 2025, 11:39:31 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on January 21, 2025, 09:14:41 pmYou forgot oneBusiness executives and upper management not letting the engineers finish the design before rushing it into production.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2025, 02:44:56 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on January 21, 2025, 11:36:37 pmI keep hearing not to use water on lithium battery fires. I suspect also firefighters don't like to use water on electrical fires, for the electrocution hazard they worry about.“In all honesty, I do not know if those guarantees {residents’ health } are possible,” Church said. “With this being thefourth fire incident in a little over five years in Moss Landing, it is obvious that this technology is ahead of both government’s ability to regulate it and private industry’s ability to control it.”“Attempts to put out battery fires at other sites have only worsened the situation,” Church said. “Water is used initially only when the batteries start to heat, not when flames have emerged. I find the lack of a proven system to extinguish the fires highly alarming. We simply cannot have a fire incident every year or two and expect that to be normal.”source

author: neverendingstudent
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2025, 03:06:45 am
content: Quote from: floobydust on January 19, 2025, 11:31:52 pmWhen it comes to grid-scale Lithium based energy storage, we really need to take a page from the cold war and munitions bunkerage. You split up your storage into a number of dug-in buildings with moderately tall earthen berms between them, blocking fire / heat / explosions from spreading from one bunker building to neighboring bunker buildings, thus creating a 'maximum acceptable loss' of a single bunker from a single strike (or in this case, from a single fire incident).This is simply a matter of profit motive getting in the way of the necessary physical engineering. Regulation is therefore required to be implemented to force companies to do things differently, no matter that it is more expensive to do it the safer way.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2025, 03:36:51 am
content: Quote from: neverendingstudent on January 22, 2025, 03:06:45 amSurprisingly, there are major countries that haven't learned that.Look up Toropets, where back in September a drone attack on an ammunition depot caused the equivalent of a magnitude 2.5~2.8 earthquake.https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/earthquakes/quake-info/9611698/mag2quake-Sep-18-2024-BALTIC-STATES-BELARUS-NW-RUSSIA-REGION.html

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2025, 03:52:21 am
content: he should add 'free world' to that statementthe other half never cared too muchbut I heard alot of munitions dumps over seas, particularly in the pacific, were equally shoddy, but they took care of most of that in the late 70's.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2025, 08:00:37 am
content: Quote from: floobydust on January 22, 2025, 02:44:56 amThat is true, but irrelevant because these sites do not use lithium batteries. For lithiumionbatteries, a totally different thing, water is the correct medium, because these batteries have nothing that reacts with water (unlike lithium batteries), and because rapid removal of heat is the only way to stop the exothermic reaction, and only water can do that easily. The options really are "let it burn" or "try to stop it with water".Maybe the issue is trusting too much on the water system alone. That should be combined with physical separation, or as you suggest, firewall-like structures (that work by thermal insulation, isolating the failing part).

author: neverendingstudent
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2025, 03:58:06 pm
content: Another option I can think of (though I'm going to start by admitting there are a TON of complicating issues with this) would be at-battery compressed nitrogen storage in high volume.This would not be 'instead of', but rather 'in addition to' planned structural failure mitigation like cold-war era multi-building ammo dump designs.Have piping with designed thermal failure points at the batteries (literally in-between cells) that would evacuate large volumes of pressurized nitrogen to flash-cool burning batteries.Problems I can think of: adding asphyxiation hazard to the system (if you have a leak you could kill people by displacing oxygen), pressure-explosion hazard added to the system.Not sure if the pros outweigh the cons, but it's an idea that occurs to me.Edit: now I'm going down a rabbit hole on Wolfram Alpha calculating specific heat capacities and thermal delta potential of volumes of water (room temp to boil evap) vs. volumes of nitrogen (@ room temp under compression then vented to 1 standard atmosphere) at different pressures of stored compression...

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2025, 04:31:50 pm
content: Quote from: neverendingstudent on January 22, 2025, 03:58:06 pmUseless for li-ion batteries. They burn without external oxygen; they have their own internal oxidizer.Really, li-ion fires and their prevention/mitigation is really well understood. All that is needed is investigating why the knowledge is not applied to practice (my guess: money), and discussing what should be done to enforce proper engineering (which is getting to politics).

author: krish2487
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2025, 04:34:52 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on January 22, 2025, 04:31:50 pmPutting it another way... Humans are the weak link in the chain.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2025, 05:18:53 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on January 22, 2025, 08:00:37 amThey started out lithium-ion and very discretely changed over to LiFePO4. I think Australia got the last at Bouldercombe. You don't want to be one of the suckers running the old tech.I called them "lithium batteries" and there is still relevance for firefighters who shouldn't have to guess what kind of fire they are fighting, electricity included.I fully understand they default to "let 'er burn" - no need to take risk and save anything.We've had several of these battery storage facility fires and not learned much.Vistra should have done better homework towards raking in the profits. I keep wondering how they have so much market cap at $63B and not a blip in their stock price lol.I guess no one noticed the fire. Green investors are hilarious.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2025, 07:09:51 pm
content: Quote from: floobydust on January 22, 2025, 05:18:53 pmLiFePO4islithium ion. What you say is like: "First we were served fruits, but then they were discretely changed to apples."There is noting "discrete" here, different cathode chemistries and their trade-offs are all well-known.QuoteYou confusing others by hallucinating about stuff you don't have any idea about (and not willing to learn about) is not relevant to anyone, least firefighters. Regardless of if the cathode chemistry is LFP, NCO or some other lithium ion chemistry - water is the way to cool them down.Letting burn is always an option with any type of fire, of course.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2025, 08:21:03 pm
content: What battery chemistry is in the Powerwall, Powerpack, Megapack, Megapack 2 etc.?I think differences, the change is to less volatile iron phosphate lithium batteries is seen across the board.As a firefighter arriving on scene, you say it's irrelevant- just pour on the water and cool it off? So why did the firefighters do nothing if it's that simple? Maybe you could work as a consultant to Vistra or the Monterey Fire Dept.Paper is a bit interestingToxic fluoride gas emissions from lithium-ion battery fireswater increased the hydrogen fluoride production rate but not the total volume.edit:Senate Bill No. 38passed in 2023, about having an emergency action plan. Oops.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2025, 08:33:14 pm
content: Quote from: floobydust on January 22, 2025, 08:21:03 pmFire fighting in a warehouse full of lithium cells is very different from firefighting in a warehouse full of lithium power packs. In one case they aren't chained into a voltage that could kill a firefighter with some conduction through the water they are using. In the other case they are.

author: neverendingstudent
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2025, 09:06:08 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on January 22, 2025, 04:31:50 pmOh, I know about the issue of not needing oxygen, I was thinking specifically of the cooling aspect. Water has more thermal capacity, but will start out at whatever room temperature is. Compressed nitrogen, rapidly decompressed will produce much much lower outflow temperatures. My perspective was to get as much as possible as cold as possible to arrest the catch-fire chain reaction of one cell to the next. It would also not introduce the complicating factor of water, dirty with everything it is mixing with, being conductive and shorting out more batteries.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2025, 09:11:38 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on January 22, 2025, 08:33:14 pmIt's saying containment is the only solution but I see nothing for that in these battery skids. They are just plopped down like Lego blocks, close to each other and lots of sheet metal that melts fast. No firewall or decent spacings.Somewhere a myth exists on how these won't burn up. They are ending up like nuclear power plants. Where is some foam or dry chemical technology?SpaceX has thermal tile tech, what it's too much extra cost or something.The fire fallout so far is in the environmental consequences, for the farms and air/water pollution. It's quite a mess. Meanwhile Vistra stock... to the moon

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2025, 09:33:43 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on January 22, 2025, 04:31:50 pmOne way to deal with it in an easy way is to put the batteries in a structure which can be flooded with water so the batteries become submerged. Just like they do with electric cars; dump them in a large bin filled with water and let it sit for a couple of days. With the batteries charged or not, it doesn't matter. The energy will need to be dissipated anyway.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2025, 11:45:51 pm
content: Quote from: floobydust on January 22, 2025, 08:21:03 pmMegapack 1 is NCA/NMC.Megapack 2 is LFP.I'm fairly sure Powerwall/Powerpack are all NMC or NCA depending on the generation.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2025, 11:52:03 pm
content: LiFePO4, while this chemistry is safer under normal (or barely beyond normal) conditions than basic Li-ion (but with lower energy density, you can't have it all), in case of fire (which may be caused by something else than the batteries), the result is basically the same.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2025, 12:12:54 am
content: LFP batteries do require a considerably higher temperature to enter thermal runaway: around 350C for a BYD LFP battery, for instance. This does make them considerably safer, since it may be possible to keep temperatures below that level with an appropriate sprinkler system, even if one cell or bank does become, er... "angry".NMC is typically around 180-200C for thermal runaway and NCA can be as low as 150C.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2025, 12:23:56 am
content: Quote from: tom66 on January 23, 2025, 12:12:54 amI doubt that as the cells would need to be submerged in water and/or sufficient water ingress to get cooling where it is needed must be guaranteed by design.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2025, 06:49:46 am
content: Quote from: floobydust on January 22, 2025, 08:21:03 pmIt doesn't matter. None of them contain lithium in a form that reacts with water, which was your original implication even if you now try to hide it as you realized how ridiculous it was.QuoteIt is true that LFP batteries have higher thermal runaway onset temperature (so smaller risk of failure in small events; but it's still susceptible to chain event) and smaller release of energy during the event. So it's safer (than e.g. NCA or NMC) - but not even by a full order of magnitude. Safety (assuming it's not ruined by slacking on other safety measures "because it's safer") is one argument for using LFP. But really, they are used for other reasons; like cost of raw materials, longer cycle life at large DoD%... The compromise on energy density is not a big problem on stationary packs.QuoteNo, I say firefighters do not start googling about the battery chemistry and guessing that maybe it has metallic lithium which reacts with water because floobydust speculates so on the internets.At least hopefully.What they need is, like with any large industrial setting, a safety plan, a firefighting plan, which takes into account all the details, like: how to ensure no dangerous voltages are present? Where to spray the water (if at all - maybe it's better to let it burn)? What is the risk level of gases emitted? Risk of firefighters being engulfed if the fire suddenly spreads - how fast can it spread? Water being used to cool the neighbor units to prevent cascading effect, and if so, how? Is there some specific "spray here for emergency cooling" hole? Or just cool the outsides of the containers?QuotePeople more involved in lithium ion chemistry than me most definitely work with fire depts. They don't google for speculation on internet forums.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2025, 08:17:09 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on January 22, 2025, 09:33:43 pmA bit of distance helps more. The most practical design is to keep the walls of neighbouring modules cool and let it burn.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2025, 09:30:56 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on January 23, 2025, 12:23:56 amWell, we don't know if the building had a sprinkler system and if it did how effective it was intended to be, but I would have thought water deluge in the area around the affected cell bank would prevent adjacent cell banks from getting up to the critical temperature of 350C. As others say, all about partitioning between adjacent cells. Rule of thumb is 1kWh NMC burns with roughly 10-15kWh chemical energy (unsure on LFP but likely similar), so your cooling system needs to be able to remove enough of that heat to stop adjacent banks from combusting. Even if you lose a whole row of modules, it's better than the building!

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2025, 09:44:19 am
content: Quote from: tom66 on January 23, 2025, 09:30:56 amReally?https://www.fire.tc.faa.gov/pdf/TC-TN16-22.pdfhttps://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/1945-7111/ac3c27/pdf

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2025, 10:31:35 am
content: Quote from: Marco on January 23, 2025, 09:44:19 amIf I'm skimming those papers correctly, they're saying around 1-1.5x stored energy is released as heat, so considerably lower? That does seem a bit too low to be believed, so we're probably talking about different things.The figure I cite is from an electric car fire study, where the battery is assumed to be completely consumed by fire in the ensuing thermal runaway and subsequent vehicle fire. In other words: how much energy did that battery contribute to the fire? For a typical EV battery it turned out to be equivalent to 70-100 litres of petrol. (60kWh EV battery = 216MJ stored energy, ~2.1-3.2GJ combustion energy). I'd assume that figure does include things like module interconnects, PCBs, insulators, plastics, casing etc. most of which would be shared with a PowerPack type system. It came about in the EV fires thread we had a few months ago, I'll have to dig through it later, but the bottom line was that the total contribution was around 10x more than the stored energy.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2025, 11:07:50 am
content: The number I remember is roughly 2x. Could be wrong.Don't underestimate the contribution of other combustible materials. I remember a calculation where it was shown that for shipping li-ion cells, cardboard (+ plastic, as in foams) packaging material is a significant contributor to the total energy release in case of fire.Thinking that li-ion cell is some super concentrated energy storage is exaggerated. For example, car fires where just plastic parts in engine compartment, tires, brake fluids etc. burn look quite violent, even if no gasoline or battery pack is involved at all. Li-ion fires (e.g. in aircraft cargo) are dangerous because they don't extinguish by simple removal of air (replacement with vacuum or nitrogen/argon gas, or CO2 or powder extinguisher). And they setother stuffin fire. Not because the energy release is exceptionally high.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2025, 11:33:23 am
content: Right, and that was the interesting thing from that study, which was the interior and plastics in the vehicle contributed 90% of the energy, so it didn't really matter if you had a 50 litre fuel tank or a 60kWh battery, the net result was the same. Yes, the battery is a bastard to extinguish once it is aflame, but once the interior components are involved, it doesn't really matter from a thermal loading perspective. I imagine much the same is true for a battery storage facility, there will be a lot of non-battery components in there that will become involved.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2025, 12:44:36 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on January 23, 2025, 10:31:35 amI'll just believe the well controlled calorimeter studies for the moment. Calorimetry is hard and it gets far harder when things get larger.

author: Simmed
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2025, 01:41:38 pm
content: this paper is too large for attachment 11mbhttps://www.mdpi.com/2313-0105/11/1/24the chart data shows the 20s "explosion" window for NCM523, which gives a rough estimate of about 390k joules in 20s

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2025, 02:26:00 pm
content: I was speaking to a friend the other day who works in automotive and he mentioned an interesting new test for EVs. EV batteries are subjected to direct fire exposure for 2 minutes. The expectation is that the battery does not enter thermal runaway. The vehicle is allowed to use the cooling system to protect the battery, including localised cooling to protect specific areas of the pack. UN ECE R100. I wonder if such a regulation will come into play for stationary storage.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2025, 02:37:47 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on January 23, 2025, 02:26:00 pmThat sounds like a very strange test. Testing batteries for their behaviour in a fire sounds good, but why only 2 minutes? When is a real EV battery ever going to be exposed to a fire for only 2 minutes?

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2025, 02:54:05 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on January 23, 2025, 02:37:47 pmMy guess would be in case of a fuel spill on a roadway. You need to give the people in the car time to evacuate in a sudden situation. I think they assume that continuous exposure to fire will cause the pack to enter runaway so there's no way to protect against this. It might also be trying to address the rate of fire spread in parking garages etc.For a point of comparison, petrol tanks only have to withstand 2 minutes of flame before catastrophic failure, so it's a comparable objective.This document is also interesting:https://wiki.unece.org/download/attachments/25270993/EVSTF-03-29e.pdf?api=v2Seems that the quickest time to thermal runaway was around 150s for the small PHEV, but most vehicles took 300-400s.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2025, 03:58:18 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on January 23, 2025, 02:37:47 pmProbably to give passengers (extra) time to get out of the car. Safety regulations are only there to protect human life.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2025, 05:14:24 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on January 23, 2025, 03:58:18 pmIn a crash bad enough for start a serious fire the passengers aren't typically in the greatest shape for getting out fast.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2025, 05:35:31 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on January 23, 2025, 05:14:24 pmThis type of test is specifically aimed at external fire sources. I imagine for instance a multi-car pileup where fuel is spilled on/under your vehicle.Vehicle crash resulting in battery fire is specifically tested too, essentially, it can't happen in any of the standard tests where passenger survival would be expected.