I design big custom battery packs in car trailers or shipping containers for storing them outside of infrastructure. If the battery catches fire you can drag the trailer or shipping containers further away to let it burn out. Of course it gets harder to drag them away after a few minutes of fire when the axles and wheels start to melt.
The point is to never put Lithium-ion batteries inside buildings, especially not put them inside heavy (metal) boxes bolted to the building.
You will have to do some research to find out what the new laws in the making and fire department procedures say about garages and multi-story car parks in 2024.
A quick review by me just now suggests the government regulations still have not yet caught up with the new reality in the US and EU:
EV's and large batteries inside buildings are not yet forbidden but probably will be soon.
Fire departments choose to evacuate a building with EV fires (and other industrial fires) and just let it burn out [2].
Fire departments only quench a fire by sudden rapid cooling if possible, for example by drowning [1] the entire Li-ion fire in a basin. Taking the oxygen away is not the goal.
I design neighbourhood batteries as two shipping containers underground. In the bottom container the batteries with multiple infrared camera's looking at all battery sides and also with redundant temperature sensors. The top shipping container will deliver 60.000 liter of water into the bottom container in seconds. Testing such a setup would make for a hot and cool spectacular Mythbusters episode.
EV's and large batteries inside buildings are not yet forbidden but probably will be soon.
I'd like to see a reference for that, the closest I can find is this NFPA bulletin calling for updating fire protection and electrical standards for parking garages, nothing suggesting a ban.
I wish, it'll cost a million dollars or more to test at this scale and it would still be one data point. Instead I simulated these systems to test the physics.
But please, come help me do this test in real life, it will be fun!
Are you representing these devices to others as safe, with safety mechanisms? That is, are you selling or even giving them to people?
I hope only you are at risk from these devices (and I hope you are safe too, but that's your choice). Untested technology can't be depended on. As a rule I don't believe anything works unless I see it with my own eyes - if I swap in a new patch cable, I ping something. Safety equipment for mortal risks is on a different level.
Sounds like a sound design to me. If he gets sued at least he can argue he did everything reasonable to prevent and quench a battery fire. That's how gen 4 nuclear power stations are designed to cool the core in the event of a loss of coolant incident. The other way is to use LiFePo chemistry which doesn't ignite like LiIon but has half the capacity.
> Sounds like a sound design to me. If he gets sued at least he can argue he did everything reasonable to prevent and quench a battery fire. That's how gen 4 nuclear power stations are designed to cool the core in the event of a loss of coolant incident.
"Sounds like a sound design" isn't sufficient engineering; doing everything reasonable would include testing or using an existing tested design; and nuclear power station designs certainly are tested.
> EV's and large batteries inside buildings are not yet forbidden but probably will be soon.
Really? That would more than inconvenience millions of people who already have such things. Seems most unlikely to me. Here in Norway we have about half a million EVs many of which are parked in private garages overnight and in multistorey car parks during the day. I can't recall a single incident where the battery either caused or exacerbated a problem.
The point is to never put Lithium-ion batteries inside buildings, especially not put them inside heavy (metal) boxes bolted to the building.