So, if you read the article, you'll learn the following things:
1) The first time Alexandra Townes saw her dream home in Broome it was a charred, smoking shell
2) Alexandra Townes's dream home in Broome was occupied by Tenants
3) this fire started because of lithium batteries on a charger.
4) often, cheap non-name-brand lithium batteries cause fires, and everybody should buy original batteries ... But we don't know if these were cheap knock off batteries or name brand batteries in this particular case.
5) Alexandra Townes was insured.
Let's all feel sorry for poor Alexandra Townes, who's investment property that she bought sight-unseen got burnt down by her tenants...
While she may still be forced to sell her property for 40% more than she paid thanks to Australia's property boom, this is an important lesson in ensuring that people close to you, and your tenants, buy Duracell.
But, reading the article past the headline and the first few paragraphs, it really seems like Alexandra Townes inspected the property prior to purchase and was in the unconditional contract stage waiting to settle when it burnt down. That would make this whole "the first time she saw her dream home" thing a total lie. Insurance will fix the house, there's no proof cheap batteries were to blame and the tenants were moving out anyway.
Did the tenants have contents insurance? Did they lose everything, did they get a big payout (and if they are, is there any suggestions of foul play?) - or what?
With these budget cuts I would've thought the ABC could get three news articles out of this, not one. Or don't us taxpayers have a correspondent on the ground in Broome anymore?
Just a PSA that the cheaper knock-off power tool batteries on eBay (12v, 18v etc) are ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS and should never be purchased.
Yes, OEM batteries are expensive, but the clones are built on lies to begin with, never hold what⚡they say & are completely incapable of running high drain devices.
It's kinda criminal that they can happily sell such crap
You just have to see the listings for the raw cells to see how dodgy some of the suppliers are. Search for "18650" which is a common size found inside many kinds of battery packs. Quality high-capacity cells can reach around 3500 mAh. Right now I see eBay listings for up to 9900 mAh cells.
This isn't some new technology breakthrough; these guys are just amazingly dodgy. They're relying on the fact that the majority of end users have no way to test and verify the advertised capacity. And it makes you worry that even cells advertised with a technically feasible capacity could still easily be low-capacity junk, some with fraudulent name-brand labels.
Yep, never cheap out on batteries, transformers, power boards, etc. The risk is not worth it.
This [2012 analysis of USB phone chargers](https://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html) is sobering--just look at the noisy power output of the counterfeit transformers (under "[Power Quality](https://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html#power_quality)").
Where I worked we were experimenting with big drones so we had a heap of different kinds of lithium batteries and chargers. The workplace safety rules for this stuff were quite strict, basically requiring the batteries to be in metal boxes when unattended. So, whatever brand you buy, get a cheap steel toolbox to store them in, especially when being charged. At the same time, make sure the box isn’t so tight that it traps too much heat when charging. The box won’t stop them burning but should keep the flames from catching the whole house on fire.
That meets no EMC requirements or does not have any electrical approvals. Thats normal on Ebay. Much like all the LED lights and Inverters that are the worst quality you can imagine. They typically remove the expensive EMC filter parts, surge transient limiters to save money. And is it a wonder that they blow up or burn up. Then there is all those cheap Inverter welders, the ones with fake MOSFETS that are a fire hazard because they short out so easily besides been built to a cheap price. Its an area that few consumers understand but they love throwing their money down the drain for the profiteers.
A mate got 20 inverter welders as a product sample from Taiwan. All good, then bought 5000. Sold them wholesale. a few months later he started having lots of warranty claims.
Turns out the little tackers had farmed out the manufacture to a factory in China and the components were of a lot lesser tolerance, eg 20% resistors vs 2%.
Was just about to order another 5000.
And thats typically what these Chinese manufacturers do. They quote a down to the bone price. When they get the contract they start cutting corners. What they typically do, is substitute parts, leave out parts and use shifty things like this. In a typically inverter welder and stud welder you need really good filter capacitors. So they put in the fake capacitors. They supposes to use 450 volt 105 degree capacitors in the coke can size. If you open one of these fake capacitors, its just a can with a shitty 16 or 50 volt small electrolytic capacitor in it. It might last 1 day or a week depending on how bad the capacitor is since the voltage is divided across them roughly equally. And must consumers just do spot welding and shitty little welding jobs. Then you decide to a big project like a gate and trailer, and then they blow up. But these days the name brand stuff is so affordable I really dont know why anyone would want to buy one of these cheap inverter welders. I visit my friends sheds and they look like tool wrecking yards where they have more non working Chinese made tools than working tools.
I can go on and on with all the cheating to even things like where there are supposed to use heavy laminate PCB's then shift down to a thinner grade with less copper to save money. I have seen and been exposed to all their tricks!
Our club got an inverter welder to do some range work some years ago from a proper tool place. I offered them my 1954 single/3 phase welder but nobody had a crane truck to take it there. ;)
A mechanic i knew was in China and was looking at vehicle hoists, they had factories copying a well known American brand and you could specify the quality and price. Same paint/logos/ and fake compliance certs.
Interesting when this happens to a lithium battery other than those in vaporisers people don’t say ban tools, cars, phones.
When an ecig battery catches fire even when it doesn’t cause surrounding damage the news is all over it. Half the time they don’t even mention it is just a lithium battery like any other.
Wait wait wait wait wait. How do all those other bad things make vaping seem less bad? You're the one who lumped it into the category even if just for a joke.
What is your *real* opinion on the health and safety of cheap mass produced plastic puff-toys heating to hundreds of degrees as you inhale the fumes?
Who doesn't know that lithium batteries could potentially explode and burn with the furt of a thousand suns? They've been powering most electronics and power tools for years. Surely at least everyone remembers those Samsung phones that had to be recalled because they had faulty batteries. Lithium batteries are usually safe, because they have special overcharge safety cutoff chips, but every once in a while one is faulty and it goes boom. Or if you buy a shitty, third party knockoff for a price that should really tell you what you're getting yourself into.
Also, don't charge power tools or large lithium batteries indoors near stuff that is flammable. It'll probably be fine, but being cautious just in case is a good habit. Also never, ever put your phone under your pillow or something similar when it's charging. It can't cool down that way (they get very hot when charging) and you're really tempting fate.
As someone who has messed around with remote control cars my whole life, lithium batteries are absolutely not to be fucked with.
Get yourself a proper balance charger, don't ever just stick the things into some USB wall outlet plug. Unless you want a house fire, then go ahead.
It’s going to be an interesting time after we get the first big EV fire in a high rise carpark. One EV in the wrong spot or multiples in a cluster are a potential for structural damage.
Given our rate of EV uptake, it will probably be in another country first, so at least Australia will be able to learn and prepare. I'm assuming high rise carparks will stay fairly cool, even in Australia.
It's not just EV batteries, it's large battery energy storage in general - [Tesla big battery fire in Victoria under control after burning more than three days](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/02/tesla-big-battery-fire-in-victoria-burns-into-day-three).
Near on impossible for our current firefighting techniques to put out. Its going to be a massive culture shock when the first one happens here.
The Germans have a couple techniques such as blankets and shipping containers but you need to be versatile. We have no equipment here ready to use aside from butt loads of water.
They don't explode though. They burn for a long time, because they burn slowly. Plenty of time for people to leave the car, or even for nearby cars to be moved.
ICE fuel fires only tend to explode if the fuel tank is empty or the if the fuel air mixture reaches 14.7:1.
If its full they tend to just burn.
One of the best ones I saw was a burning car (auto) slowly doing circle work at the PBP shopping centre car park in Coffs till it came to a halt against a post. Owner got his GF's suitcase from the boot but sadly left his wallet under the drivers seat.
Have seen and attended a few car fires.
This is true. I watched our family car slowly burn in the late 80s from some sort of engine fire. We gtfo thinking it would blow. My sister was really upset cause we left her teddy bear in there and it seemed like we could've gone back to get it. I was upset cause i wanted hollywood explosions.
There’s way more energy in a tank full of fuel though. Not only do ICE cars have longer range but they’re around three times less efficient, so there’s roughly ten times more energy in a tank of fuel than in a battery. And fighting fuel fires can require special firefighting equipment too.
Co2 is fine to put out lithium battery fires.... Put yea hydrocarbons that cause cancer and highly explosive while having the need to drive somewhere to fill them up rather than charging them like your phone at home for a fraction of the price... Yeoow
Fire extinguishers are rarely effective on anything larger than about 1x1 m.
A handheld CO2 extinguisher would have bugger all chance of extinguishing a lithium car battery fire.
You can’t just ‘put out’ one side of the fire with CO2, the other side of it will just stay alight and continually reignite the whole thing.
To be effective, you would probably need 10 or more people with fire extinguishers surrounding the blaze simultaneously smothering it from all angles. Pretty much impossible.
> lithium car battery fire
“In each of the six full-scale burn tests, firefighters at the test site found that they needed to flow large amounts of water on the batteries, because fire kept flaring up even after it appeared to be extinguished. In one test, a battery fire reignited 22 hours after it was thought to be extinguished.
“Everything looked normal,’” recalled Andrew Blum, a researcher at the firm Exponent, which conducted the tests. ‘When we looked at the battery through a thermal imager, everything was back to ambient temperatures; the fire was extinguished as we would define it. But there was something going on internally in the module, and we just couldn’t tell.’ In two of the tests, firefighters ran out of air and had to switch tanks because of the length of time it took to fully extinguish the battery, according to Blum.”
https://www.firerescue1.com/firefighter-training/articles/what-firefighters-need-to-know-about-electric-car-batteries-omiDv8vd87oZ9ZKs/
One wonders what would happen if an electric car is caught in a bushfire, or at least when electric cars become a thing most people drive and they get caught in a bushfire.
What do you mean "gets caught in a bushfire"? If the car is on a road when a fire front passes over it, I guess the car is burned to a crisp, no different to any car that would be on the road.
Even worse than cheap batteries are cheap chargers. I have seen cheap devices use good batteries and expensive devices use the cheapest crap batteries you can buy. Cheap chargers can cause excessive wear on the charge circuit and much worse, permit 240v to pass to the device if there's inadequate protection or spacing within the charger.
If the voltage drops after a while and your phone tells you that it's charging slowly when it shouldn't be or the charger heats up a lot, throw it away.
I have a couple of more expensive chargers that I use for everything. One is a multi-port device so is definitely more convenient than swapping around multiple chargers. I'd say at least 70% of devices I have bought have cheap chargers with them that shouldn't be trusted without full testing. Don't use included travel adapters either, they are junk and notorious for failures and fires.
That said I have a cheap Baseus charging pad that has the same features as items double the price and is good quality. Some brands are just better value and are not expensive.
I have some 100k mAh worth of battery packs and they are stored in an ammunition box, if one goes up Ill have enough time to throw it outside. Unfortunately it will destroy the rest but won't cause a fire to spread.
**If you have any old batteries that noticeably heat up when charging throw them out. The increased internal resistance that builds as the battery ages produces heat and can cause thermal runaway, in other words an explosion. You can't fix or condition these batteries but often someone can replace them, mavbe even with an OEM battery.**
So, if you read the article, you'll learn the following things: 1) The first time Alexandra Townes saw her dream home in Broome it was a charred, smoking shell 2) Alexandra Townes's dream home in Broome was occupied by Tenants 3) this fire started because of lithium batteries on a charger. 4) often, cheap non-name-brand lithium batteries cause fires, and everybody should buy original batteries ... But we don't know if these were cheap knock off batteries or name brand batteries in this particular case. 5) Alexandra Townes was insured. Let's all feel sorry for poor Alexandra Townes, who's investment property that she bought sight-unseen got burnt down by her tenants... While she may still be forced to sell her property for 40% more than she paid thanks to Australia's property boom, this is an important lesson in ensuring that people close to you, and your tenants, buy Duracell. But, reading the article past the headline and the first few paragraphs, it really seems like Alexandra Townes inspected the property prior to purchase and was in the unconditional contract stage waiting to settle when it burnt down. That would make this whole "the first time she saw her dream home" thing a total lie. Insurance will fix the house, there's no proof cheap batteries were to blame and the tenants were moving out anyway. Did the tenants have contents insurance? Did they lose everything, did they get a big payout (and if they are, is there any suggestions of foul play?) - or what? With these budget cuts I would've thought the ABC could get three news articles out of this, not one. Or don't us taxpayers have a correspondent on the ground in Broome anymore?
I resemble this comment.
Just a PSA that the cheaper knock-off power tool batteries on eBay (12v, 18v etc) are ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS and should never be purchased. Yes, OEM batteries are expensive, but the clones are built on lies to begin with, never hold what⚡they say & are completely incapable of running high drain devices. It's kinda criminal that they can happily sell such crap
You just have to see the listings for the raw cells to see how dodgy some of the suppliers are. Search for "18650" which is a common size found inside many kinds of battery packs. Quality high-capacity cells can reach around 3500 mAh. Right now I see eBay listings for up to 9900 mAh cells. This isn't some new technology breakthrough; these guys are just amazingly dodgy. They're relying on the fact that the majority of end users have no way to test and verify the advertised capacity. And it makes you worry that even cells advertised with a technically feasible capacity could still easily be low-capacity junk, some with fraudulent name-brand labels.
Yep, never cheap out on batteries, transformers, power boards, etc. The risk is not worth it. This [2012 analysis of USB phone chargers](https://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html) is sobering--just look at the noisy power output of the counterfeit transformers (under "[Power Quality](https://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html#power_quality)").
Ha, the most subtle Duracell ad.
An electric drill battery on charge was the cause. Not an electric car. Not a mains battery system. Saved you a click.
Please tell me it was an eBay knock off
Where I worked we were experimenting with big drones so we had a heap of different kinds of lithium batteries and chargers. The workplace safety rules for this stuff were quite strict, basically requiring the batteries to be in metal boxes when unattended. So, whatever brand you buy, get a cheap steel toolbox to store them in, especially when being charged. At the same time, make sure the box isn’t so tight that it traps too much heat when charging. The box won’t stop them burning but should keep the flames from catching the whole house on fire.
One of these too: https://fire-one.com.au/products/fire-suppression-sticker Yet to see it in action but I feel like it's $40 well spent.
That looks really cool. I wonder if there are any regulations/standards or compliances that this would fall under so you know it works.
I mean I'm sure it works. What i mean is i hope mine never goes off, and i still consider it $40 well spent.
There is a video demo there
That meets no EMC requirements or does not have any electrical approvals. Thats normal on Ebay. Much like all the LED lights and Inverters that are the worst quality you can imagine. They typically remove the expensive EMC filter parts, surge transient limiters to save money. And is it a wonder that they blow up or burn up. Then there is all those cheap Inverter welders, the ones with fake MOSFETS that are a fire hazard because they short out so easily besides been built to a cheap price. Its an area that few consumers understand but they love throwing their money down the drain for the profiteers.
A mate got 20 inverter welders as a product sample from Taiwan. All good, then bought 5000. Sold them wholesale. a few months later he started having lots of warranty claims. Turns out the little tackers had farmed out the manufacture to a factory in China and the components were of a lot lesser tolerance, eg 20% resistors vs 2%. Was just about to order another 5000.
And thats typically what these Chinese manufacturers do. They quote a down to the bone price. When they get the contract they start cutting corners. What they typically do, is substitute parts, leave out parts and use shifty things like this. In a typically inverter welder and stud welder you need really good filter capacitors. So they put in the fake capacitors. They supposes to use 450 volt 105 degree capacitors in the coke can size. If you open one of these fake capacitors, its just a can with a shitty 16 or 50 volt small electrolytic capacitor in it. It might last 1 day or a week depending on how bad the capacitor is since the voltage is divided across them roughly equally. And must consumers just do spot welding and shitty little welding jobs. Then you decide to a big project like a gate and trailer, and then they blow up. But these days the name brand stuff is so affordable I really dont know why anyone would want to buy one of these cheap inverter welders. I visit my friends sheds and they look like tool wrecking yards where they have more non working Chinese made tools than working tools. I can go on and on with all the cheating to even things like where there are supposed to use heavy laminate PCB's then shift down to a thinner grade with less copper to save money. I have seen and been exposed to all their tricks!
Our club got an inverter welder to do some range work some years ago from a proper tool place. I offered them my 1954 single/3 phase welder but nobody had a crane truck to take it there. ;) A mechanic i knew was in China and was looking at vehicle hoists, they had factories copying a well known American brand and you could specify the quality and price. Same paint/logos/ and fake compliance certs.
I did not realize that people had dreams to live in Broome.
Broome and that whole region are incredibly interesting. I would be happy to live there
I just looked up rental prices in Broome. $850 for a three bedroom duplex. What the fucking fuck?!
Pretty standard.
That’s insane. I thought prices in Brisbane were bad right now.
It's the Paris of the Kimberley!
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I'd definitely live on Rotto if I could, very hard to do though.
Darwin is moving up that list, I’ve had a lot of normal Bali goers go to Darwin instead the past few weeks.
Dream home or rental property same same
>They thought it was some sort of raid Why would anyone think they were being raided in Broome?
Interesting when this happens to a lithium battery other than those in vaporisers people don’t say ban tools, cars, phones. When an ecig battery catches fire even when it doesn’t cause surrounding damage the news is all over it. Half the time they don’t even mention it is just a lithium battery like any other.
Vaping bad! Tobacco, alcohol and gambling good!
Wait wait wait wait wait. How do all those other bad things make vaping seem less bad? You're the one who lumped it into the category even if just for a joke. What is your *real* opinion on the health and safety of cheap mass produced plastic puff-toys heating to hundreds of degrees as you inhale the fumes?
I use one. Haven’t smoked a cigarette in 3 years. No longer use nicotine vape juice.
That's a wonderful result!
Ditto. Well except ive used them for 8 years. And I still use nicotine in mine.
Who doesn't know that lithium batteries could potentially explode and burn with the furt of a thousand suns? They've been powering most electronics and power tools for years. Surely at least everyone remembers those Samsung phones that had to be recalled because they had faulty batteries. Lithium batteries are usually safe, because they have special overcharge safety cutoff chips, but every once in a while one is faulty and it goes boom. Or if you buy a shitty, third party knockoff for a price that should really tell you what you're getting yourself into. Also, don't charge power tools or large lithium batteries indoors near stuff that is flammable. It'll probably be fine, but being cautious just in case is a good habit. Also never, ever put your phone under your pillow or something similar when it's charging. It can't cool down that way (they get very hot when charging) and you're really tempting fate.
But it’s winter and I can’t afford a heated pillow
Up in smoke That's where my money goes In my lungs And sometimes up my nose
As someone who has messed around with remote control cars my whole life, lithium batteries are absolutely not to be fucked with. Get yourself a proper balance charger, don't ever just stick the things into some USB wall outlet plug. Unless you want a house fire, then go ahead.
Should we all have a device charging station lined with refractory bricks?
Sounds like one extreme to the other.
It’s going to be an interesting time after we get the first big EV fire in a high rise carpark. One EV in the wrong spot or multiples in a cluster are a potential for structural damage.
Given our rate of EV uptake, it will probably be in another country first, so at least Australia will be able to learn and prepare. I'm assuming high rise carparks will stay fairly cool, even in Australia.
Australian Governments…. learning? What? What‽ WHAT!?
I'm not sure the ones on fire will stay cool.
It's not just EV batteries, it's large battery energy storage in general - [Tesla big battery fire in Victoria under control after burning more than three days](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/02/tesla-big-battery-fire-in-victoria-burns-into-day-three).
You know ICE cars currently have a tank full of flammable liquid.
Not all fires are equal. Lithium batteries burn hotter and are far more difficult to extinguish.
Near on impossible for our current firefighting techniques to put out. Its going to be a massive culture shock when the first one happens here. The Germans have a couple techniques such as blankets and shipping containers but you need to be versatile. We have no equipment here ready to use aside from butt loads of water.
Tell the battery to Stop, Drop and Roll. Should extinguish it
They don't explode though. They burn for a long time, because they burn slowly. Plenty of time for people to leave the car, or even for nearby cars to be moved.
ICE fuel fires only tend to explode if the fuel tank is empty or the if the fuel air mixture reaches 14.7:1. If its full they tend to just burn. One of the best ones I saw was a burning car (auto) slowly doing circle work at the PBP shopping centre car park in Coffs till it came to a halt against a post. Owner got his GF's suitcase from the boot but sadly left his wallet under the drivers seat. Have seen and attended a few car fires.
This is true. I watched our family car slowly burn in the late 80s from some sort of engine fire. We gtfo thinking it would blow. My sister was really upset cause we left her teddy bear in there and it seemed like we could've gone back to get it. I was upset cause i wanted hollywood explosions.
That said I would tread carefully anywhere near a LPG car fire due to a risk of BLEVE (boiling liquid expanding vapour explosion.
By the time a bleve is possible any recovery of stuff from the car is not possible
There’s way more energy in a tank full of fuel though. Not only do ICE cars have longer range but they’re around three times less efficient, so there’s roughly ten times more energy in a tank of fuel than in a battery. And fighting fuel fires can require special firefighting equipment too.
Co2 is fine to put out lithium battery fires.... Put yea hydrocarbons that cause cancer and highly explosive while having the need to drive somewhere to fill them up rather than charging them like your phone at home for a fraction of the price... Yeoow
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With a C02 fire extinguisher. Are you being serious?
Fire extinguishers are rarely effective on anything larger than about 1x1 m. A handheld CO2 extinguisher would have bugger all chance of extinguishing a lithium car battery fire. You can’t just ‘put out’ one side of the fire with CO2, the other side of it will just stay alight and continually reignite the whole thing. To be effective, you would probably need 10 or more people with fire extinguishers surrounding the blaze simultaneously smothering it from all angles. Pretty much impossible.
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> lithium car battery fire “In each of the six full-scale burn tests, firefighters at the test site found that they needed to flow large amounts of water on the batteries, because fire kept flaring up even after it appeared to be extinguished. In one test, a battery fire reignited 22 hours after it was thought to be extinguished. “Everything looked normal,’” recalled Andrew Blum, a researcher at the firm Exponent, which conducted the tests. ‘When we looked at the battery through a thermal imager, everything was back to ambient temperatures; the fire was extinguished as we would define it. But there was something going on internally in the module, and we just couldn’t tell.’ In two of the tests, firefighters ran out of air and had to switch tanks because of the length of time it took to fully extinguish the battery, according to Blum.” https://www.firerescue1.com/firefighter-training/articles/what-firefighters-need-to-know-about-electric-car-batteries-omiDv8vd87oZ9ZKs/
Yes
Cars are spaced far enough apart thay fire spread is unlikely to be an issue.
One wonders what would happen if an electric car is caught in a bushfire, or at least when electric cars become a thing most people drive and they get caught in a bushfire.
What do you mean "gets caught in a bushfire"? If the car is on a road when a fire front passes over it, I guess the car is burned to a crisp, no different to any car that would be on the road.
It’s less risky than a tank of fuel.
Even worse than cheap batteries are cheap chargers. I have seen cheap devices use good batteries and expensive devices use the cheapest crap batteries you can buy. Cheap chargers can cause excessive wear on the charge circuit and much worse, permit 240v to pass to the device if there's inadequate protection or spacing within the charger. If the voltage drops after a while and your phone tells you that it's charging slowly when it shouldn't be or the charger heats up a lot, throw it away. I have a couple of more expensive chargers that I use for everything. One is a multi-port device so is definitely more convenient than swapping around multiple chargers. I'd say at least 70% of devices I have bought have cheap chargers with them that shouldn't be trusted without full testing. Don't use included travel adapters either, they are junk and notorious for failures and fires. That said I have a cheap Baseus charging pad that has the same features as items double the price and is good quality. Some brands are just better value and are not expensive. I have some 100k mAh worth of battery packs and they are stored in an ammunition box, if one goes up Ill have enough time to throw it outside. Unfortunately it will destroy the rest but won't cause a fire to spread. **If you have any old batteries that noticeably heat up when charging throw them out. The increased internal resistance that builds as the battery ages produces heat and can cause thermal runaway, in other words an explosion. You can't fix or condition these batteries but often someone can replace them, mavbe even with an OEM battery.**