“This week South Korea announced the conclusions from their fire investigation committee regarding the root cause for the 23 energy storage system fires that have occurred since August of 2017. The lithium-ion battery fires resulted in system losses valued at over $32M USD. In January, the government requested to stop operation of existing systems which resulted the shutdown of 522 ESS units – approximately 35% of the budding market. The Ministry of Industry formed an investigation committee of academics, research institutions, laboratories and ESS industry experts to investigate the causes of the fires. Their report was released on Tuesday, June 11, 2019 and included four causes for the fires:
Insufficient battery protection systems against electric shock
Systems were not able to properly protect against electrical hazards due to ground faults or short circuits. When large electrical surges were imposed on the battery system the fuse was not able to quickly interrupt the current which led to catastrophic failure of the contactors. The short circuit current allowed the failures cascade to the bus bar which resulted in fires inside the ESS. This failure mode was confirmed by the committee during their fire accident investigation.”
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Cumming, Steve. Li-Ion Tamer 14 June 2019.