Damaging a GivEnergy battery - is it a fire 🔥 risk?

This is a story that I have alluded to before, and is overdue for telling. I share it for information and reassurance on the products we’ve bought, not as an example of what to do ….

Background

I have two GivEnergy Gen 1 hybrid inverters, one with a 9.5kWh battery and one with a 5.2kWh. My original installation didn’t include any EPS and after a while I was keen to use the inverter with the 9.5 to provide EPS for the house. Our house has had an extension and all the high load appliances (electric showers, oven, washing machine, dishwasher, etc) are on a separate feed and fusebox, with the original fusebox near the inverters that contains just ring main and lights for the un-extended part of the house.

There were a couple of circuits that needed to be removed from the fusebox, for the hot tub and our FIT solar array, and these would go to their own fusebox, but not a lot of electrical work required to prepare for connecting the EPS terminals up.

The fusebox would have a changeover switch so I could run the house circuits either directly off the grid or from the inverter EPS outputs. In normal operation it would be in EPS mode all the time as there would be no high loads on these circuits.

Earth Spike

The ‘EPS fusebox’ would need its own earth spike and a suitable location was identified down the side of the garage and about a metre away from the house. The earth cable would need running from the spike down the garage wall, through the garage wall, and up to the fusebox.

To help the electrician out and reduce the work to be done I said I’d do the earth spike and wiring to it.

Measure twice, then measure again

(and probably measure a third time)

Fitting the earth spike was pretty straight forward and it was soon hammered into the earth down to ground level. The cable would run in a duct under a pathway then along the garage wall, cable tied to the existing feed from the garage to the hot tub.

To penetrate the garage wall I would drill a hole through a little way underneath the existing hot tub cable so as to not risk drilling into that cable. Checking on the inside wall of the garage the hot tub cable came through about 2 inches away from the side of the 9.5 battery, so drilling underneath the cable would be clear of any obstructions.

There was a horrible noise

Double checked the position for the earth cable hole, all good, so with a heavy duty SDS drill I started drilling through the wall. After a short while I felt the drill had broken through, so I checked the inside of the garage, no sign of the drill bit, so figured it must have penetrated the cavity wall and I went back and resumed drilling.

Suddenly there was a horrible hissing noise coming from inside the garage.

I pulled the drill bit out of the hole and white smoke started pouring out of the hole! 😱

Went inside the garage and smoke was pouring out the back of the battery 🤬

Several choice words, turned off the inverters and batteries and called 999.

Fire 🔥?

The 999 call handler advised to shut the garage door to contain the fire and we awaited the fire brigade.

Two fire engines, flashing lights, full breathing equipment; something for the neighbours to talk about.

They rigged up their hoses, opened the garage door and prepared to douse everything with water, but lots of white smoke but no flames.

There then proceeded to be a period of time when the fire brigade tried to work out whether it would catch fire or not. Despite me telling them it was a Lithium Iron Phosphate battery, they couldn’t find that term, GivEnergy or anything else they searched for on the database on their tablet.

After a while the battery stopped emitting smoke and the firemen disconnected it from the inverters and lifted it out into the garden. A heat camera showed it was still hot inside but they were happy it wasn’t going to burn the house down so packed up and left.

What happened 🤔?

Inspecting the battery I could see there was a hole punched in the back bottom corner of the battery

And looking in the garage I could see the matching hole in the wall, right underneath where the battery was mounted.

But how?

And then I realised the stupid mistake I’d made, I hadn’t measured the hot tub cable position on each side of the wall. If I had done then I’d have realised that the cable went through the wall at a sloping angle, so when I started drilling underneath the cable from the outside at 90 degrees I was actually directly behind the battery. You can see the hot tub cable coming out of the wall to the right of the battery and I thought my hole would come out underneath it. 😢

What to do next, can the battery be repaired?

After cursing myself several times for my stupidity, next day when the battery was cooled down I took the cover off the front to see if I could see what had happened inside but there was no visible sign of damage.

I phoned GivEnergy support to explain what had happened and ask about options for getting the battery repaired.

Long story short, after a few days they came back and said that there was nothing they could do, no repair option and I should contact my local council about appropriate disposal of the battery 😭.

So I now had a £4000 door stop. And I did this on November 21st as well so winter coming up and we needed the battery for the heat pump, but it looked like my only option was to buy a new one and get it fitted.

Offer of assistance

Couple of weeks later out of the blue I had a phone call from GivEnergy marketing. They’d heard my story (probably was posted on the office wall as ‘stupid things our customers do to our products’) and were interested in it from a marketing perspective. Basically whilst the GivEnergy datasheet for my 9.5 battery explains the chemistry of the battery and that it won’t catch fire, I had proven it in a real world practical demonstration.

In return for my story GivEnergy would give me a discount on a replacement battery. The deal was agreed and a few weeks later I gave a video interview on my story and how despite the damage the battery had made a lot of smoke but hadn’t caught fire.

The new battery was bought from Midsummer wholesale, delivered, and my installers came and fitted it and wired up the EPS connections to the changeover switch.

Job done, but far more expensive than I was planning it to be …

So what was the damage?

A while later I investigated further to see what the damage actually was inside the battery. It could still be powered on but produced a red fault light after its self-test.

Basically I had drilled into one corner of the bottom battery pack, damaging one cell of that pack.

And even more annoyingly if I had been another cm to the right when drilling the hole, then I’d have still penetrated the metal box of the battery but I’d have missed the battery pack/cell completely. I only just caught it.

Postscript

The replacement 9.5 battery works lovely. The EPS provided by the inverter works lovely, we had a power cut the other day and ran the house off the inverter no problem at all. I did have to move the kettle into the hallway to brew a cuppa, but that was a small hardship.

The holey battery is still in a GivEnergy box in my garage and to be honest I’d like to get something done with it. If anyone has (a) any idea about whether its possible to replace the failed cell/pack, it must be a reasonably standard thing, or (b) a use for the battery, then do let me know.

I’ve proven the reliability and safety of the GivEnergy battery, but don’t recommend that you try this yourself.

geoffreycoan The long awaited "confession" 😃

I'm kind of curious about the whole "how to dispose of dead battery" thing.

"Consumer law" suggests its the retailer or manufacturer who is normally responsible for recycling/reusing/setting on fire/whatever 😉 but in your case that probably wouldn't apply. I feel it should for end-of-life batteries but I'm pretty sure nobody has actually made provision for 110kg units like yours/mine.....

Edit - as an aside the white smoke is toxic and that's one of the reasons the fire brigade want areas with batteries to have active ventilation (see previous discussions on "new regs etc").

Poor shot Geoffrey but nice to know. It doesn't look like you actually clipped the second cell as it's relief valve looks intact.
Givenergy don't seem to have an MSDS sheet available for the 9.5 pack which does tell you how to handle accidents but ultimately the 8.2 version would be much the same: https://givenergy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/8.2kWh-MSDS-report.pdf

As for what to do with it, I guess you have a few options - as each module is 8 cells but in 2P4S config you should see around 12.8V (well....from the other 3 none poked modules!) so they would work quite nice if you have a caravan? Slap a 12V BMS on and you're away.

The other option is repair but you'll either need to find:

Someone with an equally failed 9.5 to whip another 8 cell module out of.

Bravely attempt a full repair with replacement cells, You'd have to change all 8 as the spot welded busbars make this "interesting" prospect otherwise. The QR codes on the top (do you have a better pic of those?) will tell you who's and what cells they are but my bet is 102AH EVE cells based on maths and the round terminals, colours & explosion vent shape)

Convert to "low AH" module - careful removal of the 2 melty cells, and the 2 upper left ones plus some creative cutting of busbars and a bit of rejigging of cell orientation would net you the same 12.8V module but at 102AH. I'm pretty sure that would then limit the entire pack to essentially 5.2kWH but I'll have to mull that over.

Vestas geoffreycoan The long awaited "confession" 😃

Yes, mea culpa

hoggy Thanks Hoggy for your thoughts.

I have videos from when I disassembled to see what the battery damage was, here’s a couple of screenshots of the QR codes

I had assumed that the battery cells were pretty standard things, but making them up into the battery modules, spot welding the bus bars on, etc was something done by GivEnergy, so I was unlikely to be able to get a replacement module other than from another failed battery. From the way the conversation went with GivEnergy I think my “experience” was fairly unique.

My guess was that the battery modules were common to different GivEnergy battery sizes, the 5.2 had 2, the 2.6 had 1, etc?

Making up my own battery module with replacement parts, welding busbars onto batteries was not something I fancied doing myself. Have already escaped from one misadventure with the battery ….

But if there is a way to reconfigure what I have so that it is recognised by the BMS and by the inverter, then yes, am interested in that.

I'll need to decide the QR but looks like I was wrong as "03H" is Gotion cells but they do make a 102AH one which I'm lead to belive are what is fitted.

hoggy as each module is 8 cells but in 2P4S config you should see around 12.8V

You're sounding like our very own Andy from the off grid garage 🙂

geoffreycoan I gave a video interview on my story

Where can we see the video interview to this great story.
Very interesting to see the inside of the battery and reassuring to know what could happen.

geoffreycoan so yes they do work out to be Gotion 102ah cells if you stuff those digits into an LFP cell QR decoder (03H-CB-01600-00AGC-5E000-5374)
As they only seem to make one of those then it surely has to be part Number: IFP50160116A-102Ah of which they appear to be readily available still as both weld type (as fitted) and studded type (what you would likely need for DIY repair)

Still this is major surgery, so I'd probably keep an eye out for a water logged 9.5 and hope that the tide mark is lower than atleast the top module and transplant as a block.
Sadly how the cells are laid out I can't see the modules being the same for other sized batteries - the voltages just don't add up correctly - 4x 12.8V modules get you to your 51.2V - if the 5.2 battery simply had only 2 of these modules then it'd only kick out 25.6V.

I'm surprised Givenergy don't have a spare module to transplant, they must surely rebuild these for their refurb/service exhange ones - but they probably don't have the time or appetite to do so.

Robgy is that the slightly crazy German/Austrian guy? I'm going to take that as a compliment.

hoggy I'm going to take that as a compliment

It is.

The most scary thing here is the ignorance of the firefighters. These products have been readily available to homeowners for over 5 years. Firefighters put their own lives at greater risk by not learning about all the hazards they might encounter.

The battery should NOT have been moved AT ALL until 48 hours after the incident.

There is almost zero risk of fire, but the "magic smoke" that escaped is toxic, corrosive, flammable, and potentially explosive.

When dismantling the battery, the 16 sense leads to the BMS must be disconnected first (they should be black, red, yellow, and blue). If you disconnect the cells without disconnecting these first, the BMS can be damaged. If this is the case do not attempt to repair the battery.

If you want to see how explosive the gases from LFP batteries can be, search Youtube for "Gayton Marina".

I'd be drilling out those 4 welds, buy 2 new bolt/stud types cells and bolt them in.

Rubikcube you want to see how explosive the gases from LFP batteries can be, search Youtube for "Gayton Marina".

Just watched a couple of videos for that boat explosion.
One commenter who appears to have detailed technical knowledge of batteries says the over voltage protection failure / cells imbalance within the battery is the main cause of cell outgassing.

geoffreycoan Job done, but far more expensive than I was planning it to be …

Well done for owning up to your "mea culpa"!
In my opinion, you are quids in on the basis that a) you are uninjured and b) your house is still intact!

Talking of fire, did anyone see this video from EVMan

I did struggle to understand what caused it (perhaps something reflective in the house on a hot day). I was multitasking whilst watching so might have missed some of the detail!

The inverter/panels shutdown as it noticed the panels "were a bit hot" (understatement!). The fire brigade sprayed the panels to cover them in a material to ensure they didn't generate electricity given the cables were no longer connected (e.g. hanging down as parts of the cable had been destroyed by the fire).

https://youtu.be/jwMwM11jWv0?si=-L8PEsKc7qicGXvJ

TX200 yes watched the video and it shows the dangers of windows in bright sunlight and items near the window such as mirrors, crystals etc...

Interesting to see the FB had used a spray on the solar panels, I guess that is SOP for them if dealing with a fire during daylight hours.

M_J Mirrors are a common cause of fire/damage, especially the ones which are double sided and have a magnifier on one side. UPVC window frames can be melted quite easily by them.

TX200 perhaps something reflective in the house on a hot day

Whilst possible, there are 2 flaws.

1. It was April. The UK isn't that hot in April.
2. The fire apparently started on the opposite side of the house to the panels. Which, if the panels face south, would be the north side. The sun wouldn't be shining in through the window.

Rubikcube I think they said all the doors were open, so maybe the sun was shining all the way through the front to the back? 🤔😂

Rubikcube

They stated a crystal / dreamcatcher was hung in the window, and focused the sun to ignite the bedding...

@geoffreycoan That 'terminated' 9.5 battery of yours, do you still have it lurking in a shed?

I'm looking for a replacement battery BMS board with 3.6kW capability.... so from a 8.2 or 9.5 battery.

Andrew