Lithium-ion battery fire disrupts South Korean government data centre in Daejeon
EIR-1177Provisional entry. Confirmed: a single broadcast report describes a lithium-ion battery fire at the National Information Resources Service data centre in Daejeon that caused sequential thermal runaway within about two minutes and knocked out more than 700 government computing systems. Not yet confirmed: the exact date, the system capacity and operator, casualties, emergency response and any investigation findings. Next update: 23 September 2026.
Reported in September 2026, a broadcast report describes a fire involving a lithium-ion battery pack at the National Information Resources Service facility in Daejeon, South Korea, which the source places in September of the previous year (2025). According to the report, sparks flashed across the battery pack and the fault progressed into sequential thermal runaway within about two minutes, paralysing more than 700 government computing systems. The report does not give the battery capacity, the operator, the emergency response, or any casualty figures. The same report describes a national requirement, in force since 2024, for all energy storage systems in South Korea to transmit charging and discharging data, including 75 data types such as cell temperature, voltage and current, to the Korea Electrical Safety Corporation for 24-hour remote monitoring. The corporation states that remote management has prevented 355 cases that could have escalated into large-scale fires, and the report cites an example in Dangjin, South Chungcheong Province in September 2024 where a sudden fall in charge rate and cell voltage was detected while the site operator was unaware that fine smoke was already rising.
Not established. The source reports only that sparks appeared across the lithium-ion battery pack and that thermal runaway then propagated within about two minutes. No technical root cause or investigation findings have been reported.
- Battery systems supporting critical facilities such as data centres carry the same thermal runaway risks as utility-scale storage and merit equivalent monitoring and separation.
- Transmission of cell-level voltage, current and temperature data to an independent monitoring body can reveal anomalies that site staff have not noticed or have not acted on.
- Propagation from a localised fault to full thermal runaway can occur within minutes, so detection and isolation need to be automatic rather than dependent on manual observation.
Published 2026-09-22. Written from public reporting. Descriptive, not investigative. See the data accuracy disclaimer.