Multiple solar battery fires reported at homes in Germany and Austria

What happened

In the second half of September 2023, pv magazine reported five fires involving batteries connected to residential photovoltaic systems: three in Germany and two in Austria. On 29 September in Kleinkahl, a fire service report said a technical malfunction blew up the power storage unit of a photovoltaic system in a single-family home. The room housing the unit was affected. Firefighters put out the fire, cooled the battery in a container and used fans to clear smoke.

Nobody was injured, but the home was uninhabitable because of smoke and soot. Images were said to suggest the battery may have been an LG unit; that was not confirmed in the fire service account. On 19 September in Kochel am See, firefighters found a heavily smoking battery in a basement technical room, described as presumably from a photovoltaic system. It was disconnected, taken outside and cooled in water. Residents were away and nobody was harmed.

On 26 September in Ehrenfriedersdorf, the fire service gave medical care to two people and a nearby highway was closed. It did not disclose the origin of the storage unit. On 24 September in Altach, Austria, a shelter and an attached building in an allotment garden, with an agricultural vehicle inside, were fully alight. No injuries were reported. The cause was reported as a defective photovoltaic battery storage unit at the rear of a caravan.

The same day in Feldkirchen, Carinthia, a cellar fire followed a loud bang. A local report suggested a short circuit in a photovoltaic system may have ignited the batteries. The storage model was not clear, and one resident was taken to hospital with smoke inhalation.

Contributing factors

The reported factors differ by incident and are not all confirmed. Kleinkahl was described as a technical malfunction of the storage unit, and Altach was attributed to a defective photovoltaic battery. Feldkirchen was only suggested as a possible short circuit. The origin of the Ehrenfriedersdorf unit was not disclosed. Any link to LG rests on images from one scene and is not established.

Lessons learned

1. A residential storage fire can leave a home uninhabitable through smoke and soot even when nobody is hurt.
2. Where crews identified the unit, they isolated it and cooled it outdoors in a container to limit reignition.
3. Product identity and cause were not established for every fire in this cluster, so a headline link to one maker should not be treated as a finding.

Source

pv-magazine-australia.com