Reposted from the NoTricksZone
By P Gosselin on 11. June 2021
Just a day before EIKE reported on burning e-vehicles in China, the electric vehicle curse struck in Hanover, Germany.
See video here.
A fire at a bus depot in Hanover caused millions of euros in damage. According to fire fighters, the fire broke out on Saturday afternoon at the Üstra transport company where electric buses were parked,
According to Üstra spokesman Udo Iwannek, the fire caused damage running in the millions. Five e-buses, two hybrids and two combustion engines were destroyed, as were also the building and the charging station.
According to the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), Hanover’s administration wants to run only e-buses in the city center area by 2023 and is purchasing 50 new vehicles in a bid to reduce the air pollution.
E-buses have shown to catch fire very rapidly. For example, four shuttle buses in Guangxi, China, exploded into flames last month:
Scary! Four shuttle buses on a campus of Guangxi, China, bust into flames on Saturday, as intense smoke roaring upward. Luckily, injuries were reported in the incident. pic.twitter.com/worqpY6GHj
— People’s Daily, China (@PDChina) May 16, 2021
It’s really not a good idea to park e-buses close each other.
According to Jörn Künzle at Facebook:
Although fires can happen anywhere, they become critical and dangerous when e-vehicles are involved. An affected battery acts as a powerful fire accelerant due to a chain reaction and must also burn out completely, which can take as long as two days. In February, Kulmbach in Bavaria became the first German city to close underground garages to e-cars as a result.
Regardless of the many question marks behind e-mobility, the city of Hanover is pushing it by hook or by crook, and even more so under its Green mayor Belit Onay.
Numerous technical and practical problems associated with e-mobility are far from being satisfactorily solved. And anyone who is just a little bit familiar with the subject also knows that e-mobility is by no means as good as we are always led to believe, even from an environmental and “climate protection” point of view. And what’s particularly bad is that the left-wing green media are keeping quiet about the event.”
On the Kulmbach, Bavaria, e-vehicle fire, read here.
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Ironic, the battery powered vehicles idea is going up in smoke right before our eyes.
In upside down world that means many thousands if EV bus orders for cities and school districts with borrowed money. Go for it.
Here’s the more scary Guangxi fire with people making a panicked exit
https://youtu.be/-5aNdqZWphY
Notice that fire extinguishers are ineffective.
What kind of idiots drive by a burning vehicle?
That was sardines on toast, just how many people can they get on a bus.
I never heard about this one from Beijing 2017
Beijing EV Bus Charging Station Fire Part 1 – YouTube
What’s wrong with trolleybusses?
They’ve run reliably and much more cheaply for a century.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus
I rode on them many times in Russia and Belarus without any problems at all (except once being caught without a ticket).
You have to stand up wind of these types of toxic fires. Very nasty fumes.
There is an important lesson here. If something is on fire get away from it.
The mantra for those of us that have recreational vehicles nis that you have less than 2 minutes to get out and safely away.
It is just property, let it burn.
There are many causes of vehicle fires, unless you know the root cause all you are contributing is your p
(from above) is your political agenda.
My first motorhome has a gas engine in front and my current is a diesel pusher. With engine in back, an engine fire would not be noticed until there was sufficient smoke to be seen in the rearview mirrors. Same with overheating brakes catching tires on fire.
I have 4 large golf cart batteries powering a 12v dc system and an inverter for a 120vac. Lots of opportunity for a small fire to become a large one .
I have watched videos of RV fires. Fully engulfed in two minutes. Relief valve on the 30 gallon propane tank popping off at 4 minutes.
The point here it does not matter how the fire started or how you store energy.
Some claim fire suppression systems are cheap insurance. Since those systems are more expensive, than the cheap insurance I have; I am skeptical
What I found particularly scary was how fast the fire spread. I hate to think of what would have happened onboard if this had been a fully loaded bus trundling down the road at speed. There would have been many deaths.
Federal regulations in the US still require a hazard warning on any package that contains lithium ion batteries to have a warning large warning label and advising that they can not be shipped by air.
I personally know a hot air balloonist (who has a PE in EE) whose hobby was to set Height and Distance records that nearly lost his life.
He was concerned about the stories of laptops and Cellphone catching on fire so he purposely purchased LiIon batteries that were built for government use to very stringent government specifications on operable temperature range, amperage, use at high elevations, etc. for use with hi communications and GPS equipment. Even after taking all of these precautions, the second time he used it it caught on fire at about 10,000 feet. IMHO, These batterers are still not ready for prime time.
Just a little OT, but part of the overall fire hazard of the Green New World:
https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2021/06/09/accidental-roof-fire-solar-panel-system/
Wonder if Amazon will have a fire sale?
PV system fires can be caused by improper grounding; the fires are very different from AC power systems because the DC current does not fall to zero twice per cycle. I have seen pictures where the burning propagates along the string wiring.
Might be a lot cheaper and reliable to install trolley buses because these do not need batteries. But I hear you cry “These need electricity generated from fossil fuels” and I reply “Where does the energy to recharge batteries come from?”
A little technical information for you.
ALL (re)chargeable batteries use / have a chemical reaction in order to store power: the electricity used to charge is converted into chemical energy, and that conversion is never going to be 100% efficient. The energy going in that can’t be converted to chemical storage is turned into heat (this according to physics: the conversation of energy: what goes in must all go somewhere, and what’s not used for the intended process goes into something else and in almost everything, that is heat).
ALL (re)chargeable batteries also use / have a chemical reaction to extract the power. The chemical energy is converted back to electricity, and this process is also not 100% efficient. Therefore when discharging to extra power, some of the stored chemical energy is converted to heat.
These phenomena are easily measured, for example using a thermal camera, on batteries of any kind when they are being charged or discharged.
What matters with batteries is to ensure that the heating is kept within acceptable limits, because ALL (re)chargeable batteries have this thing called thermal runaway.
NOW, given the physics is understood due to the universe and materials being imperfect, the next thing to understand about all batteries is:
Thermal runaway is what makes all batteries dangerous. This includes your old fashioned NiCd as well as the more modern Lithium.
To quality that: Some battery types are so robust that in practice you will never see this be an issue (for example, Lithium Ferro Phosphate); however they are not used in vehicle applications because their energy storage density is low.
High energy density = more storage in a given physical size, compared to a battery of a lower density. Nobody wants massive batteries, with their volume and weight, when smaller does the job more effectively.
The trade off is that high density is more prone to thermal runaway as well as other things like physical fragility.
The effect of thermal runaway is like a chain reaction:
An energetic battery fire, once started, is pretty much all over in a matter of minutes.
The danger temperature is one deep inside the cell, not on the outside, and once exceeded it is like a tipping point: there is no return.
The reason these fires are so hard to put out is: you need to do 2 things to stop these kinds of fires:
And the trouble is – the cells of the battery are BOTH the fuel source, and the source of heat. Removing both is very very difficult.
The modern suppression agents help a little, for small fires involving few cells.
For large fires, with hundreds or thousands of cells, in a battery bank under vehicle seats or floors, the difficulties associated with using any suppression system or modern material is the amount of suppression agent needed (and its prohibitive cost), and access in a timely manner to the place where the cells are located .
This all fits into the category of vexing problems. To some degree the issues can be managed using a lot of very good monitoring circuitry and having fail-safe systems shut off charge / discharge if temperatures get too high. Fundamentally, rechargable batteries are dangerous things and wishful thinking does not make them less dangerous.
I would never have a Lithium battery power wall or similar storage product mounted on my house, and never ever ever on an interior wall, not even in a garage. It’s only a matter of time before houses are destroyed by these things going up in flames.
As far as transport vehicles go – it would seem to be very early days. Perhaps one day the technology will improve.
Recall those photos of things like the Tesla giant battery farm built in South Australia? Now you know why there are many small huts, separate from each other.
I think Wellington in New Zealand replaced their fleet of electric trolley busses, which were great BTW, with e-busses and were a complete failure IIRC.
Heh… I’ve been perturbing to no end a climate kook over on CFACT who was bragging about his Tesla… claimed it was “over 90% efficient!”.
Except Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and DOE show that the efficiency of the US grid system is 34.83%:
… the Tesla charger is rated at 92% efficiency at 240 V / 24 A and 94% efficiency at 240 V / 40A or 80A, the Tesla battery has a maximum efficiency (energy in:energy out) of 90% and minimum of 80% (dependent upon age and use), and the Tesla vehicle has an overall drivetrain efficiency of 93%.
That gives a ‘fuel to wheels’ efficiency of:
100 * .3483 * 0.94 * 0.9 * 0.93 = 27.1088856% “fuel to wheels” efficiency, which is comparable to an ICE-powered vehicle.
So when charging his 100 kWh battery, assuming charging from 50%, he’s burning 184.4414 kWh worth of fuel, assuming maximum efficiency all along the line.
Now, he lives in Illinois, where 27.3% of electricity is generated by coal-fired plants, meaning that 50.3525 kWh worth of his energy is coming from coal… he’s essentially driving a 100% coal-powered car, and burning an additional 134.0889 kWh worth of fuel from other sources just for the fun of it.
He hates it. LOL
That, combined with my warning him not to park his vehicle in the garage or charge it in the garage, while showing him story after story after story of vehicles that have burst into violent flames in a matter of seconds (just as we saw for those buses), burning the structure as well… well, it’s got him feeling blue and more than a little paranoid about his coal-powered fire trap vehicle. LOL
Nice analysis
On the same A-to-Z basis, IC vehicles are about 20% efficient
You have to go from oil well to wheel, or from coal mine to wheel, or from forest to wheel, etc
Regarding EVs, for moderate climates, about 17 to 18 percent is lost due to charging the batteries, and running various ON BOARD systems at the same time.
For cold climates, charging is slower, less efficient and ON BOARD uses more.
If you want long battery life with minimal degradation, operate between 20% charge and 80% charge at all times; it is most efficient. Use a regular IC car for long trips.
How do we know an e-bus can’t catch fire when in use?
Electric trains work because they are fed electricity and don’t have batteries. Battery powered airliners opens up a bigger can of worms (imagine).
No sane airline is going to pay the costs for hauling the dead mass of a huge battery from city-to-city.
E buses are not a good idea. FTFY.