Unsafe batteries continue to pour into homes across Australia and this needs to stop.
For a number of years now governments of both persuasions have and continue to support home batteries to assist in the storage of power. Great news!
Maybe not. As a battery manufacturer of course we want to see this continue but we would like better scrutiny of how this money is spent. It’s simply not good enough to say this battery is CEC approved, therefore safe. The CEC is a not an arbiter of safety and seems to know little about it. Further, governments such as the South Australian Government, offer subsidies to home owners based on the initial amount of storage expressed as kilowatt hours (kWh) a battery can provide. However, this measurement has little to do with how a battery will perform over its life and its economic return.
In other words, the government is paying for unsafe batteries to be installed in homes putting lives at risk. It also fails to understand that day one cell storage is not a reasonable measure of what a battery will economically do for the consumer or state over its life.
Many, but not all, batteries are unsafe not because they are electrically poor or do not have built-in mechanisms to try to stop dangerous conditions occurring but because the chemistry used in the cells is inherently unsafe. A condition known as “thermal runaway” can spontaneously occur which no amount of electronic safety devices can stop. We have all seen this in Tesla cars and in their large scale batteries at Geelong recently. LFP and NMC chemistry batteries are the most common types of batteries which suffer this condition. Other chemistries such as Lithium Titanate (LTO) do not suffer from this problem and are inherently safer.
In a home, such as we have just seen in South Australia (see ABC News), where a battery fire caused $200,000 dollars in damage, a fire can erupt without warning and potentially burn down a house. The obvious question which should be asked is why do governments continue to support companies which use these cells, especially in home battery systems, risking people’s lives including families with children when much safer options exist? Is the weight of funds from the majors so great that governments and the CEC are too afraid of what an investigation will find?
“Safety is paramount but an economic return for the public on their funds being spent on batteries should also be a major consideration when the government spends taxpayer’s dollars.”
Another issue with these chemistries which poorly advised governments and end users continually hand out money for, is their so called storage capacity. Just because a battery has, say 13.5 kWh of storage day one does not mean you will get close to that capacity during its warranted life. Far from it. These batteries degrade with use quite quickly and if used daily to their capacity can be dead in as little as five years. At least one major company, offering a 10-year warranty if the end user allows them access, reduces the upper and lower ends of the cells storage, thereby reducing storage capacity so the cells can last longer. Others offer a “declining warranty” which really means you pay them for a new battery after five years!
Temperature can also reduce the lifespan of a battery, lowering overall capacity, and some even have built in air conditioners which use 20% of their own power to help with this problem.
And these issues do not end there. These same LFP and NMC batteries can only be charged relatively slowly even with large numbers of panels. They can only be charged slowly to avoid damage. Other cells such as LTO can take charging very quickly without damage and thus fill up when there is limited and patchy sun. This allows them to provide a significantly better return of investment to their owners and indeed to the State.
Other costs which home owners and governments should consider is the cost of disposal of these batteries and short life span they will last. Safety is paramount but an economic return for the public on their funds being spent on batteries should also be a major consideration when the government spends taxpayer’s dollars.
Batteries can profoundly help consumers lower their overall costs of electricity. They can be very safe and should last for more than 20 years. It’s high time governments who spends our money held a proper investigation into the safety of home batteries with a view to ensure both the health and the wealth of all are maintained and improved.
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