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Would you not install the battery in a heated place in your house (garage, basement, furnace room)?
by giarc 12y ago
Would you not install the battery in a heated place in your house (garage, basement, furnace room)?
- danielweber 12y agoWhat if it's in the garage and someone hits it with the car and pierces the cells? I didn't see "insurance" anywhere on that Tesla page. Ideally my insurance company won't pitch a fit about about me installing this in my house, but will Tesla guarantee that?
- jws 12y agoDoes your insurance company allow you to keep one liter of gasoline in your garage? It has the same energy content as the Powerwall, is insanely flammable, is frequently implicated is home fires, and regularly causes human deaths. (Ok, a burning lithium battery will release more energy than its storage capacity, but I'm not finding a nice reference, Tesla knows all about containing cells to prevent chain reactions, and one liter of gasoline is still enough to burn down your whole house.)
- danielweber 12y agoGas fumes are very flammable, but the gasoline itself will flow down and out of my garage, and the fire would be very easy to contain with a simple garden hose. A gas can also will not light on fire just because it gets hit with a car. It would take malicious use of a gas can -- splashing it on a wall and then lighting it on fire -- to match the default configuration of a Powerwall.
- jws 12y agoOr a vapor reaching an open flame. Common source of human immolation.
- warfangle 12y agoYou ever try to put out a gasoline fire with a garden hose?
- dragontamer 12y agoWhile you are correct, you can at least snuff out a gasoline fire. Lithium fires do not require oxygen, so your typical Class ABC fire extinguishers won't actually work on it. You need a class D (dry powder) extinguisher, which is very rare and expensive.
- viewer5 12y ago> Lithium fires do not require oxygen I thought fire is by definition a combustion reaction, meaning some kind of material reacting with oxygen. What's fire, then? (I feel like a little kid, having to ask that...)
- TeMPOraL 12y agoSome substances bundle together their oxygen source (think of rocket fuel, or napalm), so they don't need to consume it from air.
- tedunangst 12y agoGenerally, a fast exothermic reaction. Oxygen may be the most popular oxidant, but not the only one. Lots of stuff burns in pure chlorine gas, for instance.
- CamperBob2 12y agoIt's possible for something to burn hot enough to split water molecules apart. I don't know if lithium metal qualifies, but that could be what the MSDS is referring to.
- warfangle 12y agoWhile true for lithium fires, a venting lithium-ion battery is not a typical lithium fire. According to the MSDS for lithium ion batteries, fires involving them can be extinguished with a typical ABC fire extinguisher. Lithium batteries (not the rechargeable kind) are the ones that need a class D extinguisher. Edit: > CO extinguishers, halon or copious quantities of water or water-based foam can be used to cool down burning Li- ion cells and batteries. Do not use for this purpose sand, dry powder or soda ash, graphite powder or fire blankets. > Extinguishing media Use water or CO2 on burning Li-ion cells or batteries http://www.uscg.mil/hq/cg4/cg432/docs/msds/MSDS_LiIon.pdf http://www.uscg.mil/hq/cg4/cg432/docs/msds/MSDS_LiIon.pdf
- feld 12y agoI don't think you use the same gasoline as the rest of the planet if that's your experience.
- kbenson 12y agoIt's common advice not to leave rags that have gasoline on them sitting in your garage because in enough heat the fumes from the evaporating gasoline will combust. Gasoline is very volatile, we've just gotten fairly good at managing it.
- danielweber 12y agoedit: my karma https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=9471929&goto=threads%3Fid%3Ddanielweber https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=9471929&goto=threads%3...
- danielweber 12y agoedit: my karma http://i.imgur.com/rjNrXTc.gifv http://i.imgur.com/rjNrXTc.gifv
- CamperBob2 12y agoModeration is pretty weird in this thread. I got voted down for pointing out that the US power grid is likely to experience problems when entire residential neighborhoods full of Tesla owners try to charge their Model S at once. I don't think many people around here understand (a) just how efficient gasoline really is at storing energy, and (b) just how much energy is used by a typical passenger car.
- Spooky23 12y agoTalk to your insurance people. Usually when you have expensive items, you can get a specific rider for it. For example, a friend had a rack with about $80k of servers in his basement a few years ago. I believe he paid an additional $400 for coverage.
- edwhitesell 12y agoI have the opposite problem: Living in Texas, my garage easily gets above 110F many days during the summer (it would be crazy to pay for A/C in it). But, I'm also not going to put the battery pack(s) "inside" my house (e.g. utility/laundry room).
- NickM 12y agoBut, I'm also not going to put the battery pack(s) "inside" my house (e.g. utility/laundry room). Why not? The whole point to making it wall-mounted is that it won't take up any substantial amount of space. A utility/laundry room seems like exactly the logical place that you would want to put it.
- hammock 12y agoFire hazard
- giarc 12y agoI doubt many homes would have adequate fire separation between a garage and main home to make a difference between laundry vs garage.
- edwhitesell 12y agoIt may not make much of a difference from the overall perspective of damage, but it certainly makes a difference in warning and escape time. Also, the chance of dangerous fumes while trying to escape is lower.
- giarc 12y agoDepends on design. Garage could share a wall with a bedroom and the laundry could be on other side of the house or vice versa. I would say that garage may be the most obvious choice, but not always.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago