Tesla is making money from Megapack Powerpack ESS and sales are also growing more than twice the previous year, so it has become a hot topic, but it is not clear if Tesla is also properly solving the fire problem, which is the biggest problem of ESS.

In the capture below, even the Tesla Megapac installed in Australia did not escape the fire problem, which is the biggest problem with ESS. (Fortunately, it wasn’t a big fire.)

ESS fires are constantly burning every few months in Korea. If you look here, there is a list, and there are so many fires. https://blog.naver.com/5asis/221396897552

The problem is that the ESS fire has been going on for more than 5-6 years, but the cause of the fire has not been properly identified. Not only in Korea, but also overseas, the fire continues. If you look at the following article, more than 80% of the fire cases are unknown. https://biz.chosun.com/policy/policy_sub/2023/06/28/FFGQKUGFIFAVTBK2IMV2MPAWAU/

There are many theories as the cause, but if you refer to engineer TV YouTube, domestic batteries are mainly energy-dense NCM batteries instead of LFP batteries with high stability, and since Korea produces them in the form of NCM pouches, they cannot escape when overheated and gas comes out, and there is a high risk of explosion. (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GaPzMV6zwA , https://blog.naver.com/chcmg2022/223402121784?trackingCode=rss )

And no matter how well batteries are made, if you make millions of them, some of them will be defective, and if you charge them more than 80% of them several times, they will overheat and cause a fire. Even if you look at the cell phone we use, it gets really hot when you charge it at high speed. But wouldn’t the possibility of fire increase beyond overheating if hundreds and thousands of batteries are stacked? If it is currently in place, ESS must have all the fire detection and suppression facilities, but if this happens, the cost problem will continue to increase.

Tesla is using the 2170 cylindrical LFP battery in the mega pack, so it may be seen as a little better in terms of stability than the domestic battery, which uses the NCM-based pouch type.

Actually, I’m not a battery expert, so I think it’s my limit to investigate this much.

However, if LFP is superior to NCM in terms of stability and pouch is inferior to cylindrical or square batteries, it is true that domestic ESSs are significantly less competitive than Chinese-made ESSs before mass production of domestic ESSs made of LFP batteries, and ESS currently installed as domestic batteries always has a fire risk.