All of a sudden! German national battery energy storage system explodes South Korean lithium giant as a supplier!

According to foreign media, on March 3, the German fire department reported an explosion in an apartment building in southern Germany, which was caused by an explosion of a battery energy storage system installed in the basement due to technical defects, followed by a fire in the basement. The shock wave even pushed several doors and windows out and overturned the entire roof structure.

It is understood that a skilled electrician pulled the fuse and removed the battery. "five people wearing fire masks removed the battery from the basement and caught fire again outside," the local fire department said. When it is extinguished, it is put into a bucket of water to cool. "

Fortunately, no one was inhabited in the building at the time of the explosion, so no one was injured. At present, the house is now uninhabitable.

The supplier of battery energy storage system is SENEC.

Seven days after the accident, SENEC, a German supplier of battery energy storage systems, admitted that the products in question originated from the company and responded to the explosion.

SENEC posted a notice to all users on its Facebook that it had remotely shut down all of its home energy storage systems, including three products: SENEC.Home V3 hybrid, Senec.Home V3 Hybrid Duo, and Senec.Home V2.1.

The cause of the incident has not yet been identified, there is no evidence that the battery was the cause of the explosion, and there is no indication that there are any technical problems with its energy storage system, but safety is its top priority, so shutting down the energy storage system is purely a "precaution", SENEC said in the notice.

In addition, SENEC promises to provide specific information about the restart as soon as it has a better understanding of the facts that caused the deflagration.

The battery supplier is Samsung SDI.

Data show that by the end of 2020, the total energy storage capacity of household batteries in Germany has reached 2.3 GWH, and the average size of household battery systems has increased from 8kWh in 2019 to 8.5kWh in 2020. With the increasing scale of installation, the safety of energy storage has been directly related to the personal and property safety of households.

According to the information on SENEC's official website, its battery energy storage products use "Samsung SDI high power density maintenance-free lithium battery". The product profile shows that the energy storage capacity of SENEC.Home V3 hybrid is 4.5 kWh and 9kWh.

Compared with LG New Energy and Panasonic, perhaps most people are not very familiar with Samsung SDI, but it is not a nobody.

Samsung SDI used to be the picture tube production department of Samsung in China, but due to technological changes, it later switched to producing lithium batteries, relying on Samsung's resources, and has made small achievements in the global small consumer lithium battery market, with a market share second only to the leading ATL. But in the field of power batteries, Samsung SDI is significantly lower in terms of revenue and power battery shipments than Panasonic and LG Chemical.

In fact, Samsung SDI began to enter the field of power batteries as early as 2000, and Samsung SDI was also one of the first overseas companies to look at China's electric vehicle market. It took the lead in building a power battery factory in Xi'an in August 2013, and set up a joint venture "Samsung Huanxin" with Anqing Huanxin Group and Xi'an High-tech Group in June of the following year, ready to make a big career.

Unfortunately, it was not long before the Samsung SDI factory opened, because the power battery "whitelist" stopped production, and by the time it resumed production, the pattern of power batteries in China had changed greatly. Slowly, Samsung SDI can no longer be seen in the ranking of power battery loads in China. In the latest domestic power battery installation TOP15 enterprises in February 2022, LG new energy is still strong, but there is no Samsung SDI.

Although slightly bleak in the Chinese market, Samsung SDI achieved more than double-digit growth in 2021, when the global new energy market was booming. Among the top 10 companies in 2021, Samsung SDI ranked sixth, with 13.2 GWH installed, an increase of 55.29% over the same period last year.

Since last year, Samsung SDI has also changed its conservative style and accelerated the pace of production expansion.

On June 15, 2021, South Korean media TheElec reported that Samsung SDI plans to invest 200 billion won (1.144 billion yuan) to expand the capacity of its Malaysian lithium battery factory, which currently makes cylindrical lithium batteries.

In February of the same year, Samsung SDI announced plans to invest 942 billion won (5.39 billion yuan) in its Hungarian battery plant in 2021, which will be used to expand the capacity of the region's first battery plant (from 30GWh to 40GWh) and to build its second battery plant in Hungary.

In addition, in July of that year, Son Michael, senior vice president of Samsung SDI, said that the company would set up a battery production plant in the United States. This means that Samsung SDI will officially enter the US market.

It is worth mentioning that it emerged in October that Samsung SDI was evaluating potential ways to spin off its battery business to ensure adequate funding for investment in the business.

The death of Korean Battery Enterprises

Vike Lithium noted that it was reported in October 2021 that a statistics disclosed by the South Korean National Assembly showed that among the lithium battery fires that occurred in South Korea's electric vehicles and energy storage device (ESS) in the past five years, 32 accidents occurred in LG new energy products, 11 accidents occurred in Samsung SDI products, 1 accident occurred in SK innovation, and 3 accidents occurred in other manufacturers.

According to the statistics, the types of cells are also classified, in which the proportion of accidents caused by the use of soft package battery packs reaches 70.21%.

Specifically, statistics provided by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Resources and the Ministry of Land and Transport to the Korean National Assembly show that among all 47 lithium battery fires in South Korea from 2017 to October 2021, 33 were soft pack battery packs, 12 were square battery packs and 2 were cylindrical battery packs.

Summary

Compared with electric vehicles, there are relatively few fire incidents in battery energy storage systems around the world, but it does not mean that the industry and related enterprises can not take action, and safety problems can not be ignored.

Of course, the energy storage battery market is also ushering in a gratifying change, that is, more products with different technological routes are emerging, such as sodium ion battery, all-vanadium flow battery, iron-chromium flow battery and so on. A common feature of these products is that they are safer.