Information middle fires elevate worries about lithium-ion batteries

Fire is to blame for a modest but substantial range of knowledge-middle outages which includes a March 28 fire that prompted significant damage to a facts middle in France, and an investigation of world-wide incidents highlights ongoing problems about the safety of lithium-ion batteries and their danger of combustion.

The use of lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries in information facilities is expanding. Now normally applied in uninterruptible electrical power materials, they are envisioned to account for 38.5% of the info-center battery market by 2025, up from 15% in 2020, in accordance to consulting business Frost & Sullivan.

Adoption is pushed by Li-ion batteries’ smaller footprint, less difficult routine maintenance, and for a longer time lifespan in comparison to lead-acid batteries. In addition, Li-ion electrical power storage is a critical component in renewable electrical power distribution, in accordance to Uptime Institute, which delivers resiliency products and services, guidance on setting up and running info centers, and certification providers.

Even so, Li-ion batteries present a larger fire possibility than valve-controlled lead-acid batteries, Uptime warns.

The agency observed in its yearly examination of details-heart dependability that 7% of outages have been triggered by fires. (Connectivity problems—which include problems with fiber, community software package, and configuration—are the biggest bring about, responsible for 29% of publicly noted outages.)

“We uncover, each time we do these surveys, fireplace doesn’t go away,” mentioned Andy Lawrence, executive director of analysis at Uptime, in a convention contact to discuss the firm’s new outage analysis.

Fire security has generally been a obstacle when it comes to batteries and thermal runaway, when heat builds up in a battery speedier than it can be dissipated. Over time, the field has gotten a superior knowledge of what will cause thermal runaway in direct-acid batteries and formulated clever charging circuits that enhance detection and avert issues, mentioned Chris Brown, main complex officer at Uptime.

“We figured out a great deal by way of the years with guide-acid batteries. Now, lithium ion arrives onto the scene, and it is a entire distinct animal,” Brown stated.

Weigh the professionals and downsides of deploying Li-ion batteries.

Li-ion batteries burn off hotter than direct-acid batteries, and if the battery-containment device is broken, it doesn’t react nicely with oxygen or h2o, Brown said. “We’re getting that we do not absolutely, truly understand all the failure modes of lithium-ion batteries at the moment, and the charging circuits are not in a position to cope with them all,” he claimed.

As with any battery, when a Li-ion battery starts to burn off, it is difficult to put out. “It’s heading to burn right until it expends all of its power, and just dumping h2o on it doesn’t genuinely enable. It keeps it from spreading, most likely, but it does not aid,” Brown said. “And the point that it burns much hotter than direct-acid batteries [means] it is likely to do a large amount more injury. It is likely to burn off a whole lot extended since it retailers a whole lot extra strength. And so which is the difficulty we’re observing with lithium-ion everywhere.”

In response, area authorities and regulatory agencies are enacting necessities associated to the storage of Li-ion batteries.

Brown suggests details-middle operators pay back shut notice to facility design and style if Li-ion batteries are section of the plan.

“If you are on the lookout at employing lithium-ion batteries, then undoubtedly search at segregating them into their individual battery home,” he said. A battery room must have at least a couple of fireplace-rated walls and ceilings, and operators ought to think about making use of a foam fireplace-suppression system “because at minimum foam will smother the fireplace and help to extinguish it, whilst drinking water is just going to retain it from spreading.”

When asked about the use of dispersed batteries, as opposed to a centralized UPS program with banks of batteries, Brown advises warning.

In the previous, a standard tactic was to clear away each and every type of combustible unit from the data corridor by itself. Now, with distributed batteries getting set up in racks and rack-mounted UPSes, facts-middle operators have to weigh the energy-performance gains of distributed Li-ion batteries versus the hearth challenges, Brown says.

“The fantastic factor is that if it does catch hearth, these are significantly smaller sized batteries, so you may well be equipped to incorporate it to a handful of racks. Nevertheless, there’s heading to be smoke, and in the stop, any racks in that vicinity are heading to suck some of that particles into them. And while it could not trigger failures currently, that is going to guide to untimely failures in the potential.”

Persons need to go into it with eyes broad open, accomplish a cost—benefit assessment, and do what’s finest for them, Brown claims. “But my advice is that you get batteries out of the data hall. That’s the most dependable, most resilient thing you can do.”

Current details-heart fires blamed on Li-ion batteries

Lawrence referred to occasions in which Li-ion batteries are suspected to be the induce of details-middle fires.

One of the most notorious incidents happened in early 2021, when the most significant cloud provider primarily based in Europe, OVHcloud, suffered a catastrophic hearth that destroyed just one of its information facilities in Strasbourg and weakened a neighboring one.

A Maxnod data centre in France suffered a devasting fire on March 28, 2023, and “we imagine it is triggered by lithium-ion battery fire,” Lawrence mentioned.

A lithium-ion battery fire is also the claimed cause of a important fireplace on Oct. 15, 2022, at a South Korea colocation facility owned by SK Team and operated by its C&C subsidiary. The fireplace at the SK C&C details center reportedly started out in a battery home and impacted the operations of  major South Korea tech corporations.

“Most of South Korea endured an 8-hour service disruption. CEOs resigned. Authorities investigations and numerous course-motion lawsuits have been initiated,” Uptime said.

The SK C&C incident took tens of hundreds of servers offline, which include the IT infrastructure working South Korea’s most preferred messaging and single indication-on platform, KakaoTalk, wrote Daniel Bizo, study director at Uptime, in a blog article.

“The outage disrupted its built-in mobile payment procedure, transportation app, gaming system and music service—all of which are applied by thousands and thousands,” Bizo wrote. “The outage also influenced domestic cloud big Naver (the ‘Google of South Korea’) which noted disruption to its on the net research, browsing, media and blogging companies.”

Kakao attributed the trigger of the fireplace to the Li-ion batteries deployed at the facility SK Group has not disclosed its official conclusions.