Fires During EV Charging Are Not Necessarily Caused by the Battery

KatadataOTO – A fire that occurs while an electric car is charging is not necessarily caused by the vehicle's battery. This is because there is a potential for the fault to lie with the EV charger itself.

This was stated by Abdul Rahman Elly, Founder & CEO of Voltron Indonesia, to KatadataOTO earlier today. According to him, many companies do not yet understand the importance of safety when installing EV chargers.

“There's a possibility the problem is with the wall charger installation, not the electric car's battery. It could be from a substandard Miniature Circuit Breaker (MCB) causing it to overheat,” he said.

However, the MCB is a crucial component responsible for cutting off the electrical flow during an overload or short circuit. If this component does not work optimally, safety is at stake.

Photo: 123rf

Sparks hit flammable materials around the vehicle. As a result, the fire could easily grow and spread throughout the house.

“So it's not certain that the EV battery is the main problem,” he then added.

Previously, it was reported that a fire occurred in Pejagalan, Penjaringan, North Jakarta. The incident is suspected to have started when the vehicle owner was charging the EV.

“The fire is suspected to have originated from EV charging in the yard and then spread to burn the building,” said Gatot Sulaeman, Head of the Operations Section (Kasiops) of the North Jakarta and Thousand Islands Fire and Rescue Agency (Gulkarmat), as reported by Antara.

He said that the homeowner was charging the electric car's battery when an electrical phenomenon occurred, causing an explosion. The fire hit paint thinner used for making flower vase accessories, causing it to immediately grow larger.

The cooling process at the fire location was hampered by the presence of hazardous materials such as paint thinner, paint, plastic pellets, and paper. It took Gulkarmat Agency (Sudin) officers 10 hours to extinguish the fire.

Photo: JD Power

A total of 110 personnel were deployed with 22 fire trucks to extinguish the fire. Moreover, the fire location was quite large, reaching 1,680 square meters.

This certainly posed a unique challenge in extinguishing the fire.