Heads up on a Battle Born battery safety issue

[jfabernathy]

I just saw a warning of an overheating issue with Battle Born batteries. Will Prowse's DIY Solar Power Youtube channel posted it 9 hours ago. Check your setup if you use Battle Born.

video link

 

[Gmlexus]

I just spoke to Battle Born’s tech support on this. Understandably they are getting a lot of calls on it. They said a couple of things, one, that is a very old battery and they said that a lot of times those conditions may be caused by battery overheating. There are a lot of DIYers that install this stuff and might not know what they are doing and you also have to be diligent and check everything once in a while to make sure nothing has come loose. So the first thing to do is make sure your system is installed correctly with the adequate wire gauge and everything torqued down properly then feel your wiring and see if there are any hot wires. He said in the factory they put 100 amps thru those batteries and neither the battery or the related wiring gets hot. After that if there are any problems call Battle Born/Dragonfly and talk to them. These batteries have a 10 year warranty and I have personally had an issue with mine (not related to this issue) and they replaced all 6 batteries, no charge, no questions asked. In my opinion this YouTuber is a bit irresponsible. He should have some qualifiers about what he is talking about before totally crucifying a very reputable company and getting everyone all excited about what could be a very isolated case.

 

[jfabernathy]

Glad you are not experiencing any of these issues with your batteries. Battle Born has been a respected vendor for years. Will has reviewed Battle Born batteries and has been to their factory. In fact when he started tearing apart cheap junk batteries he compared them against his gold standard which was at that time Battle Born.

Will is an interesting YouTuber and I follow him for his entertaining way of showing DIY solar and battery installations. As an electrical engineer, I appreciate his testing methods overall and not necessarily in this particular video.

My intent for the OP was just to have people check to make sure their install was not over heating.

 

[R.S.O'Donnell]

Lots of people are making hay over Battle Born’s response to the design of the positive battery connection to the busbar. Tom Morton addressed it in this year old video. Scrub forward to about 10:30.
We have six of them in our Montana, three in our truck camper and had two in our class C. No issues with any of them. I installed mine with appropriately sized copper cables and copper ends crimped with a high a quality crimper.

 

[mlh]

If you have a loose connection on a battery, in your home or camper it can overheat. With only one bolt holding the connector with any movement it will come loose. They should have used those bolts. They used two nuts to prevent it from coming loose but it WILL still come loose.
I’m just an old machinist but they do have a serious problem with no way to fix it.
Lynwood

 

[ChuckS]

Watch his updated video regarding this .. at around 2.30 into the video you will see the arcing

 

[Route 66 Rambler]

It's a YouTuber not the manufacturer. Trust the source not social media.

 

[R.S.O'Donnell]

I've seen his video and his other video from six years ago where he did a teardown and praised the batteries and (unlike Tom Morton) totally missed the positive post design. Apparently it's doing exactly what it was designed to do if the post gets hot to prevent thermal runaway. Can't find any reports of BB battery fires so if it were a systemic problem I'm sure they would have come up.