Alibaba Cloud struggles after blaze at Digital Realty Singapore datacenter

At least a portion of Chinese web giant Alibaba's online services have been disrupted by a fire at a Singapore datacenter following what's said to be an Li-ion battery explosion. Singapore media reports the blaze started Tuesday morning, local time, in the battery room of one of the datacenter's buildings. A spokesperson for …

[CowHorseFrog]

i predict that lithium battery factories and buildings with lots of batteries like datacenters will become the new target in tomorrows wars.

Today Ukraine is targetting oil refineries, if China invades Taiwan, its pretty obvious what will be the targets.

[UnknownUnknown]

Or with car parks underneath/

[Anonymous Coward]

Exploding lithium-ion batteries

When lithium-ion batteries are near fully discharged, one of the cells can go to zero volts. Current forced through the cell can cause it to undergo a permanent chemical change. On next recharge, the cell overheats, emits smoke and catches fire.

Something like this happened on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Roughly 96 cells at 3.7 volts per cell in series parallel configuration providing 24 volts. The batteries caught fire on the ground presumably when charging. The cure being to run a pipe to the outside of the hull from the battery compartment.

[CowHorseFrog]

Re: Exploding lithium-ion batteries

Batteries rarely go anywhere near 0volts. An empty battery is not zero volts its simply at the lowest safe voltage for that chemistry.