RobotRisk Autonomous Systems Incident & Risk Register
RobotRisk / LG Energy Solution / 2019-04-19

APS McMicken (Surprise, AZ) battery explosion injures four firefighters

S4 · 04/19
2019 · 20:00 MST · LG Energy Solution · Surprise, AZ, USA

Record

CompanyLG Energy Solution
Categoryenergy storage
Typefire
Date04/19
2019
Time of day20:00 MST
LocationSurprise, AZ, USA · APS McMicken battery storage facility
SeverityS4 (serious injury, total loss, or grounding)
Scale1 site, 4 firefighters injured
Confidencehigh
VerificationYes - adversarially checked against the cited source
SourceIEEE Spectrum

What happened

A lithium-ion battery rack using LG Chem (LG Energy Solution) cells at the Fluence-assembled McMicken 2MW/2MWh BESS in Surprise, AZ entered thermal runaway; when firefighters opened the container door, accumulated gas ignited, severely injuring four firefighters (broken bones, internal bleeding, brain injuries, burns), two of whom never returned to work.

LG Energy Solution record context

Entries by year and severity

122019 S3: 12019 S4: 12192025 S4: 12025 S5: 1225
S1S2S3S4S5

By incident type

By severity

LG Energy Solution vs energy storage alternatives

energy storage context

energy storage: entries by year

252019 S3: 22019 S4: 24192020 S3: 11202022 S2: 11222024 S2: 11242025 S3: 32025 S4: 12025 S5: 1525
S1S2S3S4S5

energy storage: failure modes

energy storage: most entries

fire context

fire: by category

fire: by year

fire: severity profile

Comparable fire events in energy storage

SevDateCompanyEvent
S32025-11-23Eos Energy EnterprisesFire at Eos Energy's Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania manufacturing facility
S32025-09-23Tesla EnergyTesla Megapack battery fire burns for hours at Boulder City solar facility
S42025-01-16LG Energy SolutionMoss Landing 300MW BESS fire (Vistra) destroys facility using LG Energy Solution cells
S22024-09-05FluenceSDG&E Escondido, California BESS fire 'well managed' by Fluence-supported response
S32019-10LG Energy SolutionSouth Korea ESS fires linked predominantly to LG Chem/LG Energy Solution battery cells
S32019-09-19EnerSysFire at EnerSys Richmond, Kentucky motive-power battery plant
S42019-04FluenceAPS McMicken (Surprise, AZ) battery explosion injures four firefighters

Other LG Energy Solution entries

Also from Critical Systems Analysis: CSA - functional safety engineering · Company directory · FSTalent - functional safety jobs