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South Korea ESS fires linked predominantly to LG Chem/LG Energy Solution battery cells

S3 · 10/2019 · LG Energy Solution

Record

CompanyLG Energy Solution
Categoryenergy storage
Typefire
Date10/2019
Time of daynot documented
Locationno physical site (recall / fleet-wide / aggregate record)
SeverityS3 (recall, enforcement, or fleet-wide fault)
Scale17 of 27 national ESS fire incidents
Confidencehigh
VerificationCited source on file; not independently re-verified
SourceETNews / Korea Times

What happened

Of 27 energy storage system fires in South Korea by Oct 2019, 17 involved ESS units equipped with LG Chem (now LG Energy Solution) batteries; a government-led investigation team concluded 4 of 5 fires in an Aug-Oct 2019 cluster were probably caused by battery malfunction, which LG disputed.

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
S32019-09-19EnerSysFire at EnerSys Richmond, Kentucky motive-power battery plant
S42019-04-19LG Energy SolutionAPS McMicken (Surprise, AZ) battery explosion injures four firefighters
S42019-04FluenceAPS McMicken (Surprise, AZ) battery explosion injures four firefighters

Other LG Energy Solution entries

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