A mate of mine, who is into remote control boats is currently counting the cost of putting Lithium Polymer batteries on charge overnight. He woke up to his smoke alarm and a kitchen full of fire, acrid black smoke and a lot of damage. He says the battery was showing a slightly higher voltage than it should have but he assumed it was a glitch. It speaks volumes that you can buy special boxes designed to contain the fire/explosion if LiPo batteries go into thermal runaway. He was telling me as well that another club member had a battery spontaneously combust at the waterside and picked it up and threw it into the water and it literally exploded like a hand grenade in mid air. If he'd been a second slower he'd have probably lost a hand. This technology is extremely unsafe and the batteries have the capacity to go off like phosphorous grenades and it's incredible that governments, in pursuit of money and control are pushing this technology long before it is actually safe to use. You have to wonder why the good old Consumer Protection and Trading Standards folks aren't going ape shit ..... Money perhaps?
