Another Battery Fire in AT&T's Network

An anonymous reader writes "AT&T has disclosed another fire started by one of the 17,000 Avestor batteries in its broadband network. The first fire caused a violent explosion in suburban Houston. This second incident occurred just 20 miles away."

Comments

Re:Wow

[gratemyl]

Don't be silly - nobody would make an unreasonable conclusion that this was a terrorist attack - after all, everybody knows that Al Qaeda planned this attack so carefully that nobody would notice.

Re:Why that kind of battery?

[zeromorph]

You have to distinguish between two types of lead-acid batteries and then the whole thing is not that optimal anymore.

With wet-cell lead-acid batteries you'll get evaporation and resulting loss of capacity. Beside that you have a precipitation of lead(II) sulfate that can ultimately kill your battery.

With maintenance-free (sealed) batteries like Valve Regulated Lead Acid batteries you do not get these problems but you could get thermal runaway and they do explode. Gel-batteries are less inclined to explode but especially older ones do that too.

On the other hand lithium metal polymer are said to "have service lives as long as 10 years, under ambient temperatures from -40C to +65C."