A very close call. My wife heard it go up. Fortunately we had a fire extinguisher close by (bloody smoke alarm didn’t go off though! 
)
Could have been a very different scenario. Running a LiPo way too low and poor battery management led to this.
Thermal runaway is very, very real.
Fire safe charge box ordered and arriving tomorrow! (Along with a replacement extinguisher)
Time to start the clear up. 
Holy crap!
Was a reasonable quality 1500mah LiPo that was plugged into a 100w charging station (again not mega expensive but not the cheapest option)
My main thought is this…
Got far too overexcited chasing @Jase_MK and ended up juicing it completely.
I’m reading it as you didn’t do a balance charge? So it didn’t pick up the bad cell?
Yup. Can’t explain to myself why atm either. I usually always balance charge, of course 
Crikey…anyway…lots of ammo boxes on EBAY…drill a couple of small holes for charger wires…think I might invest in one… 
Well…I did invest in one @ £16. Use for charging and storage…at least I will sleep easier! IF you are considering these then ensure they are advertised as NEW…a lot are not and are dented with slight rust and some cost more than the new ones!..
Put some holes in the top as well, to allow the escape of gasses/pressure, otherwise you have a bomb !!
Yep…thats for sure!! 
I too use an ammo box for storage. Not too sure about the wisdom of drilling holes though. A lipo fire would jet out of any holes at around 1000C, instant blowtorch. They are designed to contain Military grade ammunition.
I fitted a Lipo charging station in April this year. A Log Burner, absolutely ideal.
This might help
Reading some of the stories about LiPo has me worried. I bought 2 TP-Link rechargeable USB power packs, TL-PB15600. Thought I’d check to see what battery types they are and according to TP, they’re LG LiPo. The brief slip of paper that came with them, nor the box, didn’t mention what type they are. Never noticed them auto discharge and a power bank isn’t something I’d expect to have to charge before use!
I’m hoping there’s some decent smart technology in the packs to prevent them being a danger.
Lipo batteries are perfectly safe if used and cared for correctly.
The power banks, like DJI batteries and smartphone batteries would have technology within them to make sure they are cared for correctly without any room for user error. But like anything that technology can fail but it’s rare.
The lipo batteries we use for the RC hobby haven’t got that technology and it’s up to the user to know what they are doing and how to care for and look after their batteries. The case above was due to the battery being discharged below the recommended voltage and therefore killed one of the cells and the user accidentally put it on a charge cycle without the balance option enabled on his charger this caused the overall voltage to be lower than expected once the 3 good cells had reached full charge because of the dead cell still reading 0 volts. The charger then carried on charging the 3 good cells over the max voltage resulting in the fire. Had the charger been set to balance charge the charger would of detected the dead cell and stopped the charge cycle.
How are you today @DaveJaVu ?
Blood pressure come down a bit?
Cleanup operation underway?
Genuinely frightening though. Imagine if you’d gone out, or worse, gone to bed?
Doesn’t bear thinking about 
Jesus! That’s me buying some lipo safe bags!
To add to Deano’s great reply it’s worth also noting that most, if not all, Powerbanks use low power outputs, in the range 2Amp (10watts) to 5Amp (25Watt). The charging power of these devices is also in the 10Watt range. The power output of Lipo’s used for our quads and planes are in the 100’s to 1,000’s Watts of output, they are capable of dumping all that power in milliseconds and thus the reason they can destroy themselves so dramatically.
I’m not a fan of Smart Batteries as the manufacturers, such as DJI, Parrot, etc, manufacture them to be proprietary even though they all use the same technology, but they do have excellent safety measures built into them that prevent the situation that @DaveJaVu unfortunately encountered.
Yeah that’s the downside to the smart batteries. They are designed to fit only one quad unlike hobby lipos, that fit many.
I have a 4 cell lipo that will fit on any of my 5inch FPV quads. The only restrictions really is the size weight and capacity. These need to be the right balance to get the best performance.
I use a hand grenade case for charging and also have a smoke alarm placed above it. The smoke alarm came in handy when I got complacent with some little 350mah 4s batteries, charged them just on the bench and got the settings wrong. Heard the alarm and fortunately due to the size I was able to literally just blow out the flames.
For normal lipos, however experienced, knowledgeable and careful you think you are just assume that they’re going to burst into flames at some point during the charging cycle, look at your setup, try to imagine the worst case scenario and then try to mitigate it.
There are a few exceptions. When 3DR stopped supporting the Solo they released all the code to the community. This means that even though Solo batteries are now no more you can use any LiPo or L-ion battery pack on the Solo with a simple Battery management mod that still provides all the protections the original batteries had.
The battery supplied with the Connex Falcore I recently purchased has a proprietary locking system for its batteries, but Amimon supplied empty battery cases so you can use your own 4s 1400mAh to 1800mAh LiPo Packs with the quad.
Still in the same vintage time domain the Yuneec Q500 used proprietary packaged LiPo’s but I can use any 3s 5500mAh LiPo in it with a simple 3D printed accessory.
I’m wandering again, need more coffee.
