Lithium-Ion Battery Fire Risk: Charging and Storage Duties for Victorian Factories

Why this is suddenly on every factory's risk register

Walk a typical Victorian manufacturing or warehouse site today and you will find lithium-ion cells everywhere that weren't there a decade ago: electric forklifts and pallet jacks on overnight charge, cordless power tools lined up on charging racks, e-bikes and scooters some staff use for the last-mile commute and leave charging near the loading dock, and increasingly a battery energy storage system (BESS) feeding on-site solar. WorkSafe Victoria has now issued three dedicated safety alerts touching lithium-ion battery fires, and EPA Victoria has a standing guideline on storing and managing waste batteries. Together they give Victorian manufacturers a genuinely specific basis for a charging and storage policy — not generic "be careful with batteries" advice.

How these fires actually start

WorkSafe's alerts are blunt about the mechanism: "lithium-ion batteries of all sizes can catch fire" when they overheat, and the most common triggers are physical damage and the use of incorrect or incompatible charging equipment. Once a cell goes into thermal runaway, the resulting fire is hard to extinguish and produces toxic smoke — WorkSafe's guidance explicitly tells workers not to attempt to fight a lithium-ion battery fire themselves. Large packs — the kind fitted to forklifts, scissor lifts, and site BESS units — carry greater risk again, because some conventional sprinkler systems aren't rated to control a fire of that size.

What WorkSafe Victoria has told employers to do

WorkSafe's first alert, Lithium-ion battery fires (published 30 August 2023), sets out the baseline controls for any workplace charging or storing these batteries:

• Charge only with an original or approved charger, and inspect equipment and cables for damage before and after each use.
• Set up a dedicated charging area, physically separated from where people work, away from emergency exits, evacuation routes, direct sunlight, heat, and moisture.
• Use "smart chargers" that monitor battery status and cut power automatically if a fault is detected, and provide a way to remotely isolate chargers (e-stops, distribution-board isolators, or disconnection triggered by the fire alarm).
• Don't store or charge removable packs or light electric vehicles in offices or other occupied spaces. Keep equipment in fire-resistant areas — outdoors where practical, or indoors with working smoke alarms and sprinklers suited to a lithium-ion fire.
• Where a conventional sprinkler system's suitability is in doubt, get advice from a fire engineer before relying on it.

WorkSafe's second alert, issued 14 August 2024 after a lithium-ion battery fire forced a hospital evacuation, adds a practical point for any site that swaps batteries in and out of equipment regularly: damage is often caused not by use but by batteries being knocked or dropped during changeover. Its fix is to build a battery-inspection system into the changeover process itself — checking for swelling, leaking, cracks, dents, punctures or crushing — and to limit changeovers to trained staff, rather than relying on administrative controls alone. The alert is direct that the highest level of control available should be applied, not just a procedure sheet.

A third, more recent alert — Safe placement of Battery Energy Storage Systems on construction sites (30 July 2025) — is squarely relevant to any manufacturer running on-site solar with battery storage. It requires at least 3 metres clearance between a BESS unit and occupied areas or access ladders (with fire-rated barriers if that clearance isn't achievable), and warns that BESS explosion-relief panels vent fumes and smoke upward, which can block evacuation routes for people working at height nearby.

Storage and segregation: what EPA Victoria specifies

Where WorkSafe focuses on the workplace and the worker, EPA Victoria's Storage and management of waste batteries guideline (2018, revised December 2021) covers the storage side in more technical detail — and it's directly relevant to any site that stockpiles spent or returned lithium-ion packs before disposal or recycling. Lithium-ion batteries are classified as Class 9 dangerous goods under the ADG Code, and EPA's guideline sets out concrete separation and containment requirements: use UN-approved containers, tape over terminals and loose wires with non-conductive material, cap small packaged battery containers (phone, camera, laptop-type cells) at 30 kg total, and keep stored lithium-ion batteries at least 10 metres from other dangerous goods or combustible and flammable materials — with greater separation again for larger stockpiles, set through a site risk assessment where space is tight. This pairs directly with the controls covered in our guide to dangerous goods storage licensing in Victoria, since a large enough battery stockpile can itself trigger a manifest or licensing threshold.

Damaged or leaking cells need to be pulled out of mixed storage immediately and protected individually — EPA notes a damaged battery can take hours, or longer, to ignite after the damage occurs, which is exactly why a "looks fine, keep it moving" attitude at changeover is dangerous. Damaged, defective or leaking lithium batteries being moved for disposal must be packaged to ADG Code packing instruction P908.

Why this sits alongside your other fire-risk controls

None of this guidance exists in isolation on a real factory floor. A battery charging bay near a dust-generating process should be assessed with the same rigour as any other ignition source — see our coverage of combustible dust explosion risk — and a battery storage area should never double as a chemical decanting point, given the static and spark risks covered in our chemical decanting fire risk guide. Treating lithium-ion charging as its own, separately risk-assessed zone, rather than an afterthought bolted onto an existing storeroom, is the pattern running through all of WorkSafe's alerts.

The legal basis

WorkSafe's alerts ground every recommendation in existing law, not new rules. Under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, employers must, so far as is reasonably practicable, provide and maintain a safe working environment, give employees the information, instruction, training and supervision needed to work safely, ensure non-employees aren't exposed to risks from the employer's conduct, and consult employees and health and safety representatives when identifying hazards and choosing controls. The Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017 add a specific training duty: employees and supervisors must be trained on plant hazards, including hazard identification and risk control processes, safe operating procedures, and — where relevant — the use, fit, testing and storage of PPE.

On the EPA side, the storage duties sit under the Environment Protection Act 2017's general environmental duty (s25), its duty on waste transport (s135), and its priority waste duty (s139), supported by the Dangerous Goods (Storage and Handling) Regulations 2012 and WorkSafe's associated Code of Practice.

A practical starting checklist

For a Victorian manufacturer or warehouse operator, a credible response to this guidance looks like:

1. Map every lithium-ion battery on site — forklifts, pallet jacks, power tools, e-bikes/scooters, BESS — and note its charging and storage location.
2. Designate a physically separated charging area, away from exits and combustibles, fitted with smart chargers and a remote isolation method.
3. Build battery inspection into every changeover, with training limited to competent staff, and a clear "remove and quarantine" rule for anything swollen, cracked, leaking or dented.
4. Apply EPA's separation distances and containment rules to any stockpile of spent or returned batteries awaiting disposal.
5. Update your emergency response plan specifically for a lithium-ion fire: evacuation routes that avoid vents and exhaust panels, and an explicit instruction not to attempt to extinguish the fire.
6. Consult your HSR and affected workers on the resulting procedure, as both the OHS Act and WorkSafe's alerts require.

This article is general information for Victorian manufacturers, not legal advice. Last updated: 18 October 2026.