As you might remember, a while ago, we posted an article regarding the unfortunate events surrounding the death of an Indian IT engineer, who was apparently killed by a blast originating from his laptop. However, it seems that laptops are not the only things that explode, solar chargers can do that as well, since this is the unfortunate event one of our readers went through.
So, a while after the original story was posted, we received a comment from one of our readers called Lyn, who said a few words about going through a similar story, but one involving a solar charger. Since we were quite curious about just how such an event occurred, we contacted our commenter and asked for further information, which Lyn was kind enough to provide.
“We were very lucky indeed as we had been outside for a few hours, loading a skip with old bedroom carpets & I went into my daughter's room to collect washing to be met by a foul electrical fire smell & a lot of blue smoke. The battery had landed on the floor about four feet away from the charger & was burning a hole in the floorboards & a large German 'teddy'. It was too hot to pick up,” Lyn tells us.
However, the fire hazard was even higher, since the main body of the charger in question had “charred the window-frame & various close items.” Apparently, despite being an older device, the charger was still in pretty good functioning condition, since, according to Lyn, it “had been used maybe the day before, or the day before that to charge an iPod - fortunately, it was not in use when it caught fire as I would be considerably more annoyed if we'd lost an iPod!”
Any other possible causes for the fire were ruled out, since “There were no other electrical items on the windowsill at the time, or anything else (such as candles) that could have caught fire first.”
Quite obviously, after seeing all the damage the charger had done, Lyn took the issue up with the respective product's manufacturer, sending it a photo of the damaged charger. The company responded immediately to Lyn, saying that this type of incident had not been recorded before and subsequently offering to replace the burned charger with a brand new one.
On the other hand, it's rather difficult to trust the respective product again, or, in Lyn's own words, “not too sure that I want a replacement!” and we fully agree with her.
P.S. For obvious reasons, we haven't said anything about the brand of the charger in question, but those of you familiar with these products will most likely figure out from the photo exactly what the gadget in question was.
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