The battery charging area: what a camera should check there
A faulty connector, cardboard against the charger, a rack too close. The charging area is one of the best-documented fire origins in a warehouse, and one of the easiest to watch.
The forklift charging area is an ordinary place: chargers on the wall, a few sockets, floor marking. It is also one of the best-documented fire origins in a warehouse. The ARIA database of the BARPI records a fire attributed to a defective connector between a forklift battery and its charger; the operator then scheduled annual thermographic inspections.1 At Grand-Couronne, on 16 January 2023, lithium-metal-polymer batteries stored in a rack went into thermal runaway and started a fire that took the warehouse.2
Between those two cases lies everything the ICPE inspection checks once a year in that zone, and that nobody looks at the rest of the time.
What the inspector checks, what the site forgets
The requirements that apply to warehouses ask that battery charging happen in a dedicated zone, separated from combustible materials, ventilated, with extinguishing means reachable. In the life of the site, that zone drifts:
- cardboard or stretch film leaned against the charger “for now”;
- a pallet of returns stored in the clearance zone because there was no room elsewhere;
- a charging forklift parked across the access to the extinguisher;
- batteries or portable tools charging on a workbench, outside the planned zone.
None of these deviations triggers anything. They last for hours, take two minutes to fix, and come back the next day. That is precisely what an annual inspection records, and what an existing camera sees every day.
The “battery charging area” task
In Camly, the charging area is one of the most direct safety tasks to write, because the rule is simple and the image stable. The site describes the expected state in plain language, names the camera and the zone, and the agent checks at regular intervals.
| What the site writes | What the agent checks | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| “No combustibles in the clearance zone of the chargers” | Cardboard, film, wooden pallets, waste in the marked zone | First: the most frequent non-conformity |
| “Nothing stored in the charging area” | Pallets, containers, equipment placed in the zone | First |
| “Access to the extinguisher clear” | Object or forklift in front of the extinguishing point | Second |
| “Occupancy of the zone” | Number of forklifts charging versus charging points | An indicator, not an alert |
| “Abnormal light or smoke at the charging point” | Secondary signal, to be confirmed by the fire safety system | Secondary, never a substitute for fire detection |
Every deviation becomes an episode: a start, an end, a duration, the image, the camera. The monthly report says how many times the zone was obstructed, for how long, and at what hours. That is the line the HSE manager needs for the risk assessment document (DUERP), and the piece the works council and the insurer ask for.
“What is at the charging station right now?”
The second use is simpler still. Camly’s history can be queried in plain language from the chat. A team leader closing the site can ask what is at the charging area now, or whether it was obstructed this week, and get an answer with the image and the time, without opening the video system. Questions about an employee are refused by design; answers talk about places and objects.
What Camly does not do
It has to be repeated, because the charging area is a fire topic:
- Camly does not detect the start of a fire and does not replace the fire safety system, the detectors or the sprinklers. The “abnormal light or smoke” signal is a secondary clue, not a detection.
- Camly does not see a defective connector. The thermographic inspection that the operator in the ARIA case put in place remains the right tool for that.1
- A periodic check catches what lasts. It does not replace the rule, the charging cabinet or training.
Where to start
Go and look at your charging area at 11 a.m., then at 4 p.m., and note what is there that should not be. If the answer is not “nothing” both times, you have your first task. It takes a camera that sees the marked zone and the chargers, a sentence written with the team, and thirty days: that is the scope of a Camly pilot.
Sources
- BARPI / ARIA: fire attributed to a defective connector between a forklift battery and the charger, followed by annual thermographic inspections; BARPI notes on warehouse accidentology. aria.developpement-durable.gouv.fr, BARPI note (PDF)
- BEA-RI, report on the Highway France Logistics 8 warehouse fire, Grand-Couronne, 16 January 2023 (March 2025). report (PDF)