IEC 62619, the safety standard for industrial lithium cells

What the standard defines

IEC 62619 covers secondary lithium cells and the batteries built from them when they are used in industrial applications — a category that includes the stationary storage sold for homes and the larger packs inside power stations. It sets out test conditions and requirements for the cell and for the system around it, and it expects a battery management system to be part of that system rather than an option.

The requirements are written as tests a product either passes or does not: behaviour under overcharge, under short circuit, under forced discharge, under mechanical abuse, and the propagation of a failure from one cell to its neighbours. A maker that cites the standard is saying its product was assessed against those tests.

What it does not promise

It does not say how long a battery will last, how much of its nominal capacity it will return, or how it behaves below freezing. Those are separate figures published — or not published — by the maker, and this site reads them separately.

It also says nothing about a particular installation. A cell assessed to this standard fitted with the wrong cable, the wrong fuse or no isolator is an installation problem, and the standard has no view on it.

What it works with

The standard sits alongside the transport rules that govern how a lithium battery may be shipped and carried, and alongside the product rules of each market. A battery sold in Europe carries a CE mark for the directives that apply to it; the IEC standard is one of the documents a maker may use to demonstrate conformity, not a substitute for it.

On a listing, it usually appears as a line among the certifications, sometimes with a test house named. Where a maker names the standard, the product page reports the name and the source; where it does not, the product page says the certification is not published.