Or see any downsides?
We all have heard about home fires started from power tool battery charging fires.
How about gutting/disabling an old micro wave, SS would be ideal, slap a working smoke detector on top, drill a hole for a power cable in a good spot, locate in garage/non living space(?) and place your battery charger inside, plug into a GFI, and use it to charge your power tool batteries?

Like the idea here. The doors close securely. But what about any heat generated from the charger/battery?
Not sure how hot would get inside after some time charging.

I only charge batteries when I'm in the shop. I bought a used, small, fire-proof paint storage cabinet and when I'm not there the batteries go in that.

Everyone wants to make a big deal out of charging batteries, but how big a problem is it?

How many go up in flames as a percentage of how many exist?

Note, EV are a whole nother story.

well, the percentage may be low...but it's never a problem untill it happens to you.

.
I've never seen a fire that was a result of a full-size batter charger at work, but cheapie trickle chargers are a whole different category of bad.

We have a member here that lost his whole garage and car a decade back if I remember correctly with a power tool battery charger.


But then I'm the guy who wears a seat belt to drive to my mailbox.

Rhino

It was a battery tender plugged into a gf recep, tending his batteries. It was a horrible loss, that said, we don't need to see the pictures for the hundred time. Rhino, please, no offense.

Old school here with no battery powered tools, and still dragging the extension chords all over.

A few years ago..
I had a Battery Tender short out, but fortunately I caught it in an early stage.
Funny thing was the whole case was totally warped and out of shape, being an electronic engineer I knew the battery tender had shorted out internally. I did call Battery Tender's tech support line and reported the issue, spoke with staff and asked if they wanted me to ship it back so they could review/evaluate why it shorted out doing a failure analysis but staff said that wasn't necessary...
The staff did send me a new one and I tossed the defective Battery Tender into the dumpster. And then about a week later I got a panic call from one of Battery Tender's executive staff, he asked me to send the defective unit back, but I told him that their staff told me they didn't want it returned. The executive then asked if I recalled the staff's name and I said no, he was very concerned as this situation could have triggered all kinds of product liability issues. If the defective unit had started a fire and the insurance company investigation confirmed the fire was due to the Battery Tender then Battery Tender Corp. would have been liable for all of the damages...
i don't know if the Battery Tenders are made in China, but it made me very apprehensive about using any more of their products.


Just my $0.02...

Yes I'm aware of that event. But my point still stands, how big a problem is it? 1 in 10,000,000 ? 1 in 100?

How many of us have cell phones? How many have gone up in flames?

I think it may make a difference what type of battery we are talking about. Most people use lithium ion rather than the old nicad batteries.
Probably also makes a difference on what kind of quality control the manufactures use, IE Harbor freight compared to Dewalt,Milwaukee etc. As for the percentage the manufactures probably know but won't revile the #'s. I don't charge anything that i am not around in case something does go wrong.

YouTube is full of these videos.

https://youtu.be/8nz5ijXcckI?si=3BquVhbkoPhtpz1b

Good to know I'm not the only one.

I like the idea of being as fire-safe as you can, especially with things that contain a ton of energy like that.. batteries, fuel, volatile chemicals..

Heat and Smoke detectors save lives for sure.. The thing to be aware of is this: An alarm will only alert those at home, those who can hear it, and get out, which will save their lives.
If you also want to save the property when nobody is home, go with a central alarm system and a monitoring company.

I had reason to talk with our Fire Dept about fire safety and prevention recently.... They advised all the basic things: Heat, CO and Smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, etc..

.. The fireman on the phone concluded with this bit of information: "The most common source of a fire these days.. is the thing nobody expected."
- Art

I have all my workshop outlets on a switch by the door. When I leave I turn off the lights and the outlets.

No problems anymore.

I initially did this so my kids couldn't accidentally turn something on that might hurt them. They are all grown up and moved out now and I still use it.

I did a similar thing on all my lower power 120V outlets in my shop, but used a 4hr rotary timer.