On Saturday, January 7, 2017 at 7:54:32 PM UTC-8, wrote:
We had a member place a similar level of faith in his FES to that shown above, using it to climb away from unlandable terrain. The system powered up and climbed away as advertised - initially. During the climb, the battery overheated and the FES shutdown, as it's designed to do, to protect the battery and ultimately, the aircraft. The pilot was now at moderately low altitude and presented with an unexpected outlanding (startle factor) over terrain that hadn't been assessed for such (complacency / over reliance on FES). A successful outlanding was achieved in that the pilot walked away unharmed. The glider was extensively damaged.

[snip]
CJ

CJ, can you give us more detail about this incident? This is the first FES failure I've heard of. You said the FES had to be shut down at "moderately low" altitude, which suggests it didn't run for very long. It's surprising that it could overheat so quickly. How long did the FES run before the shutdown? What was the OAT at the time? What altitude MSL did it fail at? Was the battery damaged? Was there any smoke or burning smell? Has the manufacturer or owner inspected the FES system since the incident?

-Ben