About the firm
Energy Forensics Group was founded on a simple premise: the person analyzing why a lithium-ion battery failed should understand — in depth — how it was meant to work in the first place.
Most fire investigators reach batteries from the fire service and learn the technology second. Energy Forensics Group starts from the technology: more than a decade spent designing, building, and maintaining lithium-ion systems, now applied to determining why they fail.
Founder & Principal Investigator
Dustin Herte, CFEI
Dustin Herte has spent his career inside lithium-ion technology. Over more than a decade he has designed, constructed, and maintained battery systems across North America — work that spans individual cells and modules, pack architecture, battery-management electronics, and the charging systems that support them. He serves as Chief Technology Officer of Blue Line Battery, Inc.
That design-and-build foundation is the difference he brings to a fire scene. Understanding how a system is specified, assembled, and controlled makes it possible to reason rigorously about how it failed — why a particular cell vented, how a fault propagated through a pack, and where design, manufacturing, installation, or misuse actually sits in the chain of causation.
As a Certified Fire and Explosion Investigator, he pairs that domain knowledge with the systematic methodology of NFPA 921, the recognized guide for fire and explosion investigations. The result is analysis that is both technically deep and methodologically disciplined — the combination behind a well-supported finding.
Background
Full CV available on request.
Methodology
Findings are only as strong as the process behind them. Every engagement follows the systematic approach of NFPA 921: form hypotheses, test them against physical evidence, and document the reasoning so it can be independently followed.
Secure and document the scene and evidence before anything is altered; establish and maintain documented chain of custody from the outset.
Document burn patterns and fire spread, then work back to the area and point of origin, identifying the device and cell responsible.
Controlled disassembly and imaging of the evidence, with exemplar acquisition and comparison testing where the questions require it.
Develop competing failure hypotheses and test each against the evidence to isolate origin, mechanism, and contributing factors.
A clear written report documenting the basis for each opinion, with support through discovery, deposition, and trial as needed.
Independent by design
Energy Forensics Group is engaged by subrogation and plaintiff counsel pursuing recovery, and by manufacturers and defense counsel responding to a claim. The methodology does not change with the retention. An opinion is only useful if it would hold regardless of who is paying for it — and that is the standard every report is written to meet.
Where the evidence supports a client's theory, the report says so plainly and defensibly. Where it does not, you will hear that early — before it becomes an expensive surprise.
Tell us what happened. We'll be candid about fit, approach, and what to preserve right now.
