DIY Powerwall Builders Are Using Recycled Laptop Batteries to Power Their Homes
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DIY Powerwall Builders Are Using Recycled Laptop Batteries to Power Their Homes
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Re: DIY Powerwall Builders Are Using Recycled Laptop Batteries to Power Their Homes
#2One of the really disappointing things about Tesla is how incredibly proprietary all of their products are. For a company that has such lofty goals as "saving the world", it feels wrong to me for them to then sell DRM cars and unrepairable black boxes. Maybe I'm just too idealistic, but surely if we have an opportunity to create a new market for solar devices why would we decide to recreate the proprietary world of the 1980s? Creating your own powerwall from recycled batteries is a pretty neat hack, and I'd hope that people are publishing free (as in freedom) hardware designs for said battery banks.
Re: DIY Powerwall Builders Are Using Recycled Laptop Batteries to Power Their Homes
#3This sounds like it could be rather dangerous, no? Connecting up a bunch of old lithium cells of unknown origin and using them hard.
I'd also worry about an insurance claim being denied if it burned my house down.
However, I very much approve of the DIY ingenuity and repurposing of old stuff.
Re: DIY Powerwall Builders Are Using Recycled Laptop Batteries to Power Their Homes
#4This sounds like it could be rather dangerous, no? Connecting up a bunch of old lithium cells of unknown origin and using them hard. I'd also worry about an insurance claim being denied if it burned my house down. However, I very much approve of the DIY ingenuity and repurposing of old stuff.
Kind of dangerous seems like quite the understatement, considering the nature of lithium batteries!
It'd be fun to play with something like this for the learning, but I wouldn't actually run one unless it was in its own shed, many dozens of yards from the nearest anything else. Lithium fires are no joke.
Re: DIY Powerwall Builders Are Using Recycled Laptop Batteries to Power Their Homes
#5This sounds like it could be rather dangerous, no? Connecting up a bunch of old lithium cells of unknown origin and using them hard. I'd also worry about an insurance claim being denied if it burned my house down. However, I very much approve of the DIY ingenuity and repurposing of old stuff.
If they're from laptops the cells should be safe (as opposed to unknown new cells from AliExpress which may or may not be to spec); albeit not necessarily at maximum capacity. As long as appropriate protection circuitry is used, I don't see how using then hard would make any difference (laptops use batteries hard too).
Re: DIY Powerwall Builders Are Using Recycled Laptop Batteries to Power Their Homes
#6This sounds like it could be rather dangerous, no? Connecting up a bunch of old lithium cells of unknown origin and using them hard. I'd also worry about an insurance claim being denied if it burned my house down. However, I very much approve of the DIY ingenuity and repurposing of old stuff.
Yes, this is extremely dangerous. I'm sure some of the people mentioned have the expertise to pull it off, but for most this is like building a massive bomb in your garage. There's a reason that 18650s aren't generally sold directly to consumers, in most applications they need dedicated circuitry to be used safely. And that's for brand new cells, it's another story entirely to be using random collections of "old" cells, at various points in their life cycles, different rated capacities, and subtly different chemistry. No thanks!
Re: DIY Powerwall Builders Are Using Recycled Laptop Batteries to Power Their Homes
#7This sounds like it could be rather dangerous, no? Connecting up a bunch of old lithium cells of unknown origin and using them hard. I'd also worry about an insurance claim being denied if it burned my house down. However, I very much approve of the DIY ingenuity and repurposing of old stuff.
Kind of dangerous seems like quite the understatement, considering the nature of lithium batteries! It'd be fun to play with something like this for the learning, but I wouldn't actually run one unless it was in its own shed, many dozens of yards from the nearest anything else. Lithium fires are no joke.
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Re: DIY Powerwall Builders Are Using Recycled Laptop Batteries to Power Their Homes
#8One of the really disappointing things about Tesla is how incredibly proprietary all of their products are. For a company that has such lofty goals as "saving the world", it feels wrong to me for them to then sell DRM cars and unrepairable black boxes. Maybe I'm just too idealistic, but surely if we have an opportunity to create a new market for solar devices why would we decide to recreate the proprietary world of t…
This opens Tesla up to an immense amount of liability with no benefit.
If you want to build your own open source battery storage system, battery management system firmware, and distribute it online (think Backblaze), I'd encourage you to do so. But Tesla has enough to worry about as it is.
Re: DIY Powerwall Builders Are Using Recycled Laptop Batteries to Power Their Homes
#9This sounds like it could be rather dangerous, no? Connecting up a bunch of old lithium cells of unknown origin and using them hard. I'd also worry about an insurance claim being denied if it burned my house down. However, I very much approve of the DIY ingenuity and repurposing of old stuff.
Cells are brought through charge and discharge cycles to test them individually before building a pack.
Re: DIY Powerwall Builders Are Using Recycled Laptop Batteries to Power Their Homes
#10This sounds like it could be rather dangerous, no? Connecting up a bunch of old lithium cells of unknown origin and using them hard. I'd also worry about an insurance claim being denied if it burned my house down. However, I very much approve of the DIY ingenuity and repurposing of old stuff.
The hyperbolic response isn't warranted, as these are nearly identical lithium cells of known origin. Were they all different random cells, or if disassembly were required, then one might catch fire or explode like a small firecracker.
This isn't much more dangerous than putting batteries in a toy car, or putting gasoline into a hybrid.