He has powered his house for 8 years using laptop batteries

Looks like awful lot of work to create such battery packs. I guess next step is to automate general assembly and dissasembly of battery packs via some smart AI robotics.

Re: He has powered his house for 8 years using laptop batteries

#6

Post by Cthulhu_ » Tue, May 27, 2025, 9:01 AM UTC

jiri wrote: post #5

Looks like awful lot of work to create such battery packs. I guess next step is to automate general assembly and dissasembly of battery packs via some smart AI robotics.

Try it manually first, can't automate a process if you don't know the process yet. That will prove the business case too, with a lot less upfront investment.

The problem is that it doesn't scale; unless you have quality and reliability guarantees on the batteries, you won't be able to sell it in anything but unregulated markets, meaning that demand will always be low and investments in "smart AI robotics" will never earn themselves back.

Re: He has powered his house for 8 years using laptop batteries

#7

Post by xnx » Tue, May 27, 2025, 9:01 AM UTC

55 days ago | 278 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43548217

Re: He has powered his house for 8 years using laptop batteries

#8

Post by ta1243 » Tue, May 27, 2025, 9:03 AM UTC

randomtoast wrote: post #4

aaaiaiaiooaiia wrote: post #3

[flagged]

I used an AI to rewrite the article in a more interesting manner and suited to my needs.

There's basically nothing in this page other than "someone put some batteries together"

Re: He has powered his house for 8 years using laptop batteries

#9

Post by desman » Tue, May 27, 2025, 9:04 AM UTC

I've been thinking about similar setups with lots of batteries as I have excess energy I can generate during the day and a lot of otherwise barely usable space in my attic. Fire hazard is my major concern. How do you make sure old (or even new) batteries don't do their usual thing, especially if they are in an environment with unstable temperatures and scarce monitoring?

Re: He has powered his house for 8 years using laptop batteries

#10

Post by christkv » Tue, May 27, 2025, 9:11 AM UTC

desman wrote: post #9

I've been thinking about similar setups with lots of batteries as I have excess energy I can generate during the day and a lot of otherwise barely usable space in my attic. Fire hazard is my major concern. How do you make sure old (or even new) batteries don't do their usual thing, especially if they are in an environment with unstable temperatures and scarce monitoring?

This is my main problem with having a battery in the house. Once sodium based batteries and compatible inverters get on the market I might switch them out to lower the risk of catastrophic failure and losing the whole house.