Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should definitely replace all cells together - a new cell will have a different capacity and could "charge" an adjacent older cell to rebalance, causing a fire (but a good BMS won't allow that - on the other hand you'll be limited by your weakest cells despite having put some new ones in) For me the value proposition would be to avoid what happened with my previous ebike: after 3 years I wanted a new battery as t…
Exactly! That's precisely why we designed the battery, to let people be in control of their own stuff! Our batteries have now be running for close to 3 years on shared mobility ebikes, so they are well-tested indeed! If you want more infos, send us an email at contact@gouach.com :)
Building a 2.5kWh battery from disposable vapes to power my workshop [video]
121–130 of 171 posts
Re: Building a 2.5kWh battery from disposable vapes to power my workshop [video]
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once we have solid state cells I really hope the entire industry moves over to them and we just have solid state, LFP and Sodium Ion, all nicely non combustable chemistries that offer different price, power and weight density trade offs.
Solid-state batteries will never be suitable for all applications, even if they should suffice for the most frequent of them. Batteries with liquid electrolyte will always be able to provide greater power (i.e. greater current) within certain physical constraints. This should not matter for smartphones or laptops, but it should matter for many things with motors.
Re: Building a 2.5kWh battery from disposable vapes to power my workshop [video]
#123Re: Building a 2.5kWh battery from disposable vapes to power my workshop [video]
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A 12 year old i7 server runs my NVR, home automation setup, web server, and network router (not to mention a small handful of other services) without even breaking 25% CPU usage. We could replace so many data centers with old desktops. Replacing concentrated and highly optimized data center servers with 10-1000X as many old desktop computers idling away at 50-100W or more would be a terrible tradeoff. That would ex…
I did the math a few years back on how long you would have to run old machines to (roughly) offset the carbon emissions instead of purchasing new hardware. This included all mining, refinement, manufacturing, shipping and electrical savings from more efficient processors. A big part of this is the very intense amount of energy producing the silicon wafer from Quartz ingots. While they weigh only a few grams of the to…
Re: Building a 2.5kWh battery from disposable vapes to power my workshop [video]
#125The amount of e-waste in general is truly nauseating. My employer just cleaned 30 years of “junk” out of our in house IT “tech shop” and the number of working but obsolete computers that went out (many simply because they couldn’t support Windows 11) is sickening to me. The amount of carbon generated from the mining activities, steel production, etc. that went into producing “obsolete” computers has to absolutely dwa…
"We could replace so many data centers with old desktops." But I assume for way more energy costs? And the manual labour to sort out the different mainboards and make everything interoperable is not free either. But I guess it means lots of opportunity for unconventional low costs projects to scramble things together. Win 10 got another year of support, but I assume next year, even more computers will be avaiable qui…
Re: Building a 2.5kWh battery from disposable vapes to power my workshop [video]
#126Tiny standards in legislation (I'm looking at you EU) around the e-cig designs to ensure simple battery recycling would solve this. Then you make the consumer pay for the battery separately and you are done.
That's still not optimal at all, if they had any imagination we'd have
- standard e-cig bases
- powered by a 18650/AA/AAA depending on the model
- deposit on the consumable part
That way you get rid of single use battery and littering all at once.
Re: Building a 2.5kWh battery from disposable vapes to power my workshop [video]
#127Edit: I'm not saying I have a better alternative, but this system is deeply flawed
Re: Building a 2.5kWh battery from disposable vapes to power my workshop [video]
#128Just curious: if you wanted to do something like that, but prevent a... thermal event, how would you protect an experimental battery realistically? Build a brick enclosure? A fire safe?
Other prevention measures: strict inbound QA on the cells.
That's a lot of work, to the point that if you value your time you are better off buying a factory made pack of a reputable because they will almost certainly do a better job than you will on the safety aspect.
Getting Lithium-Ion packs right (especially larger ones) requires more up-front funds in terms of gear (especially testing gear for large volumes of cells is quite pricey) as well. The only reason I would do another (big) pack is if the form factor or capacity I want is not available at all.
The brief flash of that 'rechargeable powerbank' in the video has so much wrong with it that it isn't even funny and that's before looking inside the pack. All of those crossing wires, brrr. And those modules in the linked video don't look much better. Oh, and he's got one cell group in there with fewer cells (13:26) so that pack will unbalance immediately during charge or discharge. Effectively the whole pack has as much capacity as that one smaller cell group times the number of cell groups. The lack of integrated balancing wires is another puzzle for me, crossing balancing wires is a major headache when building larger packs, you want the very best grade of wiring for that with vibration resistant insulation and some kind of wire guide to ensure the wires can't move or cross. The whole BMS setup looks like an afterthought, rather than that it was designed in.
Oh, no interlock on the two separate breakers for the inverter (configured to work in island mode) and the house power. Wait until someone engages both. You need a transfer switch there, not two separate breakers.
His remark that it all looks 'super dodgy' and that 'I do not recommend anybody ever builds a pack like this' is an interesting one: if you are aware of all that, why do such a crap job in the first place? If you are going to go through that much work you might as well do a proper job.
Meanwhile, this is really just an ad for JLPCB. Running around the house and the workshop at everything working is a bit cringe, it is as if that's just padding to extend the video runtime.
Re: Building a 2.5kWh battery from disposable vapes to power my workshop [video]
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Hello, State Farm? Yes, I'd like to put in a claim for my home insurance. My homemade electrical bomb exploded and my house- hello? Hello?!"
No, the "doesn't matter" issue is that they'll try to deny you when something else starts a fire.
Re: Building a 2.5kWh battery from disposable vapes to power my workshop [video]
#130Tiny standards in legislation (I'm looking at you EU) around the e-cig designs to ensure simple battery recycling would solve this. Then you make the consumer pay for the battery separately and you are done.
Other than criminal enforcement, I'm not sure how you'd meaningfully change the incentives for someone who is willing to throw a £5 electrical device in the gutter because they can't be bothered to take it home, recharge it and refill it with £0.20 worth of liquid.