Thanks for the update .Building my battery now after 8 months of collecting and testing . Will be purchasing thermal camera soon .The documentation of your battery process has been a great help.
These were used cells when they were assembled? And after 3 years 4 from 80 cells - 5% failure rate of used cells in service in this setup for 3 years...not bad I reckon.
18650 magic. Such a universal battery cell to work with. Clip set looks awsome deffently need to not bridge and get a better in and out way to operate for removals and replacements im sure it will happen soon! Your a genuis man great work !
@@HBPowerwall so on a slightly different note how f'ed are the regs going forward for self install of home batteries or is the whole issue a non starter from the get go ?
I'm starting to change my feeling on them. Been asking around and an 'Australian Standard' is seeming like it's just like an RRP at the supermarket for a can of beens. BUT with the issue of if someone dies etc your more liable - So I CAN do what I want just have to do it in an inviroment that's safe & secure.. How ever I COULD be wrong..
i guess the main thing is these cells are an unknown and as such should be treated acordingly only thing is nobody really knows how to treat them really..
I use fuse wires for the ussies with high current shorts. I fuse all my cells (both sides) with 36AWG tinned copper and have proven them to work just fine if you slowly ramp up the current to over 5A but if you suddenly start a 5A load they will pop. this is at 4.2 V and will do more A at over voltages. But When I had accidentally shorted a pack of 80 cells it blew them all which was neat to see happen and great for Pack safety where there was little heating of the pack as a whole and cause more issues. The real only way to detect heater cells in production is to use thermal camera that will take snapshots regularly
@@HBPowerwall Yes under the plate used to join the series together usually on the vent end which likely suggests they were overcharged at some time in their life or the vent malfunctioned. These were all manufactured Bus batteries some of the cells were totally disconnected.
You have missed an important point - one on the cells was 3.7v then when you tried push DMM probe harder it suddenly started to show lower voltage 3.5v and later even lower - 3.3v, as all the rest sells in the block. So it actually looks like a bad "fuse-wire" soldering issue and when you started to push cells, the connection partially and later fully has been recovered, so the more charged cell started to dump it's energy to fully discharged ones, so its voltage dropped and it naturally started to heat up because of high discharge current. As there a few sells has been involved and it's hard to track on video what is what, I cannot say for sure, but looks like not all the cell were actually bad.
Yeh, it was replaced, watched the raw footage over and over, nothing I saw should cause it to show that inital voltage other than my DMM was playing up.
Thank you very much for sharing your experience. I have got exactly the same setup as yours from salvage battery packs. I just welded mine instead of soldering. How long this battery worked in your power wall before cells dead completely?
I don't know the actual age of all the cells in cell56 as they do get rebuilt when needed. Given the number of Sanyo cells means it's an older battery but not as old as the batteries that use the flat copper busbars so maybe 4-5 years old or at least in service. As for how long till its totally dead - that would be when the maintance time and effort becomes too frequent
@HBPowerwall my point is , solder with fuses is better ?, than spot weld with nickel stip without fuses? ... because I know that fused nickel strip from battery hook up , but is very expensive delivery for Europe 🇪🇺 ... what will be your advice ... soldering with fuses or just weld it with 0,15 nickel strip with my kweld ?
Nickel *wire* - 26 gauge? I do plan to get a Kweld in the fairly near future, and hope to build up somewhat smaller batteries of this general type for “emergency” use to run medical devices during (longer) power outages.
Apt entry to 'Pete's Garage'. Do you not keep a spare pack you can throw in? I want to set up dual (half) packs so that the system stays up when 1 half pack is is removed
9:29 i love how a basic thermal camera shows the overwhelmingly obvious issue - if only fuse wire could double as a thermistor for the same price, can you imagine? heat data on every cell in real time?
That thermal camera was my best ever investment in this whole project. Must be plus 5 years old now.. I use it to fix consoles, phones & even computers sometimes. Data on every cell would need a heck of a computer to run it hehe information over flow!
How would a commercial version of this type of battery bank catch this? I would guess the whole bank would throw a heat error and the only option would be mass replacement?
As a large, 18650 powerwall operator with Batrium.... do you think this kind of heater situation will be visible as a sagging pack in Batrium - e.g. Batrium is adequate as a 1st line of warning? I ask because I don't have any way to do thermal imaging on the cells in my 18650 battery bank.
Yes, in my case you can SEE when a cell has an issue, heat/voltage - that's enough for you to see that something isn't right and make a physical check of the battery. You can buy a cheap IR temp reader or even use some IPA on a cotton tip to wipe each cell you can reach and watch how fast it evaporates
hi mate.. nice to have you back on what we all know... lolol and love.. stay well ?????? I'm coming over next aug . might just pop in say .... good da mate hows it going .. lolol till then buuuuy
I guess the battery is turning into a resistor, and that reduces the current, ie, less chance of a blown fuse - lol -. You could snip the fuse and check the current to the main wire to know what the draw is for a heater, but I bet it will be far from the fuse wire rating.
Have you considered using thermal fuses on cells? I'm building a pack with a 60C thermal fuse attached to each cell, in addition to a current fuse. Yeah it's a lot of work but you don't really have to worry about heaters anymore. Several hundred of those thermal fuses would cost only a few euros when bought from China.
Im starting to believe, that those Tesla cell level fuses only have a purpose , when another Tesla rams another Tesla’s battery pack .. it clearly doesn’t stop thermal runaway’s.. and how on earth is a 18650 cell hanging on a wall going to dead short.. that is a impossible thing ,whit out something denting it from the outside inwards .
@@HBPowerwall indeed, it looks like Tesla did it to get that pack setified for insurance reasons , it’s more a weak point than a benefit. They burn as well whit, as whit out . Elon could have saved us the trouble years ago.. 🤪🤛..
Hi Pete, hope you are well. Some random on facebook mentioned that you are decommissioning your 18650 powerwalls because of heating and age? is this true? Hope not.
Not at this point, but given the opportunity I would - they batteries have reduced in capacity but still very much useable many years later.. Who would have thought I get this many extra years out of old laptop batteries.
@@HBPowerwall great stuff. If I get 5 years plus I will be happy. will invest in a thermal camera before the final hook up. I have found your videos inspirational even if I am late to the party and everyone else seems to be using lipo. I get my laptop batteries for free so be silly not to carry on with them. They will all be in my shed so worst case scenario is that i burn down the shed (shouldn't)
@@HBPowerwall good lad, stand the vigil and watch that mixed cell bank, so does this mean ur gonna tolerate swapping out cells for ever?? are u going to replace the heater cells b4 they burn up or wait until they r a heater?? chop chop with the next vid... hahahaha
It is not recommended to build a battery with old cells. Specifically, the lower capacity cells go to zero volts before the other cells, which causes it to heat up. The heat melts the plastic separator within the cell and shorts the battery internally. Then the cell will not charge, and will heat up when charging, and could cause a fire.
@@HBPowerwall - More "power" to you. :) I've watched your videos for several years and just marvel at your insistence on using thousands of the smallest possible battery to create a stationary home energy storage solution. It's like building a huge tower out of tongue depressors...fascinating, but the wrong application, given the availability of much safer and more robust building materials.
Clever using a Thermal imagine camera ! A must tool I would say. But, how about using one of those lazer pointer guns instead of forking out for a thermal camera? Have you had any experience with one of those please Pete ?:)@@HBPowerwall
Is this ok for a battery build??, this is my first build of a 3s 7p with bms using repckr , just need someone with good knowledge to confirm Capacity: 15454 Divergence: 0 Deviation: 52 2263 2261 2241 2225 2176 2149 2139 Capacity: 15454 Divergence: 0 Deviation: 39 2262 2241 2211 2208 2206 2189 2137 Capacity: 15454 Divergence: 0 Deviation: 69 2285 2265 2254 2242 2155 2140 2113
Thanks for the update .Building my battery now after 8 months of collecting and testing . Will be purchasing thermal camera soon .The documentation of your battery process has been a great help.
Invaluable tool
These were used cells when they were assembled? And after 3 years 4 from 80 cells - 5% failure rate of used cells in service in this setup for 3 years...not bad I reckon.
They were all old laptop batteries pulled from the recycle bin.. stunning result really.
@@HBPowerwall Gotta agree.
18650 magic. Such a universal battery cell to work with. Clip set looks awsome deffently need to not bridge and get a better in and out way to operate for removals and replacements im sure it will happen soon! Your a genuis man great work !
It think the method works well and If I wasn't filming it would have taken 20-30 min instead too a day or three with capacity testing & stuffs..
I missed this content. Glad to see an update 😅
10x longer to complete with a camera in hand, hoping the old youtubes misses it too! hehe
good to know ongoing maintenance
Can't have this sort of battery with out maintance.
@@HBPowerwall so on a slightly different note how f'ed are the regs going forward for self install of home batteries or is the whole issue a non starter from the get go ?
I'm starting to change my feeling on them. Been asking around and an 'Australian Standard' is seeming like it's just like an RRP at the supermarket for a can of beens. BUT with the issue of if someone dies etc your more liable - So I CAN do what I want just have to do it in an inviroment that's safe & secure.. How ever I COULD be wrong..
@@HBPowerwall might be a topic for a short video ??
i guess the main thing is these cells are an unknown and as such should be treated acordingly only thing is nobody really knows how to treat them really..
Great for education, glad I got an off the shelve product
Ooh if you wanted an education in solar/battery this will do it.. least off the shelf you have all the advantages of insurance & warranty :P
What gauge wire was used that runs across each 3.7 pack that is soldered on the nickel and then connect with the small bus bars?
Why you go 1p pack instead of one 14s ? Thin wires, easy to expand. Just interresting as drone pilot
harder to maintain..
Peter mattews you know best, check for heaters after a full charge!! You wouldve saved yourself some time for sure😊
love the reenactment
it wasn't perfect reenactment, but close enough :P
I use fuse wires for the ussies with high current shorts. I fuse all my cells (both sides) with 36AWG tinned copper and have proven them to work just fine if you slowly ramp up the current to over 5A but if you suddenly start a 5A load they will pop. this is at 4.2 V and will do more A at over voltages. But When I had accidentally shorted a pack of 80 cells it blew them all which was neat to see happen and great for Pack safety where there was little heating of the pack as a whole and cause more issues. The real only way to detect heater cells in production is to use thermal camera that will take snapshots regularly
Heaters I even found some in my Lifepo4 bus batteries, the thermal camera is a must.
ooh really you have LifePo4's at different heat? Would that be different IR?
@@HBPowerwall I blamed it on corrosion
on the terminals?
@@HBPowerwall Yes under the plate used to join the series together usually on the vent end which likely suggests they were overcharged at some time in their life or the vent malfunctioned. These were all manufactured Bus batteries some of the cells were totally disconnected.
You have missed an important point - one on the cells was 3.7v then when you tried push DMM probe harder it suddenly started to show lower voltage 3.5v and later even lower - 3.3v, as all the rest sells in the block.
So it actually looks like a bad "fuse-wire" soldering issue and when you started to push cells, the connection partially and later fully has been recovered, so the more charged cell started to dump it's energy to fully discharged ones, so its voltage dropped and it naturally started to heat up because of high discharge current.
As there a few sells has been involved and it's hard to track on video what is what, I cannot say for sure, but looks like not all the cell were actually bad.
Yeh, it was replaced, watched the raw footage over and over, nothing I saw should cause it to show that inital voltage other than my DMM was playing up.
One minor criticism of the re-enactment - you missed the Lego brick on the floor the second time round....
HAHAHAAH
Thank you very much for sharing your experience. I have got exactly the same setup as yours from salvage battery packs. I just welded mine instead of soldering. How long this battery worked in your power wall before cells dead completely?
I don't know the actual age of all the cells in cell56 as they do get rebuilt when needed. Given the number of Sanyo cells means it's an older battery but not as old as the batteries that use the flat copper busbars so maybe 4-5 years old or at least in service. As for how long till its totally dead - that would be when the maintance time and effort becomes too frequent
in some other your video you answered on one comment " soldering is dead " why you still solder and using that type of build ?
Do I don't have to completely remake the battery, Can't really spotweld to a soldered battery. Lesser of two evils
@HBPowerwall my point is , solder with fuses is better ?, than spot weld with nickel stip without fuses? ... because I know that fused nickel strip from battery hook up , but is very expensive delivery for Europe 🇪🇺 ... what will be your advice ... soldering with fuses or just weld it with 0,15 nickel strip with my kweld ?
Nickel *wire* - 26 gauge?
I do plan to get a Kweld in the fairly near future, and hope to build up somewhat smaller batteries of this general type for “emergency” use to run medical devices during (longer) power outages.
I would like to know how many storage locations your batteries have.
four why?
Thank you boss!!!
Any time
Apt entry to 'Pete's Garage'. Do you not keep a spare pack you can throw in? I want to set up dual (half) packs so that the system stays up when 1 half pack is is removed
I used to, but don't want to collect and test so many new cells, so just replace what is broken most times, As time passes that'll have to change.
9:29 i love how a basic thermal camera shows the overwhelmingly obvious issue - if only fuse wire could double as a thermistor for the same price, can you imagine? heat data on every cell in real time?
That thermal camera was my best ever investment in this whole project. Must be plus 5 years old now.. I use it to fix consoles, phones & even computers sometimes. Data on every cell would need a heck of a computer to run it hehe information over flow!
How would a commercial version of this type of battery bank catch this? I would guess the whole bank would throw a heat error and the only option would be mass replacement?
Yeh, don't think this style would work at all commercially, clients want plug and play - not plug and pray!
@@HBPowerwalla Filipino co worker would say it's F@ck and play lol.
As a large, 18650 powerwall operator with Batrium.... do you think this kind of heater situation will be visible as a sagging pack in Batrium - e.g. Batrium is adequate as a 1st line of warning? I ask because I don't have any way to do thermal imaging on the cells in my 18650 battery bank.
Yes, in my case you can SEE when a cell has an issue, heat/voltage - that's enough for you to see that something isn't right and make a physical check of the battery. You can buy a cheap IR temp reader or even use some IPA on a cotton tip to wipe each cell you can reach and watch how fast it evaporates
hi mate.. nice to have you back on what we all know... lolol and love.. stay well ?????? I'm coming over next aug . might just pop in say .... good da mate hows it going .. lolol till then buuuuy
Give me a heads up when you're in the area, i'll put pants and shoes on! lol
1:55 do NOT cut the green wire!!! 💣
😆
What voltage do u charge up to daily ?? 3.9v 4v? 4.1 ?
I've always charged to 4.13v on this battery bank. At the farm (next video likley) is 4v
Watt is your bms + equalizer brand
www.batrium.com
I guess the battery is turning into a resistor, and that reduces the current, ie, less chance of a blown fuse - lol -. You could snip the fuse and check the current to the main wire to know what the draw is for a heater, but I bet it will be far from the fuse wire rating.
This is a great video - just turned on notifications.
Awesome! Thank you!
Have you considered using thermal fuses on cells? I'm building a pack with a 60C thermal fuse attached to each cell, in addition to a current fuse. Yeah it's a lot of work but you don't really have to worry about heaters anymore.
Several hundred of those thermal fuses would cost only a few euros when bought from China.
Yeh we did all those tests back in the day, but if I have a heater I don't need a fuse to keep reseting hiding the issue.
@@HBPowerwall thermal fuses dont reset, just melt. think your thinking of self resetting thermal trips, but often mistranslated as fuse
@@lezbriddonправильно ли будет подключать нагретый элемент снова когда он остынет? Ведь он снова нагреется и однажды может не сработать защита.
Im starting to believe, that those Tesla cell level fuses only have a purpose , when another Tesla rams another Tesla’s battery pack .. it clearly doesn’t stop thermal runaway’s.. and how on earth is a 18650 cell hanging on a wall going to dead short.. that is a impossible thing ,whit out something denting it from the outside inwards .
Fuses are for human fuckups, do nothing for the battery just sitting there.
@@HBPowerwall indeed, it looks like Tesla did it to get that pack setified for insurance reasons , it’s more a weak point than a benefit.
They burn as well whit, as whit out .
Elon could have saved us the trouble years ago.. 🤪🤛..
Hi Pete, hope you are well. Some random on facebook mentioned that you are decommissioning your 18650 powerwalls because of heating and age? is this true? Hope not.
Not at this point, but given the opportunity I would - they batteries have reduced in capacity but still very much useable many years later.. Who would have thought I get this many extra years out of old laptop batteries.
@@HBPowerwall great stuff. If I get 5 years plus I will be happy. will invest in a thermal camera before the final hook up. I have found your videos inspirational even if I am late to the party and everyone else seems to be using lipo. I get my laptop batteries for free so be silly not to carry on with them. They will all be in my shed so worst case scenario is that i burn down the shed (shouldn't)
Well Pete, at least u check it daily..... better make sure u keep on checking them b4 thermal runnaway incurs..... :)
I have the @Batrium watchmon toolkit up on a screen all day long, it's the first thing I look at in the morning and last thing at night.
@@HBPowerwall good lad, stand the vigil and watch that mixed cell bank, so does this mean ur gonna tolerate swapping out cells for ever?? are u going to replace the heater cells b4 they burn up or wait until they r a heater?? chop chop with the next vid... hahahaha
It is not recommended to build a battery with old cells. Specifically, the lower capacity cells go to zero volts before the other cells, which causes it to heat up. The heat melts the plastic separator within the cell and shorts the battery internally. Then the cell will not charge, and will heat up when charging, and could cause a fire.
Yeh, but my battery is 6 years old and all I could afford back in the day.. This is the exact reason I do maintance and look after my time investment
Yes, so building a hard-use battery needs to have *serviceable* modules - modules that can 1) be repaired, 2) monitored, and 3) tested.
16 of the 280-AH prismatic cells, one BMS, and a 48v inverter...permanent solution.
I'd need 64, be a heck of an investment so hoping these hold out for another few years
@@HBPowerwall - You're saying you need 57Kwh worth of battery storage? Why?
Well on paper have 110kwh now here :P
I use energy in order to be comfortable.
@@HBPowerwall - More "power" to you. :)
I've watched your videos for several years and just marvel at your insistence on using thousands of the smallest possible battery to create a stationary home energy storage solution. It's like building a huge tower out of tongue depressors...fascinating, but the wrong application, given the availability of much safer and more robust building materials.
remember to turn manual cloack back for normal time (winter time)
cloak ? of invisability lol ment to say clock
In Brisbane we are blessed with no Daylight savings if that is what you were referring too
@@HBPowerwall yeah daylight saving
very interesting, I must get a thermal camera 👍
You should
Clever using a Thermal imagine camera ! A must tool I would say. But, how about using one of those lazer pointer guns instead of forking out for a thermal camera? Have you had any experience with one of those please Pete ?:)@@HBPowerwall
lol warned you 5-6 years ago this was the head ache you were heading into by mix matching different brand/model cells etc.....
That was always the case, but a few hours every month or three it isn't so bad and for the ROI still well worth the effort!
@@HBPowerwall P's I have stopped finger blasting grannies and just stick to choking chickens these days....As you can see :)
ooh fuck, I'm totally disappointed! lol
Hot stuff ❤️🔥
Bit warm!
Is this ok for a battery build??, this is my first build of a 3s 7p with bms using repckr , just need someone with good knowledge to confirm
Capacity: 15454
Divergence: 0
Deviation: 52
2263 2261 2241 2225 2176 2149 2139
Capacity: 15454
Divergence: 0
Deviation: 39
2262 2241 2211 2208 2206 2189 2137
Capacity: 15454
Divergence: 0
Deviation: 69
2285 2265 2254 2242 2155 2140 2113
👍💪✌
well I would need ALOT more than 16 and a large new investment, and not a permanent solution but YES you have a solid point still.
@@HBPowerwall 🤣👍
wtf the reply went into the right place...lol
Ya 🔋 video
😜😆😉
@@HBPowerwall honestly of been capacity checking a aaa battery and I love it 😂
:P
What gauge wire was used that runs across each 3.7 pack that is soldered on the nickel and then connected with the small bus bars?
32awg-36awg