Leaking Electrolyte from Bigbattery Powerblock

Will Prowse said:

Yeah it's sooooo hot out here ? and he posted a photo of me in shorts? Why don't people just Google search "las vegas weather" instead of creating conspiracy theories. I don't get it.

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That picture of agave or whatever plant in your yard had me fooled.

Will Prowse said:

I have tested a lot of batteries over the last 9 years, and I have not had a leaking cell. I personally do not think it was a quality control issue. Those cells were bought from NEC as "new cells", but who knows what happened to them during that time. I dont know. Mr. green doesn't seem to know considering the shock he has had from the leaking cell. I personally have no clue why they are leaking, and I am still trying to figure it out.

Never did I draw a conclusion, and I took them off my recommended battery list. Considering how many times I have been pissed off at big battery in my past videos, some of these comments do not make sense. Have people not seen my videos?

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I hear you loud and clear. I hope this story ends with no more leaking cells delivered to anyone from Big Battery. I am curious as hell why they leaked in the first place. I just don't know what to think about this. If the vent is constructed properly, and they are, a cell should not leak even if held upside down.

Different manufacturers say different things for various configurations depending on the cell. I do not believe they are concerned about cell leakage. But rather the internal construction of the cell and how the electrolyte interacts with the jelly roll. Surely the manufacturers know what they are talking about and not making things up.

Mr. Green has gone silent. I will be surprised if he updates his discoveries after examining Seth's battery. It's a shame. Big Battery has everything they need to make perfect products. But somehow they mess up. The fact your battery was a prototype has absolutely nothing to do with the fact the cell(s) leaked. If you could find someone independent to analyze them that would be great...but it might be costly and I wouldn't know where to start.

Gazoo said:

I hear you loud and clear. I hope this story ends with no more leaking cells delivered to anyone from Big Battery. I am curious as hell why they leaked in the first place. I just don't know what to think about this. If the vent is constructed properly, and they are, a cell should not leak even if held upside down.

Different manufacturers say different things for various configurations depending on the cell. I do not believe they are concerned about cell leakage. But rather the internal construction of the cell and how the electrolyte interacts with the jelly roll. Surely the manufacturers know what they are talking about and not making things up.

Mr. Green has gone silent. I will be surprised if he updates his discoveries after examining Seth's battery. It's a shame. Big Battery has everything they need to make perfect products. But somehow they mess up. The fact your battery was a prototype has absolutely nothing to do with the fact the cell(s) leaked. If you could find someone independent to analyze them that would be great...but it might be costly and I wouldn't know where to start.

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It's probably a cell manufacturing defect, non-hermetic weld, entirely the fault of vendor.
Unless, something about electrically connected can means that having it shorted to enclosure causes etch of the seal to the point of failure. I don't know if such electrical contact even occurred.
Either way, a problem that affects around 1% of battery assemblies (or in this case maybe just two shipped batteries if all others caught at Big Battery) is a small amount to replace under warranty. No big deal to get past that, with future inspection and possibly "upright only" recommendation. Just need to correct it and communicate about it.

Hedges said:

It's probably a cell manufacturing defect, non-hermetic weld, entirely the fault of vendor.
Unless, something about electrically connected can means that having it shorted to enclosure causes etch of the seal to the point of failure. I don't know if such electrical contact even occurred.
Either way, a problem that affects around 1% of battery assemblies (or in this case maybe just two shipped batteries if all others caught at Big Battery) is a small amount to replace under warranty. No big deal to get past that, with future inspection and possibly "upright only" recommendation. Just need to correct it and communicate about it.

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It’s a shame bb still hasn’t just taken ownership like that already.

there is this preception that people deserve "perfection"...
most people cannot afford that, you can buy high availability battery backup but even "six nines" is a scary price hehe

never get bothered because of a fault, its how the fault is handled that matters; and by handled I do not mean how you feel about it.
its this simple: battery breaks...
you contact vendor, they send replacement and do not yank your chain around regarding shipping costs.
thats a GOOD VENDOR, replacement arrives and works, simple.

you contact vendor, they:
a)ignore you, or you discover that all the contact info is useless...bad vendor, please tell us!
b)want you to pay $$$$ shipping costs to replace something that only cost $$... also bad vendor, share with us
c)ask for some pictures, maybe some measurements, and send you a working replacement..GOOD VENDOR, let us know

why something failed is, well, not part of the deal.

Diysolar123 said:

there is this preception that people deserve "perfection"...
most people cannot afford that, you can buy high availability battery backup but even "six nines" is a scary price hehe

never get bothered because of a fault, its how the fault is handled that matters; and by handled I do not mean how you feel about it.
its this simple: battery breaks...
you contact vendor, they send replacement and do not yank your chain around regarding shipping costs.
thats a GOOD VENDOR, replacement arrives and works, simple.

you contact vendor, they:
a)ignore you, or you discover that all the contact info is useless...bad vendor, please tell us!
b)want you to pay $$$$ shipping costs to replace something that only cost $$... also bad vendor, share with us
c)ask for some pictures, maybe some measurements, and send you a working replacement..GOOD VENDOR, let us know

why something failed is, well, not part of the deal.

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If it’s a safety concern and there is lack of trust because vendor‘s spotty past, motivated consumer base will make it part of the deal whether you think it is or isn’t.

DerpsyDoodler said:

If it’s a safety concern and there is lack of trust because vendor‘s spotty past, motivated consumer base will make it part of the deal whether you think it is or isn’t.

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fair enough, lets think on each part of that.

safety concerns:
this entire forum is definitely about people handling dangerous amounts of power. If you want to be safe you would hire an electrician/licensed subcontractor and have the entire thing done..for an insane amount of money (well, insane amount by my standards).
So safety here is bounded by the premise that you are certainly doing something that has "risk".
You are trading off "cost" by accepting that risk. As the person accepting the risk in exchange for lower cost you should be:
1)doing your homework on how things "should work" so you know how to test
2)checking each item you receive with the understanding that YOU are willing to accept that burden in exchange for the lower cost
3)expect the merchant to accept that when you find a clear problem, they accept the burden of getting you a working product
3a)expect to find problems and be pleased when you do not; do not expect perfection but do expect replacements

This part of your statement if more subjective: what constitutes "spotty past"?
I mean if somebody is selling 5 items and 3 are bad.. yea, thats a scam.
if somebody is selling 10000 items and 3 are bad, well, that is the nature of the world.
What is your measure of "spotty"? how about 99% correct? how about 99.9% correct?
Thats 1 problem out of 100 customers, or 1 problem out of 1000 customers...thats pretty good.
I would add in here a reminder of the list above, item 3; A problem is NOT that something was wrong, its that the merchant did not correct the problem. If the merchant corrects the problem, well, thats not a problem, its an inconvenience.

Never forget people quickly complain when "anything" is not as they expected it, however, they rarely say anything when all is well.
I joined this board to try and find those merchants that provide a resonable level of quality and will backup their product with replacements when things go wrong. I can mentally expect perfection but realistically know that no such thing exists

for example, I ordered some 280Ah batteries from aliexpress(liitokala seemed like really good price) and well, grumble grumble, its been 2 months and nothing yet so I will be starting the process of "where are these items?" in a week or so. This was before I found this site so I may order my next 8 from somewhere else based on what I read about.

Diysolar123 said:

So safety here is bounded by the premise that you are certainly doing something that has "risk".
You are trading off "cost" by accepting that risk. As the person accepting the risk in exchange for lower cost you should be:

2)checking each item you receive with the understanding that YOU are willing to accept that burden in exchange for the lower cost
3)expect the merchant to accept that when you find a clear problem, they accept the burden of getting you a working product

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if I am purchasing commodity cells directly, correct. If someone else is packaging them up and claiming they’re taking the risk for me and charging me for it, then your logic no longer applies. BB is taking it upon themselves to make those cells into battery packs and claiming they are perfectly safe, and claiming they are doing quality control. Do they provide any disclaimer about these being gray market cells? Do they provide a “use at your own risk” disclaimer? Well that would contradict the whole...”oh yes they are perfectly safe” marketing material, and utterly admit that they themselves have no confidence in the safety of their product. They are selling commodity cells as safe at a markup. Period.

Two units came in one day and the other came in the next. Photos from that first shipment are attached in case anyone is interested in how they package these things.

They are basically surrounded by foam. Which is good because there is no way the delivery people (FedEx in this case) are keeping the units facing the way the arrow says. Why do I know this? because while I went to the street to pick up the first two units and saw them laying down on their sides (arrow pointing left instead of up), the 3rd unit was delivered to my garage door (in the rain) and when I got to it the arrow was pointed down.

I powered up the units to check the voltage (26.1 or 26.2 on each unit). They seem to be in great condition so far. I'll report back more once I can get them installed - some time later this week.

S2000 for scale.

DerpsyDoodler said:

BB is taking it upon themselves to make those cells into battery packs and claiming they are perfectly safe, and claiming they are doing quality control.

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no no no no...
You are falling into the "perfect" trap.

They are providing a warranty, they are NOT providing perfection.
It is a common trap consumers fall into but a warranty is not perfection.
if it is a good warranty that truly does not cost you IF a product is defective then it IS worth it to pay for the warranty from a good company that honors the warranty.

When it comes to batteries sadly the return shipping costs can often run into more than the original battery which falls into my category of "worthless warranty"; if anywhere it says "customer pays shipping", red flag raised. We cannot expect perfect products, but we should expect a company that is providing a warranty cost bump to back up their product with money not just words (e.g., product does not meet advertised specs, company covers ALL shipping costs).

I am not trying to defend any company, but it is also unreasonable for consumers to demand perfection and yet be unwilling to actually pay for it.

if you truly want perfection, subcontract out and have the system built and installed to a contract.
If you want "cheap and perfect" that will never happen (space station batteries have problems!!).
If you want to have some smaller company take some of the risk (some, not all) then you should expect to pay for that.

We the consumer get to vote if a company is doing the right thing by voting with our cash.

I noticed that a tube of caulk came with a 50 year warranty.
If it ever fails (and a water leak causes your wall to rot), simply send in the empty tube with original receipt, and they will replace the tube of caulk.

Hey @Will Prowse - do the new BB Hawks have the extinguishers in them? Curious where it is located.

@Diysolar123 .... I don't remember anyone but you talking about demanding perfection.

I think the biggest question is can we demand truth and honesty?

Diysolar123 said:

no no no no...
You are falling into the "perfect" trap.

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no I’m not falling into any perfect traps. BB is a value-added reseller of commodity cells, nothing more. Curious to see how the 10 year warranty works out. Will the company be around in 10 years? Maybe they hope to be bought out by battleborn? Anyway, I dont need BB to assemble cells for me, thank you.

So I have been thinking about the leakage of Seth's battery and this might sound stupid. Is it possible the fire extinguisher activated for whatever reason and made that mess? I don't know anything about the type of extinguisher Big Battery is using in these things.

@SethRR what do you think? Did Big Battery ever let you know what was leaking?

Gazoo said:

So I have been thinking about the leakage of Seth's battery and this might sound stupid. Is it possible the fire extinguisher activated for whatever reason and made that mess? I don't know anything about the type of extinguisher Big Battery is using in these things.

@SethRR what do you think? Did Big Battery ever let you know what was leaking?

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Oddly enough, I actually design fire extinguishers . I do not know what is in theirs, but FE's are typically non-corrosive. I can't imagine anyone using and extinguishing agent that would corrode components that fast.

No, I have not heard anything from BB. Tomorrow will be a full week since it was delivered to them.

WoodyInAz said:

Hey @Will Prowse - do the new BB Hawks have the extinguishers in them? Curious where it is located.

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I'd like to see someone (maybe at BB?) show this. I don't want to void the warranty on one of my units by opening them for a photo / video.

WoodyInAz said:

Hey @Will Prowse - do the new BB Hawks have the extinguishers in them? Curious where it is located.

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This video shows the location.

Gazoo said:

This video shows the location.

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That seems very cool! I don't think I've ever heard of a battery pack with a fire extinguisher built in. Thank you for sharing!

I do wish they would update their website to reflect this new feature - it seems to be missing from the Hawk's page at least.

I'm thinking the Hawk units I purchased will be way safer than my DIY gel battery bank. Esp since they are installed horizontally.

I would also like for someone to take the cover off to see if the extinguisher is actually there if it doesn't void the warranty. There could be reasons why Big Battery doesn't note this as being a feature.