24 cell Headway battery

[Electrobob]

Bought 24 of the 38150 lifepo4 Headway cells from battery hookup and the pre made cell holder with busbars and put them together as battery. They were sold separately at the time I bought but I can see it is now available as a pre-built kit. So this is 12v 48ah 614wh. Here is a photo of it powering a 32 inch tv. They are now selling these already assembled for $199 which is a great deal. I believe I paid around $225 for it when I bought and it wasn't even assembled. These can supposedly provide 500amps continuous. Looks like it will make a great addition to the team. ?

 

[Ampster]

I started out using Headways for my first ebike in 2010. I may go back to them for my rototiller conversion. At over $300 per Watthour they are still expensive but there is nothing that compares with that ability for 24 volts and a kiloWatthour of energy.

 

[Substrate]

Don't forget to enable your TV's "powersave" or turn the backlight down as far as you can stand it to save an amp or two.

Getting slightly off-topic:

If your TV has a tuner, hook that up to an off-air antenna (remember those?) you can chill out without having to also power up a cable/sat box and save power that way too in an outage.

(Mediasonic / HomeWerx external tuners are pretty cheap these days if you want to go that route / hdmi input) and power it from the inverter as well. Also lots of garbage hdtv antennas - the classic brands still work like RCA/GE, Winegard little yagis, Antennas Direct are quite nice, but we're getting into a whole different forum.

 

[curiouscarbon]

nice build!

headway HP 38150 are crazy powerful cells

looks like capacitive active balancer; any bms for auto disconnect?

cheers

 

[Electrobob]

Don't forget to enable your TV's "powersave" or turn the backlight down as far as you can stand it to save an amp or two.

Getting slightly off-topic:

If your TV has a tuner, hook that up to an off-air antenna (remember those?) you can chill out without having to also power up a cable/sat box and save power that way too in an outage.

(Mediasonic / HomeWerx external tuners are pretty cheap these days if you want to go that route / hdmi input) and power it from the inverter as well. Also lots of garbage hdtv antennas - the classic brands still work like RCA/GE, Winegard little yagis, Antennas Direct are quite nice, but we're getting into a whole different forum.

Don't forget to enable your TV's "powersave" or turn the backlight down as far as you can stand it to save an amp or two.

Getting slightly off-topic:

If your TV has a tuner, hook that up to an off-air antenna (remember those?) you can chill out without having to also power up a cable/sat box and save power that way too in an outage.

(Mediasonic / HomeWerx external tuners are pretty cheap these days if you want to go that route / hdmi input) and power it from the inverter as well. Also lots of garbage hdtv antennas - the classic brands still work like RCA/GE, Winegard little yagis, Antennas Direct are quite nice, but we're getting into a whole different forum.

Exactly. The photo shows the tv connected to a Winegard. I was surprised I could get about 70 channels with it (although that includes a lot of QVC and Spanish language channels), but still, not too bad. The Winegard is a powered antenna so I suppose I could try the old rabbit ears and save that tiny bit as well.

 

[Electrobob]

nice build!

headway HP 38150 are crazy powerful cells

looks like capacitive active balancer; any bms for auto disconnect?

cheers

No BMS. so far no issues, but I don’t plan to overtax it. I don’t believe these cells have the same runaway potential that lithium ion does. One thing I wasn’t a fan of was the exposed busbar plates. Battery HookUp sells these batteries pre-made now and includes rubber side panels to cover the plates (at least on the super beast model). I contacted them to see if I could purchase a pair and they are sending them out to me free of charge!

 

[Ampster]

. I don’t believe these cells have the same runaway potential that lithium ion does.

My first battery was a Headway pack on an ebike I built. I got the EV grin from the acceleration and drove it until it stopped. Later as I was charging it I smelled the electrolyte that had leaked out from over discharging one of the cells. Yes LFP is safer, if that is what you mean by "runaway"? Without a BMS they can be abused. What are you using to prevent over discharge?

 

[Electrobob]

My first battery was a Headway pack on an ebike I built. I got the EV grin from the acceleration and drove it until it stopped. Later as I was charging it I smelled the electrolyte that had leaked out from over discharging one of the cells. Yes LFP is safer, if that is what you mean by "runaway"? Without a BMS they can be abused. What are you using to prevent over discharge?

Regarding over discharge, I do now have a battery monitor attached (see photo). This is a manual way of doing it but this battery is the least used of the batteries I have and is intended for individual uses as they arise rather than regularly powering something in a scenario where I start something going and walk away.

 

[Substrate]

Right on - looks like a fun project. Let me geek out on the application though..

One thing that will stop the total discharge I suppose is the LVD inside the inverter - usually designed for fla batts at 10.7 or 11.7v or thereabouts. Not ideal, but at least it's something in case you fall asleep...

Consider a lower-wattage psw inverter as it will run more efficiently than the 2K inverter only pulling 2A or so from the modern tv.

I see the Tecsun shortwave radio - ah, since you are doing OTA reception, that inverter may be noisy in the rf spectrum (for shortwave and also for the TV), so maybe consider a low-power (150w or so) psw Samlex inverter, which tend to be quiet in the spectrum.

( Note: for us OT lurkers - if you move or re-orient your OTA antenna, you'll always want to do a re-scan or autoprogram. If you have an existing system, and haven't done so in years, you'll want to do a rescan. )

I get it - Headways are overkill for this application, but you've got a lot of access to everything to play around. FUSE your positive lead though - pretty sure you've done that.

Looks like fun!

 

[nebulight]

Very cool. I think I may pick up one of these as i just destroyed my last set of temp cells as I’ve beaten the over the last 7 years without a BMS (just four cells). Looking for a temp battery to again beat up during the hot summer months in my camper van.