diy solar

diy solar

EV pack scarcity?

ReclusivePiper

New Member
Joined
Sep 4, 2020
Messages
6
Howdy all,
For those who watch and use lithium ion packs from electric vehicles for your projects, have you noticed the availability for whole modules tank over the last 8 or so months? BigBattery stopped selling whole modules although I think they still use them in their builds, and the other online vendors I frequent have theirs listed as out of stock. I see some modules on eBay but they are now rare and very expensive and it seems junk yards have followed suit.

Any ideas why supply dried up? Economy? People driving safer (hah!) Some new law?
 
I think it is the hobby growing. It used be that one guy named Larry was the only one that knew you could use the packs for other uses. Now there are a lot of Larrys out there...

I know I missed out on getting the 24V BYD batteries packs at a decent price when I had the chance. I wanted 4, but only bought 2 figuring I could get the other two later... Later never happened :(
 
Howdy Rich. Yeah it's definitely becoming more popular. I went the lithium ion route with Nissan leaf packs because, at the time, they were plentiful and reasonably priced for a large amount of kwh. I figured I'd buy a pack a year and slowly build my off grid battery bank. BigBattery had a blowout sale and I picked up ... quite a few... but if I can't refresh them as needed due to limited supply I guess I'll need to switch over to lifepo4 at some point.
 
It will be interesting to see what else comes out, but I think there are a lot more sets of eyeballs looking for these unique opportunities to repurpose used batteries.

I imagine the Leaf packs where almost considered garbage at one point. 24kwh packs that are used up and delivering under 20kwh now. What good are they? You can't use them reliably to push a car, and consumers would be hesitant to replace a used pack with another used pack.

Meanwhile in solar hobby land... 15-20kwh packs?!?!?! and you are throwing them away??!?!?! How many can fit on a pallet? I will take them all :p
 
Haha the answer is three per pallet weighing in at 1800'ish pounds of which a standard pallet jack over gravel will not carry.

Light weight next gen battery tech would be fantastic!
 
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