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Glubux's Powerwall (2016)

(secondlifestorage.com)
386 points bentobean | 7 comments | | HN request time: 0.618s | source | bottom
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ianferrel ◴[] No.43549073[source]
>the solution came with rearranging and adjusting the cells to ensure the packs worked more efficiently.

>Glubux even began disassembling entire laptop batteries, removing individual cells and organizing them into custom racks. This task, which likely required a great deal of manual labor and technical knowledge, was key to making the system work effectively and sustainably.

This kind of thing is cool as a passion project, but it really just highlights how efficient the modern supply chain is. If you have the skills of a professional electrician, you too can spend hundreds of hours building a home battery system you could just buy for $20k, but is less reliable.

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supportengineer ◴[] No.43549197[source]
There HAS to be a way to automate this process and make it work at scale.
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1. beAbU ◴[] No.43549497[source]
Yes, with cheap third world labour, the same way many other technological marvels of the modern era are "automated".
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2. harvey9 ◴[] No.43549734[source]
This can't be done remote so you will need to bring that labor to where the work is.
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3. kowabungalow ◴[] No.43549909[source]
There's already a pipeline sending old electronics to cheap labor for possible refurbishing, recycling and/or incorrect disposal. A small percentage they repackage into replacement laptop batteries and ship back, but they could also send more of them back as a value UPS with different value add parts.

Personally, I expect there to be a massive conversion to USB-PD as the primary power in the cellphone only regions.

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4. lifeisstillgood ◴[] No.43550239{3}[source]
Does USB-PD mean USB power distribution ?

And yeah - some LEDs and a usb wire around the ceiling solves lighting a house more sensibly than a three-phase converter under the stairs and enough power going through a light switch to kill me …

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5. 0xbadcafebee ◴[] No.43550268[source]
Building large battery arrays out of old recycled cells does not require bringing the workers to the battery cells, any more than building iPhones requires you to bring the workers to where they mine ore. Large-scale product development often involves shipping materials and half-finished products around the world multiple times.
6. bmicraft ◴[] No.43550975{4}[source]
It means USB Power Delivery and is a standard for negotiating custom-other-than-5V voltages from a USB Type-C power supply and communicating to the device how much current it is allowed to draw.

It's why you can charge your phone with your laptops power brick without anything exploding, and why most laptops can charge (very slowly) from pretty underpowered phone chargers now.

7. harvey9 ◴[] No.43558099{3}[source]
I was referring to installation