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Glubux's Powerwall (2016)

(secondlifestorage.com)
386 points bentobean | 1 comments | | HN request time: 1.15s | source
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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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joshvm ◴[] No.43549397[source]
You would be amazed how many battery packs are multiple 18650s in a trenchcoat. Even EV battery packs use them. Though it does raise the question - wouldn't an old EV battery be a better solution than stripping apart laptops?
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ianferrel ◴[] No.43549465[source]
Probably, but EV batteries are large enough that there might be an industrial recycling process for them, while old laptop batteries are basically free because it's too much labor to extract useful value from them.
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1. edaemon ◴[] No.43549961[source]
I'm pretty sure most industrial recycling methods for lithium batteries involve grinding them up, so pack size isn't as much a factor as sheer volume. I think there just wasn't much juice for the squeeze until demand from EVs made recycling worthwhile.

Here's a video inside a recycling plant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2xrarUWVRQ