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Glubux's Powerwall (2016)

(secondlifestorage.com)
386 points bentobean | 3 comments | 01 Apr 25 15:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.622s | source
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ianferrel ◴[01 Apr 25 17:00 UTC] 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 ◴[01 Apr 25 17:10 UTC] No.43549197[source]▶
There HAS to be a way to automate this process and make it work at scale.
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dehrmann ◴[01 Apr 25 18:44 UTC] No.43550129[source]▶
Isn't the problem with parasitic charging? Suppose you had a bunch of used 18650 cells. To scale the electronics, they'll be wired up in parallel and/or series so the charging logic can be shared, but since the batteries are wildly mismatched, it results in parasitic charging.
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1. sightbroke ◴[01 Apr 25 18:57 UTC] No.43550226[source]▶
That is why you sort them.

Some recent research into that: https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/20...

You can also consider maintaining packs together to avoid complicated disassembling processes.

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2. dehrmann ◴[01 Apr 25 19:18 UTC] No.43550410[source]▶
> maintaining packs together

(This might already be happening, but I haven't heard about it) The big thing EVs need right now is standardized battery packs. It reduces replacement cost, takes away anxiety that a replacement will exist when you need it, and enables down-cycle uses like stationary storage.

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3. sightbroke ◴[02 Apr 25 00:12 UTC] No.43552569[source]▶
I think that may be a trickier proposition than it appears.

Certainly a standard form factor for a pack would be helpful for a specific manufacturer (similar to building multiple cars on top of the same basic frame).

Some of the issues I think one runs into is battery chemistries are rapidly changing so even if the shape of the pack remains the same the performance of it is rather different depending on what is put inside.

Then even with standard form and chemistry one pack to another can be rather different depending on the history of it's use (age, charge cycles, driven hard).

There is second life storage applications currently, and still more research going into it now.

Personally I think smarter controls and smarter diagnostic and pack sorting will be more useful.