Glubux's Powerwall (2016)

>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.

$20K for a home battery backup for someone capable of doing DIY would be far larger than what I assume he has built here. AFAIK the cheaper end is around $340 (2016) per kWh at 20 kWh that would be $6,800. In 2025 at $100 per kWh it would be $2K. If it's worth it would largely depending on a persons post tax required rate of return and how long it would take.

If you took that same time, and invested it in working at Target, or Amazon etc, would you have more or less money than it would cost to buy an off-the-shelf battery? There are obviously other pros and cons.

I think Target isn't the right comparison here - the skills required for this project are worth much more than minimum wage bagging groceries. If you assume something like $50 an hour (on the low end for a skilled electrician), you get to the $6800 number in the parent post pretty quickly.