In January 2015 I got 12x Solar panels installed on my roof giving me 3.18kwh power using my SolarEdge inverter. After a few years of having solar,it has pained me to see how much energy that I don't use getting exported to the grid even though I have an Immersun Hot Water Heater and Zappi Car Charger soaking up lots of the excess power. I had been on the market for an off-the-shelf battery solution like the LG Chem or Tesla Powerwall but had started harvesting 18650 cells with a though of maybe going down that route.
So about a year ago a friend of mine contacted me advising thatan EV car shop had 28x 2011 Nissan e-NV200Generation 1 batteries for sale which are the same batteries as the Nissan Leaf. I had watched a lot of videos on YouTube and discovered this website. After spending countless hours watching videos and reading other threads of leaf powerwall builders,I decided to take the plunge and traveled to the Republic of Ireland and picked up the batteries and brought them home. I was not expecting the 24x modulepack to be so heavy. It was so heavy that 2 of us struggled to lift them out of the boot of my car. We just about managed to carry it from my car to the garageafter some almighty swearing.
Now thatwe gotthe 28 moduleshome, it was time to start taking them apart. The photos show the stages I took in unbolting the packs. I stacked themodules up in preparation for assembly. I kept all the accessories that came from the pack as I wanted to reuse as much of the original hardware as possible.
My original plan and design for my pack has changed significantly since last year. I am going to document each stage on this thread knowing that these where not the best methods but just want to document my mistakes so that others coming after me do not make the same mistakes as I did.
My initial plans was to compress each 4 parallel modules between MDF wood
But after posting on another thread, I was advised by a number of other Powerwall builders that this was not safe. So it was back to the drawing board.
I was offered a second hand network cabinet but the shape did not suit.
I also had access to old medical cabinets but once again I choose against this idea
In the end I decided for a lockable smaller network cabinet. Perfect!
So about a year ago a friend of mine contacted me advising thatan EV car shop had 28x 2011 Nissan e-NV200Generation 1 batteries for sale which are the same batteries as the Nissan Leaf. I had watched a lot of videos on YouTube and discovered this website. After spending countless hours watching videos and reading other threads of leaf powerwall builders,I decided to take the plunge and traveled to the Republic of Ireland and picked up the batteries and brought them home. I was not expecting the 24x modulepack to be so heavy. It was so heavy that 2 of us struggled to lift them out of the boot of my car. We just about managed to carry it from my car to the garageafter some almighty swearing.
Now thatwe gotthe 28 moduleshome, it was time to start taking them apart. The photos show the stages I took in unbolting the packs. I stacked themodules up in preparation for assembly. I kept all the accessories that came from the pack as I wanted to reuse as much of the original hardware as possible.
My original plan and design for my pack has changed significantly since last year. I am going to document each stage on this thread knowing that these where not the best methods but just want to document my mistakes so that others coming after me do not make the same mistakes as I did.
My initial plans was to compress each 4 parallel modules between MDF wood
But after posting on another thread, I was advised by a number of other Powerwall builders that this was not safe. So it was back to the drawing board.
I was offered a second hand network cabinet but the shape did not suit.
I also had access to old medical cabinets but once again I choose against this idea
In the end I decided for a lockable smaller network cabinet. Perfect!