Hi everyone !
I've been her for a while...looking, asking and learning.
I think I had introduced myself before but here goes my powerwall presentation. I am a small business owner fromSan Juan, Puerto Rico. In September 2016 there was a complete power grid failure due to a lightning strike on one of the main power generation plants. The whole island (100 miles long x 35 miles wide / 3.8million people) wasleft in the dark for 3 days until the grid could power back up.
I own a 6 seatbarber shop and a car audio repair shop. By luck I had a Trace power inverter in the shop for repair (from a client that had problems charging but the inverter part worked. I hooked up 4 12v AGM 112ahbatteries I had at the shop and wired in half my breaker panel. To my surprise, this worked great for 3 whole days buy my batteries drained completely down to 21 volts. Had a hard time recharging but decided to have some kind of electrical backup permanentlybuilt for the shop. Hey, It's my money maker!
I ended up buying a 6.5kw diesel generator for the barber shop but I want something more silent, less smelly and less maintenence.
Some how, some way I started looking for ideas, info and very soon ended up here. Learned a lot and I'm still learning. Most of the people in the youtube videos are part of this forum.
My first bite on the 18650's came when I won an auction on ebay for a big lot of Ryobi 40v mower packs. I "recon" (caught that grom Peter's videos) y got about 600 cells on that lot. All Samsung/LG 1200~1400 cap cells in great condition, just dead in voltage. I devised a holder (4 cell) with a 20w / 20 ohm resistor in series to a 12v battery in order to "wake" them. Put them in the cradle and switch the 12v for 10 to 15 seconds while "handmonitoring" temp. The ramp up to 1.XX volts, enough to go to a string of 4056's and fully charge them up. From there to storage for 2 or 3 days and recheck voltage for drops. If they hold up, I send them to the Opus. So far, about 20 rejects in total, all shorted, only 1 open. For now I have them sorted by brand but marked from 1100 to 1460'ish.
(Gonna add some Charge Station pics soon)
Have not decided on pack shape but playing around with some buss bar ideas, case/enclosure ideas, monitoring/BMS/fan cooling and others before I build.
I need these INSIDE the shop for security purposes so I chose a "spot" and in the process of building the case for them. Apart from being my power backup at the shop (I open 6 hours a day, 6 days a week) I hope to extend or enlarge the battery bank so I can maybe last my 6 day work week using everything Iuse now including A/C. I will be using a 7s setup with electrical (grid) recharging as I only need this as a powerbackup. Aa soon as this is all running smooth I will start adding more packs and solar panels for recharging.
My wife says that this is a new "hobbie" for me and I agree. I enjoy the skill learning and thebuilding process more than the actual usage for witch it was intended. Now all I need to figure out is how to "deviate" more funds without the wife getting upset about it. I will keep uploading more pics of my build on this same thread.
A little bonus... this is my passion, what I do for a living... Car Amplifier repair.
Thanks for reading!
I've been her for a while...looking, asking and learning.
I think I had introduced myself before but here goes my powerwall presentation. I am a small business owner fromSan Juan, Puerto Rico. In September 2016 there was a complete power grid failure due to a lightning strike on one of the main power generation plants. The whole island (100 miles long x 35 miles wide / 3.8million people) wasleft in the dark for 3 days until the grid could power back up.
I own a 6 seatbarber shop and a car audio repair shop. By luck I had a Trace power inverter in the shop for repair (from a client that had problems charging but the inverter part worked. I hooked up 4 12v AGM 112ahbatteries I had at the shop and wired in half my breaker panel. To my surprise, this worked great for 3 whole days buy my batteries drained completely down to 21 volts. Had a hard time recharging but decided to have some kind of electrical backup permanentlybuilt for the shop. Hey, It's my money maker!
I ended up buying a 6.5kw diesel generator for the barber shop but I want something more silent, less smelly and less maintenence.
Some how, some way I started looking for ideas, info and very soon ended up here. Learned a lot and I'm still learning. Most of the people in the youtube videos are part of this forum.
My first bite on the 18650's came when I won an auction on ebay for a big lot of Ryobi 40v mower packs. I "recon" (caught that grom Peter's videos) y got about 600 cells on that lot. All Samsung/LG 1200~1400 cap cells in great condition, just dead in voltage. I devised a holder (4 cell) with a 20w / 20 ohm resistor in series to a 12v battery in order to "wake" them. Put them in the cradle and switch the 12v for 10 to 15 seconds while "handmonitoring" temp. The ramp up to 1.XX volts, enough to go to a string of 4056's and fully charge them up. From there to storage for 2 or 3 days and recheck voltage for drops. If they hold up, I send them to the Opus. So far, about 20 rejects in total, all shorted, only 1 open. For now I have them sorted by brand but marked from 1100 to 1460'ish.
(Gonna add some Charge Station pics soon)
Have not decided on pack shape but playing around with some buss bar ideas, case/enclosure ideas, monitoring/BMS/fan cooling and others before I build.
I need these INSIDE the shop for security purposes so I chose a "spot" and in the process of building the case for them. Apart from being my power backup at the shop (I open 6 hours a day, 6 days a week) I hope to extend or enlarge the battery bank so I can maybe last my 6 day work week using everything Iuse now including A/C. I will be using a 7s setup with electrical (grid) recharging as I only need this as a powerbackup. Aa soon as this is all running smooth I will start adding more packs and solar panels for recharging.
My wife says that this is a new "hobbie" for me and I agree. I enjoy the skill learning and thebuilding process more than the actual usage for witch it was intended. Now all I need to figure out is how to "deviate" more funds without the wife getting upset about it. I will keep uploading more pics of my build on this same thread.
A little bonus... this is my passion, what I do for a living... Car Amplifier repair.
Thanks for reading!
Too bad you didn't have good enough dark green cells to put in the very center to have 3 color fade. Maybe on the next batch 
