New cell suppliers to the US?

Hi, I'm thinking of planning abuild sometime in the next few months. It sounds like most people here salvage cells?I'm not sure I want to go that route. The idea of mixing and matching a bunch of half worn out cells sounds like potentially more trouble than it's worth, assuming new cells can be bought in bulk with a decent price break. Are there reputable vendors for new 18650 cells that will ship to the US? What's a realistic expectation in terms of price for buying a few hundred cells at a time? Of course it depends on the cell, but does anyone have recent experience doing this?

Advice is appreciated. Thanks!

kronultimate said:

Hi, I'm thinking of planning abuild sometime in the next few months. It sounds like most people here salvage cells?I'm not sure I want to go that route. The idea of mixing and matching a bunch of half worn out cells sounds like potentially more trouble than it's worth, assuming new cells can be bought in bulk with a decent price break. Are there reputable vendors for new 18650 cells that will ship to the US? What's a realistic expectation in terms of price for buying a few hundred cells at a time? Of course it depends on the cell, but does anyone have recent experience doing this?

Advice is appreciated. Thanks!

Click to expand...

I'd suggest looking beyond 18650 too if you are looking to go with new cells. You might be able to save considerable assembly time. (and the cell cost might work out lower than new 18650 too)

Eg
https://www.ebay.com/itm/CA180FI-18...438503?hash=item3d40849fa7:g:YBMAAOSw-29ZXpgV

Neilmc's suggestion is a pretty good one. You'll be hard pressed to find 18650 (or any cylindrical) cells at $1/Ah like the larger cell he linked to in eBay. Depending on what you're building and its purpose, LiFePO4 are available in many amp/hour variations, even in cylindrical formats. Also just going outside 18650 format gives more options and capacities.

I have done a bit of searching for bulk cells (outside of eBay/Amazon etc.), and I'd estimate that even in large quantities (several thousand cells) you'd be looking at $3-$10/cell depending on brand, power vs. energy, and capacity over 2 Ah. Lower capacity = lower price. At least these seem to be the wholesale prices I've come across.

EricKoshinsky said:

Neilmc's suggestion is a pretty good one. You'll be hard pressed to find 18650 (or any cylindrical) cells at $1/Ah like the larger cell he linked to in eBay. Depending on what you're building and its purpose, LiFePO4 are available in many amp/hour variations, even in cylindrical formats. Also just going outside 18650 format gives more options and capacities.

I have done a bit of searching for bulk cells (outside of eBay/Amazon etc.), and I'd estimate that even in large quantities (several thousand cells) you'd be looking at $3-$10/cell depending on brand, power vs. energy, and capacity over 2 Ah. Lower capacity = lower price. At least these seem to be the wholesale prices I've come across.

Click to expand...

Great, thanks for the tip. I guess the main draw of 18650 is the ability to get them cheap/free when one has access to salvaged cells. I'm questioning the purpose myself, I have to admit a big part of it is I've always wanted to build something like this. But the reason I'm thinking of actually doing it sometime pretty soon is we're getting ready to move to a rural town in CO in a few months where I'll be re-installing my 4 panel PV system, and probably adding at least another 4-6 panels to it. I figure since folks there say power can be flaky in the winter when there are storms, it might be worth exploring battery backup. However, the temptation to just get a propane or natural gas powered generator is high since they're just so much cheaper than a large, multi-kWhr lithium pack. But if I build it myself and can get good pricing on batteries, it might be more feasible/cost effective.

This will all depend somewhat on the needs of whatever house we buy out there. E.g., what does it have for heat, water heater, etc. A pack that can run a hot water heater, electric heat, electric clothes dryer, etc, is gonna be a big expensive pack. Skipping laundry is always an option i.e. just using a laundromat if power is out for more than a couple days, but we'd sort of need hot water for showers.

Thanks again.

We're reaching the point where buying new cells is cheaper than salvaging cells due to popularity. That's good on the one hand as more people get interested in the topic but bad on the other hand because there aren't enough used cells for everyone. Big win for the environment though if almost all still usable cells will actually be reused and don't go to the bin.

Cheapest new 18650 in Central Europe at the moment is a 2600mAh Samsung cell for 1.95 EUR each when buying 200 pieces or 1.85 EUR each when buying 500 pieces. That is between 0.72 and 0.75 EUR per Ah. I guess you can find similar offers in the US and Canada.

Bigger cells are a good call since you save lots of time assembling everything. That is something we're still lacking over here in Europe.

kronultimate said:

EricKoshinsky said:

Neilmc's suggestion is a pretty good one. You'll be hard pressed to find 18650 (or any cylindrical) cells at $1/Ah like the larger cell he linked to in eBay. Depending on what you're building and its purpose, LiFePO4 are available in many amp/hour variations, even in cylindrical formats. Also just going outside 18650 format gives more options and capacities.

I have done a bit of searching for bulk cells (outside of eBay/Amazon etc.), and I'd estimate that even in large quantities (several thousand cells) you'd be looking at $3-$10/cell depending on brand, power vs. energy, and capacity over 2 Ah. Lower capacity = lower price. At least these seem to be the wholesale prices I've come across.

Click to expand...

Great, thanks for the tip. I guess the main draw of 18650 is the ability to get them cheap/free when one has access to salvaged cells. I'm questioning the purpose myself, I have to admit a big part of it is I've always wanted to build something like this. But the reason I'm thinking of actually doing it sometime pretty soon is we're getting ready to move to a rural town in CO in a few months where I'll be re-installing my 4 panel PV system, and probably adding at least another 4-6 panels to it. I figure since folks there say power can be flaky in the winter when there are storms, it might be worth exploring battery backup. However, the temptation to just get a propane or natural gas powered generator is high since they're just so much cheaper than a large, multi-kWhr lithium pack. But if I build it myself and can get good pricing on batteries, it might be more feasible/cost effective.

This will all depend somewhat on the needs of whatever house we buy out there. E.g., what does it have for heat, water heater, etc. A pack that can run a hot water heater, electric heat, electric clothes dryer, etc, is gonna be a big expensive pack. Skipping laundry is always an option i.e. just using a laundromat if power is out for more than a couple days, but we'd sort of need hot water for showers.

Thanks again.

Click to expand...

Things like hot water, clothes dryer and heating is going to be difficult to support especially in winter months. If you're looking at off grid, my guess is that the battery size will need to be well over 60kwh and you'll need a large number of panels to make up for lower generation in winter (maybe 40+ 250w panels) Even then you'll probably want a generator or other sources of energy for prolonged bad weather periods where you just can't get enough energy into the batteries.

If not off grid, then you can sparingly access the grid as needed.

In a house of 4 people, we use about 25kwh per day without electric heating and not using a clothes dryer. (more like 30kwh if we add some electric clothes drying in a day)We have gas hot water and heating. If we had a 60kwh battery, that's only a couple of days of storage if the weather was really bad for a couple of days.

Edit... if you find a property with a fairly reliable stream running through it, you might be able to get a few thousand watts of 24/7 energy with a micro hydro setup. Need to have a backup plan if the creek runs dry though!

Yes, good points neilmc. I'd probably only be looking at it being 'off grid' capable for short periods of time, i.e. a few days following a winter storm. During which time we would probably have to scale back electricity usage to just the essentials, i.e. lights, fridge/freezer, aquarium heater (75w), laptops, in order to get by with a pack that doesn't cost as much as our house. And make sure we have gas heat for such occasions.

I actually have an energy monitor running now that's public facing (See link below). We ran 2 window AC units instead of the large, old central air this summer and it was incredible how much of a savings we realized. Our drier is electric but the water heater is gas. Furnace is gas. We're usually well below 1000 kwh even during A/C months. My wife gets chilly and supplements with space heaters, and those light up the energy usage trace like the sun, but as many of you know 'happy wife, happy life' lol, so I've learned to shut up and let her have her creature comforts.

http://emoncms.org/AndyinKC/Mission-KS

Darn, just noticed the RPi glitched out after some changes I made to it last weekend (spun up ftp server for a security cam), so the temp/humidity logs dropped out. Probably the python script cron job got borked somehow. But if you look back a couple weeks and you'll see how the data normally looks. It integrates data from a Nest thermostat, temp/humidity sensor on a breakout board, and a CurrentCost Envi unit.



Edit - looks like when I updated firmware on the Pi a while back it broke the Adafruit DHT22 python library. Rolled back firmware, reinstalled the lib, seems ok now. Just in case any of you guys are running DHT22 sensors on a Pi 3, watch out for this!

Here is the best deal in the US now. Comes out to $1.55 for brand new LG cells. You can get them for as low as $1.15/cell if you buy 1000 cells worth. They come in already built 36v packs with BMS board. I've been buying brand new laptop batteries. This beats the heck out of breaking those things open for subpar batteries.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/172660442407