Greetings from Iowa

Amish_Fighter_Pilot

New member
Joined
Jul 15, 2019
Messages
14
Hello, I'm an Amish Fighter Pilot. When I am not busy defending our buggies and horses from aerial threats, I like to tinker with various projects. I'm just really starting to look in to 18650 batteries as a serious power storage option, and that lead me here to you fine folks. In my spare time I also run an informal cat sanctuary and I am currently building a tiny home.
 
Welcome! I've been at it for over 1.5years now and I too started with 18650s and my battery bank is working great! as described by many contributers.

However, now that I've achieved a working system - the life of my battery bank is a larger question. Its not clear exactly but in general LifePo4 cells will have double (or more) the lifespan in terms of the number of cycles.

I keep looking at prices but was just able to buy 1600 cells for $1.27/cell that should yield 260ah@48v (or a bit more). Comparing that to LifePo4 of similar power range and the price is much higher (double/triple from my limited sources) and so I keep opting for lower price, shorter life-span.

I only bring this up so that depending on your sources, $ available, expected battery life for your goals, etc... you might want to look at LifePo4 as well as 18650. Once you make a significant investment in one its difficult to switch over the to the other.
 
Welcome to the community.

OffGridInTheCity said:
Welcome! I've been at it for over 1.5years now and I too started with 18650s and my battery bank is working great! as described by many contributers.

However, now that I've achieved a working system - the life of my battery bank is a larger question. Its not clear exactly but in general LifePo4 cells will have double (or more) the lifespan in terms of the number of cycles.

I keep looking at prices but was just able to buy 1600 cells for $1.27/cell that should yield 260ah@48v (or a bit more). Comparing that to LifePo4 of similar power range and the price is much higher (double/triple from my limited sources) and so I keep opting for lower price, shorter life-span.

I only bring this up so that depending on your sources, $ available, expected battery life for your goals, etc... you might want to look at LifePo4 as well as 18650. Once you make a significant investment in one its difficult to switch over the to the other.

Good info about those batteries and other options.
 
Thanks for the welcome OffGridInTheCity. I tried to go off-grid in the city myself a while back and got run out of town! That's a looooooong story though.

I'm still trying to figure out what tech to focus on, but hopefully I'll get that sorted out soon. I have a concrete pad to finish so I can get our tiny home moved into place on the new property, but after that hopefully I'll be able to start my new project. I'm going to upgrade my kid's Action Wheels ATV to lithium instead of lead-acid as a learning project. Then I'll start to focus on building up banks of cells for my planned solar arrays at the new property. I'm going to build my own solar panels too. Should be a fun project!
 
Welcome buddy
 
Thanks for the welcomes! I'm in Eastern Iowa and spend part of my time in Linn County and some of my time in Jones. I was from Cedar Falls originally though.
 
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