There's a new wall in Germany!

owitte

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Oct 19, 2016
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Hi all,

this is my powerwall, consisting of 1400 cells in a 200p7s configuration, expandable as long as there's wall :D . Up and running since a few weeks, currently 9 days non-stop off-grid, still counting :cool: .

As you can see from the pics, I took the word powerwall literally and hung 70 packs of 20 cells on a wall in the basement. Connections are all made from copper water tubes (cheapest copper source in town) with a little bending and soldering work.

One vertical row is roughly 1kWh, overall 420Ah / 10kWh. Still in conjunction with my older battery setup (aka the tower of power), 8 sealed lead-acid solar batteries with 940Ah.


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Any feedback appreciated :)

Have sun!
Oliver

P.S.: This is my grid consumption for the current month so far, daily average now is 21W / <0.5kWh - so my house consumes as much power as a laptop :D :

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Looks Awesome. Nice to see the Power Usage that low
 
holy ....

except the ducttape there. spaceefficient nontheless

where do you live? like what state
 
Awesome!
Even for the Guines Book of records!

Gratuliere!
BigBen


Pipe conductors - my goodness! Cheap and effective...

You can use them even as radar wave conductors or heating/cooling elements... hahaha

A whole wall of power made in Germany!

Oliver, you are the champion! I like that!

BigBen
 
MajStealth said:
holy ....

except the ducttape there. spaceefficient nontheless

where do you live? like what state

yeah, ducttape is just for temporary fixing the displays on the door... blew up my arduino data logger a while ago and didn't have time to fix it, yet. And space is not an issue, still have enough wall for another six rows/42 packs/840 cells. But I already have a plan for nice, compact 5kWh modules (700 cells) with integrated cooling, temperature control and emergency switch-off.

I live in Braunschweig, almost in the middle of Germany.


BigBen said:
Awesome!
Even for the Guines Book of records!

Gratuliere!
BigBen


Pipe conductors - my goodness! Cheap and effective...

You can use them even as radar wave conductors or heating/cooling elements... hahaha

A whole wall of power made in Germany!

Oliver, you are the champion! I like that!

BigBen



thanks for the nice words, BigBen :) . In fact, it's really very cheap and effective to use these pipes. Good electrical properties, easy to make, easy to expand and easy to mount/unmout battery packs.Don't know why nobody else came up with this idea... But I wouldn't recommend using them for cooling/heating at the same time... don't really like the idea of massive current and water flowing next to each other :D


jdeadman said:
Looks Awesome. Nice to see the Power Usage that low

thanks :)

If anyone's interested: The power usage comes from the provider of my smart meter. Don't know if it's available outside of Germany, there website doesn't look very international... You may check at www.discovergy.com.

My current grid consumption can always be watched in realtime here.
 
Sehr gut gemacht - very nice!

I see no BMS? Dont you have one?
 
eAnic said:
Sehr gut gemacht - very nice!

I see no BMS? Dont you have one?

Danke :)

I don't have a BMS for reasons I pointed out here, but I'm using balancers (the small black boxes on the right side).

Have sun!
Oliver
 
Not only a work of art straight out of the Tate gallery but amazing savings on your power consumption. How much do you think your bill has dropped? and what are your estimates for winter use?
 
Looks pretty cool. I like the fact that there are more and more projects in germany.
Officially you have to register a PV battery with the state or power company or whatever, is yours registered or unofficial? I presume you have to register it so they can put some tax on us at one point :D
I wont be registering mine as it will be totally off grid.

all the best!
 
It would be great to know your used devices: inverter, charge controller, and bms.
Thanks!
 
The-J-Man said:
Looks pretty cool. I like the fact that there are more and more projects in germany.
Officially you have to register a PV battery with the state or power company or whatever, is yours registered or unofficial? I presume you have to register it so they can put some tax on us at one point :D
I wont be registering mine as it will be totally off grid.

all the best!

thanks a lot :) . Well, I don't know about registration for off-grid systems here, the only thing I know is, that you have to register your PV system if it has more than 10kWp or you're feeding back to the grid. In this case, you'll also have to pay some kind of tax ("EEG-Umlage") for the power you produce.
But as far as I know, I don't have to register my battery and therefore it's not registered :D.


Newidea said:
It would be great to know your used devices: inverter, charge controller, and bms.
Thanks!

Charge controllers: 1x EPSolar Tracer 2210RN (20A), 2x EPSolar Tracer 3210RN (30A)
Inverter: Westech WT Combi ECO 3000W (off-grid, single phase, auto-switching)
BMS: none (as describedhere)
Balancers: 7 x 1S single cell balancer (see here)
Batteries: 8 x sealed lead acid, 940Ah/32kWh, 1400 x 18650s (200p7s, 420Ah/10kWh)
 
Are you happy with your balancer ? how much did you pay for those ?
It seems a good alternative to expensive Batrium products.
 
I wouldnt call batrium expensive. 14USD per pack is not much :) Those linked 1s balancers are heckalot more expensive in terms of what they do.

1s cost 20USD each compare to batrium at 14USD each. yes you have to buy the main board for Batrium but you get so much more in terms of monitoring and controlling. Since that system can control alot of external parts. So as soon as you go above 14 units its cheaper. But if you go with lead acid the Batrium will not do it. since they are for lithium. Though lead acid generally dont need much of balancing in real life if its setup correctly. (But of course it doesnt hurt and you may save some cycles)

if you want cheaper bms you need to go to one of those 30USD-100USD complete packages but they generally are pretty cheap quality.

The 1s works and do what they should just fin. I have em to and tested them but they have no monitoring.
 
Respekt !!

How long did it take until all the batteries were together for the wall?

Mfg
 
14 per longmon is not costly indeed, but the main board and the shunt are so it's a lot of money to start with just 7 or 14 packs.
 
coolfx said:
Are you happy with your balancer ? how much did you pay for those ?
It seems a good alternative to expensive Batrium products.

The balancers do what they should. Although from the specs, they should balance to around 10mV difference between the series, but I always meassure 30-40mV... but they didn't exaggerate with the balance current, max is 10A and I can confirm that. So overall, it's a simple and quite cheap balancing solution, especially if your system is 24V like mine.


daromer said:
I wouldnt call batrium expensive. 14USD per pack is not much :) Those linked 1s balancers are heckalot more expensive in terms of what they do.

1s cost 20USD each compare to batrium at 14USD each. yes you have to buy the main board for Batrium but you get so much more in terms of monitoring and controlling. Since that system can control alot of external parts. So as soon as you go above 14 units its cheaper. But if you go with lead acid the Batrium will not do it. since they are for lithium. Though lead acid generally dont need much of balancing in real life if its setup correctly. (But of course it doesnt hurt and you may save some cycles)

if you want cheaper bms you need to go to one of those 30USD-100USD complete packages but they generally are pretty cheap quality.

The 1s works and do what they should just fin. I have em to and tested them but they have no monitoring.

You're right, the Batrium system is much better because of the monitoring functions. At the time I bought my balancers, I didn't know about Batrium, if I would, I maybe would have bought their solution. But on the other hand, I wouldn't have the challenge and the fun to build my own monitoring solution now :D
 
coolfx. Thats true. The shunt cost but comparing to the 1s balancer that neither have monitoring nor shunt ;)


I can also say that there is ongoing work on getting a new shunt type that will be more directed to DIY... And the price shall be in our area too!
 
That's good to know, I will wait before buying anything to see what's coming !
 
IronSky said:
Respekt !!

How long did it take until all the batteries were together for the wall?

Mfg

thanks :)
Harvesting and testing cells took about 5-6 months, building it only 3 weekends, including bending and soldering work. Here're a few pics from the building process:

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