Nissan Leaf battery for offgrid storage

[trin]

Hello all, I have also been looking at the leaf battery, but now I m looking at the batteries on Ebay , I see a 24v ev golf battery it says Samsung bosch that I can wire two in series to make 48v as my system is a 48v off grid system..
can anyone tell me if buying this battery will help my system , currently i have four 300w panels wired in series that's two strings, Fm60 charge controller, AIMS 3000w inverter, I m getting about 52v to the charge controller, but very little amps and watts, I have 8 gauge wire from the panels to the controller and the inverter is connected directly to the house panel.
I have four 12v 200ah batteries Sealed liquid acid batteries wired in series to make 48v yet I can only run one light in the basement.

Will upgrading to the 24v batteries make any improvement to my system

[Mike90250]

a link to a forum where EV owners are using the diags on the OBDII connector to find bad vehicle batteries, and have them replaced before the warranty expires

http://midniteftp.com/forum/index.php?topic=4061.msg40022#msg40022

[Mike90250]

"Too much bad mouth to too many experienced members."

Murby has a 3 day vacation to reflect on his posting habits. If I had the time, I'd go through the thread and purge all the lame posts, but I'll save that after I see the tone, post ban.

Murby, not sure what you want from us, every time we voice an experienced opinion to your questions, you come right back and blast the response and attack the poster.
You make bold statements contrary to published mfg specs, and generally have your head in the sand regarding our safety concerns. You, I don't care about. It's other neophytes reading your posts and following your shortcuts, that will lead them to trouble.

[Murby]

Right from the Panasonic NCR18650B spec sheet you never bothered to read. Those are the cells Tesla uses.

Are you suggesting they offer a Level 1 (Ten year residential warranty) or a Level 2 (3100 cycle warranty) on the Powerwall product with batteries that are only good for 500 cycles? Does that make sense to you?

Very true but you failed to mention Lithium batteries are much more sensitive temperature.

That's not even remotely true.

Lithium outperforms lead acid in hot weather and cold weather by a wide margin.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55d039b5e4b061baebe46d36/t/56284a92e4b0629aedbb0874/1445481106401/Fact+sheet_Lead+acid+vs+lithium+ion.pdf

. You cannot even charge a Lithium at 32 degrees or colder.

That much is true... Its funny how you do that.. when Lithium has a legitimate drawback, you seem to be accurate and honest, but when it out performs Lead Acid, you post inaccurate and false information or make ridiculous comparisons.

You're advice can't be trusted.

With the exception of not being able to be charged below freezing, Lithium FAR OUTPERFORMS lead acid in cold climates too.

http://www.batterypoweronline.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Lead-acid-white-paper.pdf

In fact, it leaves Lead Acid in the dust.

Its a lot easier to get things warm than it is to get them cooled off, and if I had to warm a battery, I'd rather have to warm 300 pounds of battery mass (lithium) than have to warm up 1600 lbs of battery mass (lead acid)


Based on your inaccurate statements, you don't seem to know what you're talking about.


You claim that you work with batteries, the implication is that you know what you're talking about... but that's like a burger flipper at McDonald's claiming they're an expert at Cattle farming and Nutrition.

[Sunking]

No, no one said 500 cycles.. In fact the Tesla Warranty mentions 3100 cycles and unlimited cycle 10 year warranty (depending on which warranty coverage you fall under) Where did you come up with 500???

Right from the Panasonic NCR18650B spec sheet you never bothered to read. Those are the cells Tesla uses.

The other problem with FLA batteries is that they are greatly affected by temperature.. Heat destroys them and cold reduces their capacity.. a lot!

Very true but you failed to mention Lithium batteries are much more sensitive temperature. So what is your point. You cannot even charge a Lithium at 32 degrees or colder.

[jflorey2]

Personally, I think I would want the entire car. I would remove everything that is "car" and keep anything battery or battery related. Use Nissan's engineering so I don't give myself an opportunity to screw things up. No solar, just a poor man's powerwall.

Take that one step further. Just buy a used Nissan Leaf (they are dirt cheap) and use it for power. Charge via the standard charger; discharge via a 12V inverter connected to the accessory system (will give you about 1000 watts.) Or get a V2G adapter and use the battery voltage directly.

Then when you need a car for a short hop to the store, use it. Used 2011 Leafs will probably have a range of about 30 miles, but to get to the store that might be plenty. And it's nice to have a mobile battery that you can drive to your home, then drive to a used car dealership/junkyard when you are done with it.

[Murby]

Lets start over with some manufacture facts. Tesla Motors and Powerwall use Panasonic NCR18650B cells. Please look at the spec sheet at Cycle Life Chart. What do you see? Did you say 500 cycles?

No, no one said 500 cycles.. In fact the Tesla Warranty mentions 3100 cycles and unlimited cycle 10 year warranty (depending on which warranty coverage you fall under) Where did you come up with 500???

Now consider this. The Trojan Industrial new cost less than the used Nissan Battery, and th ecomes with a 10 year warranty. Even if you discharge to 80% is 1500 cycles.

A used Nissan Leaf battery, which has about 24kWh of storage when new, will run about $2700 to $3000 in the used market, although to be fair, it probably won't be full capacity.

Can you provide a link to someone selling a Trojan Industrial battery ( Model SIND ?) that can provide the same 24kWh of energy and cost less than $3000 ??

I call Bull Crap on your claim but will apologize if you prove me wrong. You know as well as I do that you're claim that a new Trojan Industrial battery is less expensive than a used Leaf battery is a load of horse crap.

Prove it.. give me a link to where I can purchase 24kWh of Trojan SIND batteries for less than $3000.

Renvu.com >>> Trojan SIND 06 610 $554 x8 = $4432 = 22.6 kWh of capacity (I think I saw them for $547 somewhere too)
Used Nissan Leaf Battery $2700 to $3000 = 20kWh to 23kWh depending on car mileage if you find something with less than 10,000 on it. Of course, to be fair, the used Leaf battery will requite a $500 to $700 BMS to be added.

Don't get me wrong, the Trojan batteries are attractive, even going a step lower to the SPRE line is still attractive and far more in line with competing with a Leaf battery. Of course, after a bunch of research, I think I would probably go with a Volt battery now which are even less than a Leaf battery and seem more abundant and easier to find.

Now ask yourself who is right and honest. The battery manufactures who actually make the batteries, or Youtube, wannabes, pretenders, DIY's or whacko Preppers?

Battery manufacturers will generally pad and puff their technical specs, youtube folks generally just video what they are doing, and the wannabes and pretenders who play with battery powered toys seem to make up all kinds of wacky stuff.

I really do not care what you use or do once armed with the facts, but if you deny reality, you deserve to loose your money and you might loose your life in the process if you do not know exactly what you are doing and the world will be minus 1 less idiot. At least someone got your money.

Are you done with your little childish rant?

The other problem with FLA batteries is that they are greatly affected by temperature.. Heat destroys them and cold reduces their capacity.. a lot!

Of course, with all the wonders and features of a Tesla Powerwall, its a complicated unit and if anything glitches with it, you're out of power. While this is also true with a FLA setup, the batteries themselves are pretty much bullet proof, its the charge controllers and inverters that would fail. In the case of the Powerwall, if anything fails, the entire unit is a paperweight until its fixed.

I'm currently trying to get a hold of Trojan.. I actually really liked your suggestion of their industrial battery lineup.. I'm looking at either their SIND 06 610 or possibly one step below with the SPRE 06 415 which costs significantly less.. although its also less storage capacity and less life, it would still give me most of what I want.

If I can find a way to put a dry battery in storage and stop the plates from oxidizing, I'll probably end up going with the Trojan.. I'm working to confirm the following procedure for storage: 1) Rinse with distilled water 2) Dry out all moisture from battery 3) Pack battery into Mylar bag with Oxygen Absorber and Desiccants.

If the problem with storing dry batteries is the oxidation of the plates, I would think that storing them in an oxygen depleted environment would solve that problem. Oxygen absorbers do a phenomenal job of reducing ambient oxygen levels to ridiculously low levels.... so low, that even food will last 20 or 30 years when stored in such a way.

Lithium is far better than FLA in a lot of things but totally lacks in other areas where FLA shines. The question is a matter of the application requirements vs cost.

For us wacko preppers who pay off our homes, hold no debt, and protect our families, application requirements and cost is important.

[Sunking]

Lets start over with some manufacture facts. Tesla Motors and Powerwall use Panasonic NCR18650B cells. Please look at the spec sheet at Cycle Life Chart. What do you see? Did you say 500 cycles?

Nissan uses NMC cells and the best of them is LG Chem ICR18650HBS cells. Scroll down to 4.2.3 and see Cycle Life for yourself.

Now take a look at a quality Pb battery Cycle Life vs DOD chart that has been verified by 3rd party and IEC testing. Example if you discharge say 33% each day which would be the maximum for either Li or Pb you get over 5500 cycles or 10 times the cycle life. Now consider this. The Trojan Industrial new cost less than the used Nissan Battery, and th ecomes with a 10 year warranty. Even if you discharge to 80% is 1500 cycles.

Now ask yourself who is right and honest. The battery manufactures who actually make the batteries, or Youtube, wannabes, pretenders, DIY's or whacko Preppers?

I really do not care what you use or do once armed with the facts, but if you deny reality, you deserve to loose your money and you might loose your life in the process if you do not know exactly what you are doing and the world will be minus 1 less idiot. At least someone got your money.

[Sunking]

Or use this forum for what it's here for. Sunking enjoys being a jerk to people, but he has a lot of experience with lead acid battery packs.

Jerk perhaps, I prefer putting the spotlight on fools and their money or brutally honest. Yep lots of experience with Pb and a pretty fair amount of experience with Lithium. Say what you like about me, I am OK with it. I help a lot of people and three things can be said about me. I care about people's safety, their money, and safe-sound design.

So what is going on here in this thread is extremely dangerous, foolish, and needs to come to a stop before someone believes anyone can watch a Youtube video and use an EV battery like they can a Pb battery. That is how people get killed.

[BoloMKXXVIII]

There aren't so many used leaf batteries available.. in fact, they're hard to find because people keep buying them up.. Seems that some folks are even willing to purchase an entire salvaged car just to get to the battery.

Personally, I think I would want the entire car. I would remove everything that is "car" and keep anything battery or battery related. Use Nissan's engineering so I don't give myself an opportunity to screw things up. No solar, just a poor man's powerwall.

[jflorey2]

Care to quote where I claimed I was superior to them or anyone else?

You came here making comments about batteries and asking questions. Great; that's what this forum is for.

People started answering you. You said "no, that's not true, I saw a Youtube video." You claimed people who replied were "going off into LaLa land with the irrelevant statements." Anyone who answered you is giving you "intentionally misleading and false information" - presumably because you know better.

If so, stick to Youtube, and just insult people here and call them names, confident that you know much better than them.

Or use this forum for what it's here for. Sunking enjoys being a jerk to people, but he has a lot of experience with lead acid battery packs. I have ten years of professional experience designing lithium ion battery systems for consumer electronics, and fifteen years of experience putting together lithium ion and lead acid batteries for ebikes and home power systems. There are also about a dozen people here who work professionally in solar power, and nowadays that includes installing batteries in people's homes - even if you think that people who put batteries in someone's home is a fool.

Perhaps learn from them rather than considering them fools? Or not. Your choice.

[john95]

vast,

I'm really interested in your project. I got some info about some EV batteries, there are so many different ones. Here I got some info about Tesla:

"Packs range from 5040 cells (60 kWh) arranged in 14 modules with 6 groups of 60 cells, to 8256 cells (100 kWh) in 16 modules with 6 groups of 86 cells. In both cases the module structure yields 25V (which, times 16 modules gives 400V, and times 14 gives 350V)

The interesting question is total current. Maximum charging current and discharge current are different.

The fastest Superchargers currently charge at around 135kW (in Europe), so divide 135,000 by 400 gives around 340 Amps, though there is evidence that cars are currently limited to 300A (old 85kWh cars are limited to 225A)

But a Ludicrous P100D is been seen to generate over 570kW during max acceleration, which at 400V gives you 1,425A. The new fuse that Tesla use to turn a regular P100D into a Ludicrous P100D (along with other changes) is rated at around 1500A, so that is roughly in the right ball park".

As we can see EV batteries, of course are configured to work with cars but we can configure it to work for solar. It's no a big deal, one can just disassemble the EV battery that is configured for 350 or 400 volts and configure it to work for 24 volts, as a matter in fact each module is configured to yield 25 volts each x 16 = 400 volts.

A guy got some EV batteries that were made of 3.7 volt cells. He got some Sanyo EV battery and configured the cells to work as a 48 volt battery for his electric motorcycle.

[vast]

First of all, I intend to do with my modules from Leaf battery something like THIS guy do.

Second, if the discussions will continue like the last 2 pages, I will go out from this thread and forum, because it is not for me.

So, are you interested how this project evolve, or not? If you are interested, first you must read page 1 to can continue discussion. If you are not interested, I will go out.

Thank you for understanding.

[nebster]

Murby,

There is definitely an element of doom and gloom in some cases, and overt conservatism in others. This forum in particular harbors some... interesting... posters with interesting perspectives. (It is also clear that very few actually are managing an at-scale ESS lithium pack themselves, for what that's worth.)

In general I feel like the safety record with cobalt chemistries is quite surprisingly good, considering how omnipresent they are, how infrequently we read about disasters, and yet how absolutely intimidating the stoichiometry is for them in the exothermic region.

Some of the comments about lifecycle seem too pessimistic to me. Don't drive the pack to >90% SOC, keep the temperatures reasonable, keep C < 0.5, and any modern lithium chemistry in an ESS setting is going to do way better than a thermally-unprotected Leaf battery in Nevada. I have ~100 cycles on my LFP pack and don't see any hint of degradation. I wish I had 1000 and could confirm my hypothesis, but that'll take a few years. There are a few documented passively-managed LFP packs in a few DIY EVs with very stable performance after 7 or 8 years, so that's promising, I think.

The BMS-kills-packs argument seems more legitimate: homebrew BMSes implemented poorly with current imbalance and crappy "balance boards" have nuked many a cell, and there are lots of documented packs that have then deteriorated way too quickly. In an ESS scenario a pure passive configuration makes more sense: cell level HVD, LVD, don't try to reach 100% SOC, don't get fancy, don't get greedy.

Definitely put the homebrew ESS pack away from the house. This is not an option for those of us using ESS in a mobile application, so most of us in this use case therefore choose to use LFP for thermal safety. (But some are using cobalt chemistries even in these settings, and they'll probably still be alive in ten years... the risk versus performance/cost trade-off has to be made on a personal level at that point.)

Cheers.

[Murby]

There was a recent incident reported on EndlessSphere (EV bike forum) where someone used a repurposed battery pack for their ebike. It caught on fire and burned their garage down. He was VERY fortunate that the fire department put it out before it spread to his house.

And you've probably heard about the 787 lithium battery fires. That was with a battery built to a much higher standard.

I've done quite a bit of testing with 18650 and pouch cells for cellphones. Nail punctures had about a 50/50 chance of causing a fire. All outgassed like crazy. These were all LiCo cells (same sort you see in the Powerwall and in Teslas.)

Which is why I would never put a large battery bank inside my home.

You are calling most off gridders (and users of the Powerwall) crazy - while at the same time claiming you are superior to them. That's not really a formula for success.

Care to quote where I claimed I was superior to them or anyone else? More false information?? We're just making stuff up now?
Pretty poor defense.

Putting a large energy storage device inside your home is not wise in my opinion.. If you think it is, then we can agree to disagree.

Yep. And there is another thing called "experience." You may have never heard of it, but it's pretty useful. You can even get some yourself, if your ego lets you.

Yep, And I saw a Youtube video of a guy who built a steam rocket and launched himself a thousand feet in the air. Didn't take him that long according to the video. If he can do it, it must be pretty easy and safe.

Nope. Other people do - people with years of experience designing and testing lithium ion packs. I did it for phones rather than toys. The entire process, from start of design to first phone sold, was about 24 months.

Excellent point. And if you have never driven in your life, and you see a Youtube video on how to race, and so you go buy a car and race down the road at 80mph because "it looked pretty safe on the Youtube video" it can also cause death and destruction. Might be better to start in a parking lot driving slowly, then take a driver's ed course, then get a license, then get some experience driving, then go to some advanced driver training - and THEN try that race. That is slow and boring, and it's what all those evil race car drivers tell you to do (because they don't want to share the track with you because they are greedy) but might be a good idea.

Yep. Just get something cheap, slap something on and save a bunch of money! One, two, three, done, without all that experience and testing that those stupid battery system manufacturers say is required. I can't believe more people don't do this!

Feel free to learn the hard way. Just don't take anyone else with you.

I hope your experience bucket fills up before your luck bucket runs out, but with your ego that might be unlikely.

I was going to reply to the individual statements but the entire thing is just basically sarcastic remarks being used in lieu of a rational defense of the subject matter.

But hey, if you can't defend a position, just attack and insult the other side.. I get it. Its an argument fallacy called "Ad Hominem"..