Hello for the UK (Southeast)

Hi I'm Josh,

I love making all sorts of things and I'm really interested in electronics. Making the 18650 power wall gets my brain buzzing with ideas. Thanks to all of you who have been making the videos and creating this website!

Ihave a family member who wants to use the system along with a hydroelectric generator. He has a small stream running through his land with a big fall but the water flow varies a lot. I'd love to make him a system.

We came up with this idea along time ago but all the information that has been shared will hopefully now make this project achievable.Istarted collecting cells andIhave a grand total of..........4! Its a start!

If anyone has any information on where or how much to pay for laptop batteries/18650's in the UK that would be very useful.

Thanks again for sharing all thegreat information!

joshkennedy said:

Hi I'm Josh,

I love making all sorts of things and I'm really interested in electronics. Making the 18650 power wall gets my brain buzzing with ideas. Thanks to all of you who have been making the videos and creating this website!

Ihave a family member who wants to use the system along with a hydroelectric generator. He has a small stream running through his land with a big fall but the water flow varies a lot. I'd love to make him a system.

We came up with this idea along time ago but all the information that has been shared will hopefully now make this project achievable.Istarted collecting cells andIhave a grand total of..........4! Its a start!

If anyone has any information on where or how much to pay for laptop batteries/18650's in the UK that would be very useful.

Thanks again for sharing all thegreat information!

Click to expand...

Hi there,


I've been watching a lot of videos on youtube on the issue and a big help was the video of your average joe on how to find the laptop batteries...

Go to google maps, type in computer repair and usualy it'll show all small firms around you of people doing computer repair after their hours. Call around and drive around and you'll surely have success... It's a time consuming, but actualy fun thing to do

Good luck!

Welcome Josh!

Water power? How bizarre!
I immediately start thinking about building a dam and flooding the southeast of the UK. Your own reservoir would solve the issue with the flow of water. Honestly though, controlling this setup will probably a bit of a challenge. At least that's what I thought but there are hydro power charge controllers available

Getting 18650s is what everybody is trying nowadays. If you visit the most obvious spots you will likely find out someone was there already. If you want to go big you ideally need to find a source you can use exclusively. And one putting out enough cells for that matter. But you can also think about other formats, maybe you come across an opportunity.

Here in Germany I can buy batteries for about 1 to 2 EUR if I'm lucky, I think it will be similar for you and that will do for a start.

IvoStaelens said:

joshkennedy said:

Hi I'm Josh,

I love making all sorts of things and I'm really interested in electronics. Making the 18650 power wall gets my brain buzzing with ideas. Thanks to all of you who have been making the videos and creating this website!

Ihave a family member who wants to use the system along with a hydroelectric generator. He has a small stream running through his land with a big fall but the water flow varies a lot. I'd love to make him a system.

We came up with this idea along time ago but all the information that has been shared will hopefully now make this project achievable.Istarted collecting cells andIhave a grand total of..........4! Its a start!

If anyone has any information on where or how much to pay for laptop batteries/18650's in the UK that would be very useful.

Thanks again for sharing all thegreat information!

Click to expand...

Hi there,


I've been watching a lot of videos on youtube on the issue and a big help was the video of your average joe on how to find the laptop batteries...

Go to google maps, type in computer repair and usualy it'll show all small firms around you of people doing computer repair after their hours. Call around and drive around and you'll surely have success... It's a time consuming, but actualy fun thing to do

Good luck!

Click to expand...

Thanks for your help. I've not seen any of average joes videos but now a subscriber!

---

DarkRaven said:

Welcome Josh!

Water power? How bizarre!
I immediately start thinking about building a dam and flooding the southeast of the UK. Your own reservoir would solve the issue with the flow of water. Honestly though, controlling this setup will probably a bit of a challenge. At least that's what I thought but there are hydro power charge controllers available

Getting 18650s is what everybody is trying nowadays. If you visit the most obvious spots you will likely find out someone was there already. If you want to go big you ideally need to find a source you can use exclusively. And one putting out enough cells for that matter. But you can also think about other formats, maybe you come across an opportunity.

Here in Germany I can buy batteries for about 1 to 2 EUR if I'm lucky, I think it will be similar for you and that will do for a start.

Click to expand...

Hi DarkRaven,
A dam would be the solution but there's not enough space for anything that large.

1 to 2 is a little more than I expected but I assumed the success rate of good cells would be very low. At least I now have s benchmark to start looking. Thanks!

Welcome! Yeah scouting cells is hard and if you ask me its leaning towards soon buying new ones instead. They arent that expensive and you know what you get.

Last price i got was around 2EUR per 3Ah cells.

joshkennedy said:

1 to 2 is a little more than I expected but I assumed the success rate of good cells would be very low. At least I now have s benchmark to start looking. Thanks!

Click to expand...

For quite some time now I'm regularly seeing smaller bulk offers of laptop batteries (in the region of 15 to 30 batteries maybe) for about 4 to 6 EUR per piece. Considering the effort and potential failure rate you can get better deals buying new cells, especially if you order bigger quantities and can get a volume discount.

It definitely is leaning towards buying new ones like daromer said, especially on the level of individual cells like 18650s. It is just not very easy to find a reliable and cheap source for batteries in Central Europe though. At least from my experience in Germany, we are still lacking a bit in that area. Shipping restrictions further amplify the problem. https://eu.nkon.nl/ is the closest we have to a battery wholesaler I know of who is also selling to individual customers and they are doing a good job.

Stock and prices vary, cheapest offers at the moment seem to be Samsung ICR18650-22P (2200 mAh) for just under 2 EUR starting at 100 cells.

Hello Josh, I have a load of batteries which are bellow 2000mah which you can collect to play around with (no charge no pun intended). Im up to around 14 packs of 100 cells and have a source that keeps on giving.
I started building the packs from 1700 mah upwards and put everything below that to one side (the ones I mentioned above). based on my supply I am now discarding everything below 2000mah.I would be happy to get you started with my 3 sub 2000mah 100 cell packs for say 50 which is notional to cover my costs.

FYIPack 1 is 1700-1799, pack 2 is 1800-1899and pack 3 is 1900-1999.let me know if you are interested. I'm in Chelmsford.

PS never really used a forum before so not sure of the protocol

regards Luke

You can buy new ones in bulk for about 2.50 each which will work very well. I personally would go that way if I didn't have a source of laptops like some of us guys who work in IT departments

We used to send old laptops to an IT recycler for free, I guess that might be a good place to start asking about used cells.