Hello from Cape Town South Africa

Hi guys,

Greetings from stormy and windy Cape Town.
I've been watching Pete, Jehu and some others on Youtube for a while and about 3 weeks ago I thought I'd take up a new hobby and get in on the 18650 collecting action.

I've recently acquired550 old laptop batteries and have been stripping them in the evenings. Its such a pleasing feeling to pull out what look like perfect cells in almost every pack.

Really looking forward to the build of the powerwall, just made contact with Batrium for the BMS, ordering that shortly.

Arranged with a localbuddy to 3d print the 18650 holders... waiting on those...

The digital/intelligent chargers seem to be an issue to get locally, so I arranged with a buddy in the UK to get me the OPUS chargers. I have like 3500 odd cells ready to be charged, but I can't work out the mAH on them until I get the chargers...

Next step is to get an inverter. I was actually looking for advice on what KW the inverter should be.

Excited!!!

Hi and wellcome, these are a lot of cells , about the inverter, depends of many things, the main is the kw of course, what is the maximum comsumption you want to support? the more KW the more expensive it is.

What will be your batteries serial packs configuration? for that amount of cells I will choose 14s so you must choose an inverter for 48v battery.

Will you use separate inverter and battery charger? many people here use MPP SOlar devices, you have all in one or separate.

There are many factors you must choose before.

Regards

Welcome!

Yes many factors to think about. I also recommend 14s at least. there is also coming several inverter systems that can do higher voltage. I have been looking at some that does 150-350VDC. but they are costly too.
I like that you directly plan for BMS. It may not be needed always but some kind of voltage monitoring is needed. I run 2 batrium systems myself and doing both testing and building a platform as of now for collecting and getting the graphing together on 1 place.

I have done some videos on it that may be interesting unless you seen them already