Hi everyone. My name is Ken.
I'm a 49 year old self employed motor engineer. I specialise in engine reconditioning.
I'm looking to start building my own powerwall and once you know my story I think you will understand why.
Two years ago I had a 4kw solar edge solar system installed at my home. I very quickly found that as I have my workshop at my home and a self contained flat which I also rent out that a 4 jw solar system simply was not big enough to make any noticeable dent in my carbon foot print or my bills for that matter either lol.
So 6 months later I upped my mortgage and installed a second 6 kw solar edge system bringing me up to 10 kw of solar power. This combined with anew gas boiler and 250ltrpressurised hot water tank with imersuon and a solar diverter has cut my gas and electric bills by about half.
The thing is now on a nice day in spring I can produce 60 to 70 kw and half of it goes out to the grid.
I've even designed and built my own solar tracker with 6 panels on it. Lucky I have a massive garden.
Any way after watchingloads of you tube videos from guys building they own power walls I decided I want to do the same. Rightly or may be wrongly as a basis to get me started I've ended up buying a victron 5 kw multiplus and 5 kw of byd lipo4 batteries. Thinking I can just build my own 48 volt battery packs from 18650 cells.
I think I have my sums right and if I built 14 packs that in series that would give me 50.4 volts nominal which is the same voltage as the byd batteries. As I'm a very busy man I was hoping to buy new cells to save time and give me batteries with the maximum life span. About the best price I have found per mah is the lg 2850 mah cell with 10 amp draw rating so I thought 36 cells in each pack x 14 packs should be 10 kWh if I've learnt the calculations correctly.
The problem is everyone I've spoken to says u can't use 18650 cells with lifepo4 batteries. I don't see what the problem is as I thought they both have very similar characteristics. The other problem is managing the batteries I build as the byd ones have their own bmu which communicated with the victron colour control.
I was wondering if there was a battery manager that I could use and fit just to my 18650 packs and leave the byd ones controlled by the byd bmu.
Forgive me for posting such a long post on my first post and if I'm being a bit of an inexperienced idiot with my way of thinking here.
Sujestions and comments welcome
I'm a 49 year old self employed motor engineer. I specialise in engine reconditioning.
I'm looking to start building my own powerwall and once you know my story I think you will understand why.
Two years ago I had a 4kw solar edge solar system installed at my home. I very quickly found that as I have my workshop at my home and a self contained flat which I also rent out that a 4 jw solar system simply was not big enough to make any noticeable dent in my carbon foot print or my bills for that matter either lol.
So 6 months later I upped my mortgage and installed a second 6 kw solar edge system bringing me up to 10 kw of solar power. This combined with anew gas boiler and 250ltrpressurised hot water tank with imersuon and a solar diverter has cut my gas and electric bills by about half.
The thing is now on a nice day in spring I can produce 60 to 70 kw and half of it goes out to the grid.
I've even designed and built my own solar tracker with 6 panels on it. Lucky I have a massive garden.
Any way after watchingloads of you tube videos from guys building they own power walls I decided I want to do the same. Rightly or may be wrongly as a basis to get me started I've ended up buying a victron 5 kw multiplus and 5 kw of byd lipo4 batteries. Thinking I can just build my own 48 volt battery packs from 18650 cells.
I think I have my sums right and if I built 14 packs that in series that would give me 50.4 volts nominal which is the same voltage as the byd batteries. As I'm a very busy man I was hoping to buy new cells to save time and give me batteries with the maximum life span. About the best price I have found per mah is the lg 2850 mah cell with 10 amp draw rating so I thought 36 cells in each pack x 14 packs should be 10 kWh if I've learnt the calculations correctly.
The problem is everyone I've spoken to says u can't use 18650 cells with lifepo4 batteries. I don't see what the problem is as I thought they both have very similar characteristics. The other problem is managing the batteries I build as the byd ones have their own bmu which communicated with the victron colour control.
I was wondering if there was a battery manager that I could use and fit just to my 18650 packs and leave the byd ones controlled by the byd bmu.
Forgive me for posting such a long post on my first post and if I'm being a bit of an inexperienced idiot with my way of thinking here.
Sujestions and comments welcome