I have been building out my home based solar system and this year finally found some huge LiFePO4 batteries at an affordable price. I took the plunge and got several of them and after I built up the first one, it went so well I decided to take the time to video the build process so others could see how I did it, what to do, and in some cases, what not to do.
The video series was alot of fun to do and i’m putting finishing the last of the series now, but the first part gives alot of info on these huge batteries and good idea of what it takes to convert them your own BESS system.
let me know if you have any questions on the build!
Very interesting. I guess the biggest question is how did you get hold of this used truck battery and what are the state of cells. Could you determine how degraded they were?
I’m assuming this is some type of hybrid truck used for mining. Are these common?
Svarky - great questions! I rolled the dice and took a gamble. based on my research these modules couldn’t be older than 3 years old based on when they were designed so I purchased them and hoped for the best.
as it turns out, my 3 modules showed up with a paint pen mark on the top that says ‘engineering legacy’ which makes me think these were the prototypes that were used for design. I can’t find any evidence that mine were ever used and they are testing out at full capacity.
the only sellers I have found are EV West and greentecauto. I purchased mine through greentecauto. In April they said they had a bunch, but now even their ebay listings are all sold out of this version. they do still have a 30KW version that could be cut into 3 banks of 18s, an even easier mod than I did with mine, but I chose mine because of the huge 302Ah cells.
finally… batteries common? nope. pretty rare, but as of now, you can still get your hands on some versions of them.
are the trucks common? again… not yet in the united states, but they do seem to be deploying them in china but i’m having trouble learning much about them, so they also are a rare.
Supposedly CATL has more than 35% of global battery market, so my guess is we’ll be seeing more things like this in the future.
