Nice job. I've been using a similar setup in an off grid configuration 24/7 for 6 months now. I'll take anywhere from as little as 5 kwh's, up to as much as 10 kwh's out of the 24 kwh pack every day from sun down till sun up. They've stayed in balance, without any form of BMS, to within 1/100th of a volt--- I couldn't be happier. Oh, and they never get warm, not even 1 degree F above ambient temp when charging or discharging--- these things are the ticket as far as I can tell.
Very interesting video. May I suggest to anyone doing this when making the bus bars. Just mark out drilling on one of each length. Then only drill the end holes on each bar. Bolt the ends together so the are stacked and then you could drill multiple holes at once. It would save a lot of the set up time, and drilling would be faster also.
One drawback to Lithium Ion cells, is that the DO NOT LIKE to be CHARGED when cell temperature is under 0'C. Doing so, can permanently kill it. Discharging is OK to -20'C.
There’s a simple solution. Electric dc heaters. Heated 3D printer beds typically run off 24 volts for diy, or there are products specifically made for this.
THIS IS THE BEST RE-CONFIG EXPLANATION FOR THE LEAF CELLS ON YOU-TUBE! GREAT CHANNEL. LOVE YOUR UN-ASSUMING STYLE. YOU DESERVE WAYYYY MORE VIEWS AND SUBS = MORE $.
Very nice work. I believe I will do the same with the Nissan Leaf batteries.. seems doable and easy to manage with a BMS. Thank you so much for these detailed videos, and your blog about them!
Thanks for making a pass at using the leaf pack in a 48 volt storage configuration! We are building a similar setup, but with slightly less panel capacity (about 2500 watts)
Awesome! We have been following you guys for some time via Instagram - I am going to have to pick your brain about your DIN panel setup for your wiring!
Pop rivets are easily drilled out, its probably an 1/8th" and use a stop on the bit, I use a drill with counter sink so you can stop drill from going in further then need be. If its a blind rivit you can drill out center or take a punch the same diameter as the center pin and pop it in, then use sharp chisel on edge to cut inwards towards the edge of the center hole. You know batteries, I know metal work. Btw, to use a small welder when off grid, you MUST have good capacitor. Thank you for the instruction, your very good and easy to listen to:)
I had the same issue, we had 48 cells, but I wanted to do 7s7p for 49 cells, and 24v. Shipping one more cell would cost over $1000 to New Zealand! So we opted 8s6p, and 29v nominal. It means we'll need a couple of DC buck converters for the sensitive 24v gear, but that's cheaper than shipping another cell!
Why is shipping a cell so much? I have one in the US I can ship you if you haven't completed that part of the project yet. I can't imagine it'd cost more than about $150 USD to ship?
Mortons on the Move thanks you guys!! We are just learning as we go, so we are glad to share anything we've learned along the way if you need someone to bounce ideas off of.
If you add a fuse in the connectors between upper and lower is any shorting newer a big deal. The fuse in the middle just blow. Right now is any shorting going to get a lot of ampere until something burn over.
We are planning to fuse the output of the battery (from the 48V leads) but had not planned on fusing the "jumper" wires between the top and bottom module ...
I have similar battery bank. It was 48v for about 15 months, I changed them to be 56v, so that i can keep the voltage needed for the inverter little better. my inverter is 48v , it works up to 60v, but at 42v it gives low voltage alarm.
I'm working on building an electric chopper powered by a golf cart motor what type of battery setup would you recommend? Obviously lead acid won't work, I was thinking optima until I realized that I could use EV batteries Would you recommend these over prius battery cells?
Do you mean chopper like motorcycle or chopper like a woodchopper? It would really depend on the total power you want to pull out of the battery. This battery is rated to deliver about 120 hp (90 kW) of power. I think you would be pretty disappointed with Prius cells. They are NiMH cells, not Lithium and they are known not to be great cells. If you need more power you could get into 18650 cells (Tesla cells). LFP cells are another great option. LFP cells have reached the price point that if I was to do this over again today that is what I would use.
nice battery set up. something to think about. Cable resistance. as long as each positive and each negative cables or buss bars are the same, each individual battery bank will charge equally since resistance is the same. you said you were running buss bars on most of the batteries and then the ones at the ends your going to use cables. measure the difference between buss bars and cables. when its being charged, path of least resistance, those batteries will get the most power. so you might want to keep a close eye on each battery when you first start charging them to see whats going on. i ran into this using lead acid batteries now all my cables are same length so each of the 4 separate battery banks charge equally. best of luck, SD.
Thank you SD. Very good points. The battery has been in the bus for a little over a year and I am happy to report that it has been doing very well. The cables in this video were only for mock-up and testing. The real cables are all the same length and much larger with super fine strands (premium welding cable). Our BMS system ensures the battery stays perfectly balanced and the cells are usually within 0.005 volts of each other.
Nice build i plan to do this same thing or to source chinese batteries for a similar build . For the record those gloves you were using are useless not only because they offer no real protection but because 48v dc is considered a safe voltage. The only real danger to you is if metal tools bridge the connections on a few cells causing a thermal runaway , even then the cases on those cells are supposed to help mitigate that .
Using 4 Tesla modules would produce the same results in series/parallel with simpler wiring/bus bars. But they are almost twice the price and 4 would total only 21.5 kwh. The batteries would also weigh 220 pounds... a little more than you say these weigh. Also, the Leaf batteries are designed to deliver car-level power output with only air cooling. The Leaf batteries seem to be the way to go! And re-jiggering things is fun anyway...
Thank you Eric - Telsa modules are great and we did consider them before going this route. With the Telsa modules you do not need to run the liquid cooling for the small loads that we are putting on them. One thing to consider is that the Tesla modules run 6S for their 24V setup which is a little weak with most inverters today. 2 in series gives us 12S which is on the lower side of the working voltage from the Victron Quattro (which is 38 - 66V) - With 14S we are more "in the middle" of that range with our Voltage typically hanging out around 56V or so.
Very nice job. It's nice to see how well this part of the project was planned out, especially with the battery banking. Did you use the existing hardware to attach the buss bars? If it was changed out, you might want to consider some No-Ox at all the cell connections. I'm anxious to see the completed electrical install. Good luck!
Hi Tony - I did use the existing hardware to connect the bus bars - The original battery came with much smaller bus bars but a thick plastic cover - so the screws were long enough to work - I will look into the No-Ox product regardless - thanks for the tip!
My $0.02 - I second the no-ox, or di-electric grease on the bolts since they are a different metal. Either works great, one is conductive, one isn't, and there is this HUGE debate about which to use. But both of them protect from corrosion, the di-electric just doesn't aid in conduction (which should be fine since you have a large copper to copper surface area). Since the bus bar is copper and the battery terminals are copper you don't *need* it there, but it won't hurt.
Just checking in to see how the modules are holding up? I have a few modules looking like they are going to low voltage, is there a way to check each module internal resistance without disassembling the entire pack? great video! Thanks~
You have used a thick busbar to connect cells in parallel which isn't necessary and then using the same busbar to make the series connection which has to take the full current across a single point each time you change polarity, limiting current and spending money where you'll get no benefit instead of concentrating you resources more on the series connections 🤔
i just subbed sweet channel you have going here ,im throwing out my lead acids and going with this type battery in my solar system for sure .cant wait to see end product
You clearly have done your research (and I have not) but I am surprised you are stacking the packs vertically on top of each other in a few rather than using single height alongside each other. I would imagine this will make thermal management more difficult as the top row are going to be heated up by the row beneath. Do you have a plan for active temperature management ( I do know the Nissan Leaf range currently do not).?
Hi Norman. The Nissan Leaf pack in the car does not have active heat management (they do have heating for when it gets too cold)- we have A LOT of leaf cars out here in Arizona where the asphalt temperatures can reach 160 degrees. That being said ... we all know that heat is pretty much the enemy of electronics and batteries - so the bay these fit into is cooled by a dedicated 5000 BTU air conditioner. I have 3 temperature sensors on the battery as well as an external air temperature monitor which updates and will set an alarm if it goes above a set temperature.
Thank Oliver - this video is pretty old and we have actually installed and been using this battery for over 2 years now. For balancing, we use a BMS that will monitor and balance the cells. It technically does not balance each individual cell. We chose to put the battery in this configuration because cells connected in parallel will naturally just balance themselves (each "cell" in our battery is made up of 14 discrete "cells"). The cells in series need balancing. In the almost three years, we have been monitoring this battery, we have never seen the cell voltages drift more than about 0.05 Volts apart between cells.
Hey, you're really making progress now! Thanks for documenting it. I don't think I've ever seen a... 2p2s7p7s pack before. (Do I have that right?! Ha!) I think you'll be much happier at 48v. Let's stay in touch on rec bms versus others; I'm still deciding as well and am interested in what you may have come up with. I'm not too thrilled about all those big, exposed bus bars. Hopefully you can cover those up when you're not wrenching on the battery, or maybe you've already got it safely installed in the bus by now and shielded. Even those little meter probes you're testing with in this video could instantly get plasma-balled given how close those bars are. Be careful and keep the eye protection on if you can! One other bit of critique for you: you have a different wiring topology for your odd-man-out 3p+4p pack that spans the two racks. Because of that, the resistance may vary just a tiny bit, and so you may see a gradual degree of imbalance specific to that portion that you don't get on the other 6. It sounds like you're leaning towards active cell management, which may be able to compensate for it semi-automatically... but either way, I'd encourage you to watch those cells, specifically, extra carefully at the start to see how they make out. (In the same vein, fusing those interconnects would dramatically change the resistance topology and probably throw things really out of whack.)
Hey Ben, good to hear from you. I think 48V will be a much better fit as well :) I JUST ordered the BMS from REC 2 days ago - they were pretty great to work with. The ORION setup you showed me looked very sweet it was hard to choose between the two. With any luck, it should be here in a couple of weeks. Yeah, the 3p+4p may have a tiny bit of additional resistance - but the BMS should keep it in balance (REC does active balancing so I will report on that as it continues to happen). The wires in the pictures are "just for show" the real wires will likely be 2/0 cables to help cut down on the resistance. Yes, we are looking for something to cover up the exposed bus bars - they look really sweet but do pose a threat to anything metal that comes near them. We have seen a few rubber covers that would "snap" on that might work - still working through that. Thanks for reaching out -
Love your project. I'm looking into Chevy Volt batteries and came upon your project. But I have a caution for you.... what happens when ONE cell shorts? As I understand it, it is customary to fuse each battery to the buss bar so it can take itself our of the circuit. Natually, that will lead to an imbalance when charging, but *that* is solvable. Nice work though!
Yes - this is all pretty experimental. I am not exactly sure what would happen if one cell goes bad - I guess it depends on how it goes bad. It should show up in our BMS which "cell" (really a set of 7 modules) goes bad because it will start reaching the "stop charging" voltage first. Time will tell and I will keep an eye on everything - hopefully by the time these go bad we will be ready for an upgrade anyway :)
HBPowerwall that would be awesome! We are pretty new to this RUclips stuff and still trying to figure things out - any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
Didn't look like to got too many subs extra, i'll try a plug on youtube :) I like these types of projects. Shared on facebook.com/groups/Secondlifestorage
Hi, I know it's been a while ago, but you know, for a newborn baby every news is new... anyway, would you mind to give me some more info about what happened during the "few hours" around 5:26. I mean what did you do to make the modules ready to flip them to the correct direction? Nice trip what you have done recently though.
They ended up fitting OK after a little messing with them. I was going to drill out the those metal brackets but I ended up leaving them in because I thought drilling them out might affect the structural integrity of the battery cells.
SolarizeYourLife funny enough, we are in the process of covering and protecting all the copper bus bars as we speak. Shouldn't be any way that we can short anything now.
Thanks for the great video! I am trying to build a similar system with 42 batteries. Did you charge each cell before connecting them together? If so, could you please tell me what charger you used?
I found the batteries on a salvage yard search engine. I called them up and they faxed over some paper work. We spent $2500 on the batteries, another $150 "core charge" and $150 to ship them to a freight center. So for $2800 we got 24 kWh of battery power (about 2000Ah in a 12V configuration). They are very practical if you are willing to take the time to learn how everything works and do everything safely. We oversized most of our wires, added a BMS to ensure the battery would never be allowed to take on too much charge or discharge too deeply, protect it from temperature extremes, and balance the cells. We have had this battery in for nearly 2.5 years and it has performed extremely well.
I know I’m very late to the party here but enjoying your videos on your bus build. I live full-time in a 2000 Monaco dynasty and I have upgraded it with 800 amp hours of lithium batteries. (Lossigy) and I love them along with 1100 watts of solar using a Victron mutiplus II. I have done a lot of upgrades to my coach, but nothing close to all of the work that you guys have put into your bus. Just curious, what is the motorcycle in the background of this video?😊
Good eye - That motorcycle was my baby ... it was a 1995 Bimota SB6. Here is a photo of her I took for when I put her up for sale: photos.app.goo.gl/iH8r7kDYwBhdZDCg9
I am working on a battery pack using 14 leaf Gen1 batteries in series. Do you know what would work for a BMS and charger for this setup? End voltage is 104 volt
Hi - yes there are BMS systems that can handle that. The BMS we chose will do up to 16S but it sounds like you are more like 28S. Orion BMS makes a BMS that is more focused on the auto industry which often have much higher voltages and they have from 24 Cell all the way up to 180 Cell. www.orionbms.com/products/orion-bms-standard/
Hey, great video. I'm looking to buy 48 modules from a gen 1 leaf for my house battery wall. The seller says that gen 1 batteries will degrade forever while gen 2 batteries degrade to a point and then die with a short circuit, not a big deal in a high voltage pack but if used in parallel to get 48 volts they're a fire hazard as the other batteries in that bank will deliver unlimited amount of current trying to bring it to voltage. Do you know if that's true?
Fascinating build, I'm really enjoying your progress! You have me considering leaf modules. I have a switch on my dash so that if my chassis batteries die, I can use the house battery to start the coach. Can't use it if I go 24 or 48 volt. So, 2 leaf packs for "12" volts? I could start off with 4 for a 2 kwh pack, and add 2 at a time to go as large as I need. Limiting the charge to 3.95 would keep it at 15.8 max, within a 12 volt inverter max range of 16 volts, and 3.0 volts would be 12 volts, but I have read you can go down to 2.5 without damage, which is 10 volts, but I wouldn't want to go that low. I know staying under the max voltage of the module is healthier for it, and with a programmable mppt setting the parameters should be fine. The inverter charger I'm looking at has a 14.4 lithium charge profile option, which would be fine if I plugged in for some reason. I know my cables would be more expensive, but a 4,000 watt pure sine would be the biggest I would go. 3,000 would probably be plenty. Also not sure how much those charge parameters would reduce overall capacity. I wouldn't get the full watt hour capacity per module, but I'm not sure how the math would work out. So is this a horrible idea, or could it be done? Not messing with 24v-12v converters is appealing.
Thank you Subwoofer 101. You are correct the "use my house battery to start the vehicle" switch does become a bit more tricky when you switch to 24 or 48 Volts. 15.8 seems a tad high for 12V systems but the batteries would LOVE 3.95 for the max (they should last longer). 3.0 is getting them down pretty low. When they reach about 3.5 or 3.4 or so it does the hockey-stick thing and you are pretty close to needing to recharge. As you are aware it is all a trade-off 4,000 watts is quite a bit to ask from 12 volts (pushing a lot of amps). What are you planning to run off the inverter? Do you plan to charge the house battery off the alternator? How much solar do you have feeding the batteries? You are correct that you will not get the full capacity since you are limiting the upper end but it should perform pretty well. So, in short, it is not a horrible idea - it can be done. The tradeoff for not messing with the converters is that you are going to be pushing 2X the amps of a 24 Volt system or 4X the Amps of a 48V system.
@@BeginningfromthisMorning Good to know about the hockey stick point in the voltage, that's an important factor. I'm running a legitimate home theater in the RV, which draws about 300-500 Watts continuous at full tilt. 8,000+ Watts of subwoofer peak power (2,400 RMS) at the moment, but thankfully the magic of Class D amplifiers with good capacitance means pretty low continuous draw. The apartment refrigerator draws about 100 Watts and it's intermittent. Basic florescent lighting, CPAP, fantastic fans, and other incidentals. Might try to install a mini split down the road, but I can't figure out how to do it without looking rigged. 24 volt would probably make more sense. I'm concerned that 15.8 volts might fry some of my 12 volt lights/fans. Just picked up (4) new 310 watt Q cells duo G5 split cells, so 1,200 Watts for $500, no complaints there. Good for shading, half the panel can be shaded and still produce. Love your solar rack btw, brilliant! I could probably make it work with the 4 GC2 batteries in there now, but I'd much rather have a surplus of storage. I could also stand to shave some weight. I'd love to get up to 10kwh, but 6 might be more than plenty. I have 2.5 kwh usable now. Still have to actually run everything to see what I truly need. Have a 1200 watt inverter as a test mule until I decide which voltage I want.
Very nice setup so far, i am new to your channel will back and watch the first part, I am a electrician and I am looking to go off grid with a lithium power. Do you know what your amp hour is for your set up, or wattage
Hi Edgar - The system is just over 24 kWh (49 modules @ 7.6V nominal @ 66.2 Ah = 24,578.4 Wh). I had to buy an extra Nissan Leaf battery module to get the 14s14p configuration. The nominal voltage for the system is 53.2 V and we are running a 5000 Watt inverter. Amp hour wise we are 462 Ah @ 53.2V
@Beginning from this Morning - I wanted to take the time to thank you for your detailed videos. I have watched them all and they helped me a great deal in building the battery bank we are using to power our community funded off grid Broadband Internet tower. We went with 2 banks of batteries each bank is 4p7s and the then the 2 banks are connected in Parallel across an A B A/B switch for purposes of working on one bank at a time without shutting down power to the Access Points. I do have a question about your charge settings. We will be charging our banks from 10 327w panels 2s5p and I have been finding conflicting information on the web for the proper charge controller settings for these batteries. Have you shared your charge controller settings on here anywhere? BTW, We are using an outback power Radian 4048 system.
Awesome Jason! We run a Victron 250/80 SmartSolar MPPT controller - Here are the setting we are currently running with: Absorption voltage: 57.50 V, Maximum Absorption time: 30m . Float Voltage: 57.40V. Equalization Disabled. If you have an option set the "curve" to linear. Our charge controller also accepts input from our BMS so it will often ignore these settings and "listen" to the BMS. I hope that helps - keep me posted on your progress!
how much does the entire battery weigh? any way of telling? looks massive but probably soooo much lighter than a led acid battery of that volt/watts.. nice work!
Focused on the Road the battery weighs about 420lbs if I remember correctly including the custom frame we built. Each individual module weighs about 8 lbs. With us using our battery to 80% and a standard led acid 100ah battery being used to 50%, you would need 32 led acid batteries to be equivalent to what we have. That would probably weigh close to 2000lbs.
I think you know if you put on of the plate incorrectly (a bang) I always be very careful when putting them on as unlike gell battery's lithium battery can go thermal nuclear or blow holes in the bars or cables when a short happens (I assume there going to be a somthing like 100-250A fuse in there)
Thank you for the comment Lee - Batteries - especially these can be very very dangerous. We have a 300A Class-T fuse coming out of the battery and a bunch of other breakers where we branch out for power.
Great videos on the battery banks. I custom building and expedition vehicle and want to do something very similar. Have you figured out how many Amp Hours you have with the 48 volt cell? 60?
I believe it is JUST shy of 500ah (something like 498) @ 48V - It's basically and entire Nissan Leaf pack + one more module (to make a 14p14s configuration)
Thank you Sean - Good luck with your expedition build. We have been pretty happy with these batteries so far (but we have only been putting them together so far). From everything we read they need to be compressed (the reason we have the large threaded rod through the packs). If you are using it like us you should also strongly consider getting a BMS solution (video on that coming soon). Do you have a link to your build?
Fook Utube hi, yeah we ended up changing plans from the part one video. After more research, we found that if we switched to a 48v setup, there would be more options for BMS, 48v to 12v converters, only have to buy one solar charge controller, smaller wire because lower amp load.
They're doing awesome! We are using them to power air conditioners, power tools, refrigerator, electronics as we are still building out the bus and they are doing exactly what they were designed to do. The BMS keeps them in check and balanced and we haven't had any issues at all. The cells are typically within 0.01 volts of each other.
Hi Brian - a dynamo used as an electric brake would be amazing ... but that is far too ambitious for us if we ever want to get this thing on the road. The battery will be charged via solar as you suggested but also via shore-power hookup via 50 amp plug-in chord if we are at an RV park. We are playing with the idea of charing it via the Generator on the main motor because it is capable of producing over 200 amps of power and we just use it for the running lights and keeping the starter batteries charged.
Beginning from this Morning using the engine's alternator will not save you anything unless it only turns on when you are coasting with the engine braking. Otherwise you will be using the same amount of extra fuel as running a stand alone generator. I drive a van on Service calls for a living. I've thought about welding a pulley on the driveshaft and connect an alternator to it via a belt then you apply the brakes or use a paddle switch to turn on the alternator to charge the batteries when slowing down. I was going to see if I could produce enough power to run my house at night. But carrying the extra weight may offset any savings. I haven't gotten around to the experiment yet. It might be better to find an old 8kw generator for the project instead of an alternator
Wow! that sounds like a cool idea - kind of like regenerative braking. If you get this setup I would love to see it. I had a very similar thought about the fuel consumption. Thanks for the input.
Now that's a battery bank bro! Looks like you did a great job. If you want to join in, we have a FB group for camping/youtube channels (over 200 channels) called Camping RUclips Community Support. Feel free to come by and share your videos.
Thank you Al. It has been a great pleasure to work with Scott the Bus Grease Monkey. Honestly I have always had a fascination with electricity and the way things work. My first exposure the Lithium batteries was in about 2004 with model airplane batteries. They were far far more dangerous than the stuff we use today.
It depends on how it goes bad. Since each cell is tied in parallel with 6 other cells - if one goes bad it will likely just lose the capacity of one cell.
I just finished watching your journey fixing the under side of your bus with The Bus Grease Monkey. Wow, that was a lot of work! What type of metal are the bolts used to bolt the bus bars onto the modules? Was that a used/new Nissan battery? Great videos! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you Tom - We had a ton of fun with Scott and Kelly. We used the factory bolts with the bus bar modules. This was a used Nissan Leaf battery from a 2013 with about 30,000 miles on it.
Any gloves are a good idea - we did give it a final clean when we were finished before we covered it all up. I also went in and performed some routine maintenance about 2 weeks ago to be sure that all the bolts, lugs, screws etc were all tight and secure - everything looked great. No signs of any kind of oxidation or excess heat on any of the battery terminals.
Was it cheaper to buy the whole battery module compared to buying individual cells? I love the idea of the leaf cells but I can’t seem to like the idea of spending 3-4 k for batteries.
Yes - I bought the entire battery for $2500. I think you will pay more for modules. Another advantage of buying the entire battery is that those cells will be perfectly balanced
The blog post has a full cost break down. The battery was $2500 from a salvage yard + $150 core charge and $150 freight charges to get it to AZ. So $2800 all together.
I have a question about the way the center terminals are all tied together in each battery. Should they not be connected so as to only read each cell individually?
great idea with the leaf batteries, how do you plan to charge a 48v battery bank from a 24v alternator on your bus?... or are you not going to charge from the engine as you drive?... I'm thinking of lithium batteries on mine as well but they are pricey!!!
Hi James - I have been a fan of your bus project and channel for a while now, thanks for chiming in. We do not plan to charge the battery bank from the engine. Our bus is actually 12V so the climb to 57ish Volts is even steeper. The batteries will primarily be charged from our solar array or the shore power. There were too many headaches with trying to charge it from the engine. The solar array we are fitting is pretty substantial so we are hoping that will keep the batteries charged up. Lithium can be pricey - we got this battery from a salvage yard for $2500 - which seems like a lot until you price out 2000 Ah worth of lead-acid (not to mention the added weight). I know it is not an apples-to-apples comparison because this is a used battery but we should be able to get many, many more cycles out of this battery than even brand new lead-acid batteries. The way RV systems use the battery is very gentle when compared to their life powering a car. This system should run everything we need, including the air conditioners and still use less than 5% of the load they were designed to handle. The temperature monitor shows it never really getting very hot - even when charging it with 52 Amps. I have a BMS unit to keep tabs on everything and keep everything balanced and safe. I would love to talk it over with you if you have questions - there are also several really good groups I belong to that I can point you to if you want more information.
@@BeginningfromthisMorning you could easily add a 48V alternator to your engine if you need to, depends on your usage, if you are plugged in or able to charge with solar that's the best solution anyway, I have a 225 amp. 24v alternator already on my bus so charging from that is a no brainer, but I'm planning on traveling quite a bit so the engine can charge the batteries while driving, my inverter just arrived today even though I'm a ways away from installing, I'm definitely interested in any info you can share on lithium batteries for an RV, I haven't had a chance to watch everything you have posted yet so most of my questions may be answered already, you guys are doing a fantastic job on your bus... look forward to watching more of your videos, thanks for sharing
Absolutely - glad to share any knowledge I have acquired along the way. I am happy to report that the battery has been working very well - I have friends with this exact configuration and they are also reporting excellent performance from the battery as well.
Thank you Bob - The system continues to perform amazingly well. We will try to do an "update" video here in the next few weeks since we are in the dead of summer in AZ with 114 degree temps we are powering 4 air conditioners with this battery and solar and running great all day long.
4 AC units. That is awesome. Obviously there’s not enough solar panels on a bus to do that. Must be a hybrid system plugged into the grid. All Victron Energy components if I remember correctly. Nice work. I got stuck because I have a 24 volt Victron inverter and Leaf modules don’t make a good 24 volt battery. May buy the 48 volt model like you have. Or just use my Leaf modules in a 48 volt golf cart or maybe 48 volt electric scooter.
nice work. I want to do the same and your work is the inspiration for it! A question: what's the deal with having to compress them? first time I've heard it talked about.
They come "compressed" from the factory - they have the metal plates on the end of the row of 24 and then on the tops and bottoms of the two stacks of 12 - If you watch the first video (where I take them out of the factory metal container) you can see the plates I am talking about. All I did was take a measurement of how "compressed" they were and noted it down ... then when I put the pack back together I put it back to the same spec. Same with the other bank I made with just threaded rod from Home Depot (adding 1 that I had to buy from eBay). Just made sure they measured the same distance (+1 more module of course)
so is the compression necessary for operation electrically or just from a mechanical stability standpoint? Obviously we wouldn't want them to shift any or the fireworks might begin early!
From what I understand it is to prevent the cells (if you look inside the metal modules the cells are actually 4 "pouches") from "bulging". I am not 100% sure so we just put it to the way it was from the factory. There is not an extreme amount of compression but we did have to use a ratcheting tie down strap to even fit the original threaded rods back through the pack.
@beginningthismorning. Any chance you could publish you schematic drawing. Only reason being your verbal discription makes no sense. Only speaking as an electrical engineer who has been asked by a friend to watch your video. Parallel parallel series? I get that each "module" aka battery is a dual cell battery. Your busbar configuration is where you are loosing me. Please can I see the diagram rather. Much appreciated. Love what you doing here and a great project. Keep up the good work.
Hi Braden - of course. Each battery module is actually made up of 4 cells wired in a 2s2p configuration internally (hence the three terminals [positive, negative, sense]). We wired 7 modules in parallel (essentially creating a 2s14p configuration) then connected them in series with another "7 modules in parallel" until we had 7 "7 module packs" in series (giving us a final configuration of 14s14p). It is important to note that I have wired them in parallel first instead of wiring 7 modules in series THEN connecting those modules in parallel to give us the same final configuration) I have a high-resolution diagram here: www.dropbox.com/s/9xpxlsghtbfhvkn/REC%20BMS.jpg?dl=0 that should show you exactly how the batteries are wired. The blog post that accompanies the video does a little better job of explaining it: www.beginningfromthismorning.com/house-batteries-part-2/. I also go over it again in part4 beginningfromthismorning.com/house-batteries-part-4/.
Battery setup is all wired up and installed in the bus - it is working really great. I have a video of us running the air conditioners and it handles those really well. Solar is waiting until after we get the bus painted - then we will build the racks and get that wired up.
Are you a sailmaker ? Moto tag is JIPE. I have been using 6v golf cart batteries for 15 years in my cabin. I was considering buying a used Prius auto and just doing a plug in transfer when I arrived at the cabin. Comments??
Hi Jwayne - Thanks for following along. I am not a sailor - this is my first time doing anything like this. The thought of using an electric car for the battery (and keeping the car usable) is interesting. The nice thing is the car will start the internal combustion engine and keep the battery charged if they get too low. I have heard of one guy who was attempting to do this with a Prius that he was going to pull behind his Skoolie. He is an Electrical Engineer and I think he was having some challenges with the setup. Here is the forum post detailing his work: secondlifestorage.com/t-Mobile-24kWh-Leaf-Battery-3-6kW-Solar-Build
Hi G. Montserrat - We got the BMS from REC-BMS. We emailed them with what we were trying to do and they were very helpful and responsive. We ordered pretty much the entire system from the BMS, precharge controller, contactor, shunt, temperature probes, fuses etc. We detail the entire thing on our blog post that also has the BMS video: beginningfromthismorning.com/bms/
Yes - or we could use the RV as a backup for the house. We plan to sell the house and travel for a couple of years when we are done with the build so we have not given it too much thought but with a little effort that could be made to work nicely.
I tried to look that up and while I agree with you - I couldn't really find any official docs on how to qualify the battery. (my battery is actually a 14p14S but I understood what you meant)
Anytime you are using Lithium you should really be using a BMS. I have lost track of the number of expanded cells or fires I have seen (some very serious sending folks to the hospital) because someone thought "Oh I will be able to just check on them every few days". The problem is humans become complacent - and then a few days becomes "oh once a week" or "once a month" then SURPRISE there is a fire or the cells have expanded (if you are lucky). Honestly I wouldn't even consider doing Lithium without a BMS.
I like the video but........ I'm worried, does anyone knows about high voltage dangers ? No gloves, no isolated tools. I'm surprised no one gets injured or worst.
Low voltage DC won't harm you. 50V might tingle a bit. Over 100V might pose some danger. I've disassembled a 2013 Leaf pack before with just some thick rubber gloves. I'm still here. Thats around 400VDC
An example of a very proud young papa, proud of his kids and his batteries, life is so good
Those Leaf batteries are very versatile. Seen a lot of people using them on powerwalls. Giving me ideas, I like it.
Nice job. I've been using a similar setup in an off grid configuration 24/7 for 6 months now. I'll take anywhere from as little as 5 kwh's, up to as much as 10 kwh's out of the 24 kwh pack every day from sun down till sun up. They've stayed in balance, without any form of BMS, to within 1/100th of a volt--- I couldn't be happier. Oh, and they never get warm, not even 1 degree F above ambient temp when charging or discharging--- these things are the ticket as far as I can tell.
Wow that is great to hear! I have been surprised by how balanced they have stayed. We are hopefully installing them in the battery bay this weekend :)
beautiful battery, beautiful family
Very interesting video. May I suggest to anyone doing this when making the bus bars. Just mark out drilling on one of each length. Then only drill the end holes on each bar. Bolt the ends together so the are stacked and then you could drill multiple holes at once. It would save a lot of the set up time, and drilling would be faster also.
With a drill press yeah, otherwise you'd better hand steady hands! lol
Loving going back and watching this again, as I’m getting close to doing the exact same thing. Great work on detailed footage!
Thanks, Joel.
I love these "Mad Scientist" kind of projects. Good luck and I'll be watching your progress eagerly.
One drawback to Lithium Ion cells, is that the DO NOT LIKE to be CHARGED when cell temperature is under 0'C. Doing so, can permanently kill it. Discharging is OK to -20'C.
There’s a simple solution. Electric dc heaters. Heated 3D printer beds typically run off 24 volts for diy, or there are products specifically made for this.
Nice setup. I will be creating one of these for off grid solar for home. Thank you for all your info.
Outstanding family! Well ok so is your battery. I really enjoy your project.Thanks for sharing
THIS IS THE BEST RE-CONFIG EXPLANATION FOR THE LEAF CELLS ON YOU-TUBE! GREAT CHANNEL. LOVE YOUR UN-ASSUMING STYLE. YOU DESERVE WAYYYY MORE VIEWS AND SUBS = MORE $.
Wow, thank you!
Very nice work. I believe I will do the same with the Nissan Leaf batteries.. seems doable and easy to manage with a BMS. Thank you so much for these detailed videos, and your blog about them!
Thanks steve - I have tried to share as much as I can about what I have learned. It has been a fun process
Thank you for making me a battery setup like this one. You a real kind person. 👏👏 🍻🍻🍻
Thanks for making a pass at using the leaf pack in a 48 volt storage configuration! We are building a similar setup, but with slightly less panel capacity (about 2500 watts)
Awesome! We have been following you guys for some time via Instagram - I am going to have to pick your brain about your DIN panel setup for your wiring!
Pop rivets are easily drilled out, its probably an 1/8th" and use a stop on the bit, I use a drill with counter sink so you can stop drill from going in further then need be. If its a blind rivit you can drill out center or take a punch the same diameter as the center pin and pop it in, then use sharp chisel on edge to cut inwards towards the edge of the center hole. You know batteries, I know metal work.
Btw, to use a small welder when off grid, you MUST have good capacitor.
Thank you for the instruction, your very good and easy to listen to:)
That is awsome, thanks for putting the videos together, cant wait to see the next ones,
Beautiful work!
Thank you Bryan
Cool build and good you involved your kids so they can get hands on experience with tech!
I had the same issue, we had 48 cells, but I wanted to do 7s7p for 49 cells, and 24v. Shipping one more cell would cost over $1000 to New Zealand! So we opted 8s6p, and 29v nominal. It means we'll need a couple of DC buck converters for the sensitive 24v gear, but that's cheaper than shipping another cell!
Why is shipping a cell so much? I have one in the US I can ship you if you haven't completed that part of the project yet. I can't imagine it'd cost more than about $150 USD to ship?
Very pro and tidy job.
Thank you Dan - It has been working extremely well on the bus, we couldn't be happier with this battery.
Just found your channel. Beautiful battery! Well done!
Thanks and welcome
Great job! Following your build! Were currently looking at using a tesla pack. Excited to see ya hit the road!
Mortons on the Move thanks you guys!! We are just learning as we go, so we are glad to share anything we've learned along the way if you need someone to bounce ideas off of.
I’m very curious if you still use the battery or how long last that battery
And thank you so much this helping me so much to build my on 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Very nice! May, I suggest some dielectric grease on your bus bars once complete so they do not corrode.
Hi Corey - YES - we are using that stuff on everything even the original factory wiring.
If you add a fuse in the connectors between upper and lower is any shorting newer a big deal. The fuse in the middle just blow. Right now is any shorting going to get a lot of ampere until something burn over.
We are planning to fuse the output of the battery (from the 48V leads) but had not planned on fusing the "jumper" wires between the top and bottom module ...
OK, but it would not hurt to put a fuse in the middle of the battery too. That would make a 0" short impossible between the two banks.
I will have to research that more - thanks!
thanks for sharing good luck. And Sir You are a Gentleman.
all right now go for it you are good
I have similar battery bank. It was 48v for about 15 months, I changed them to be 56v, so that i can keep the voltage needed for the inverter little better. my inverter is 48v , it works up to 60v, but at 42v it gives low voltage alarm.
Are you in an RV?
no. I use a leaf module based battery bank on my off-grid solar system at home.
Awesome! - do you have a write-up on it?
yes, on my blog. But its in my native language. I will re-write in English when I get some free time. twimalasuriya.blogspot.com/2017/08/06.html
What are the overall dimensions of that configuration? I'm hoping to get all 48 Leaf cells into a 20" x 30" footprint, and no more than 25" tall
Good job!!!
I'm working on building an electric chopper powered by a golf cart motor what type of battery setup would you recommend?
Obviously lead acid won't work, I was thinking optima until I realized that I could use EV batteries
Would you recommend these over prius battery cells?
Do you mean chopper like motorcycle or chopper like a woodchopper? It would really depend on the total power you want to pull out of the battery. This battery is rated to deliver about 120 hp (90 kW) of power. I think you would be pretty disappointed with Prius cells. They are NiMH cells, not Lithium and they are known not to be great cells. If you need more power you could get into 18650 cells (Tesla cells). LFP cells are another great option. LFP cells have reached the price point that if I was to do this over again today that is what I would use.
@@BeginningfromthisMorning chopper motorcycle, budget build
nice battery set up. something to think about. Cable resistance. as long as each positive and each negative cables or buss bars are the same, each individual battery bank will charge equally since resistance is the same. you said you were running buss bars on most of the batteries and then the ones at the ends your going to use cables. measure the difference between buss bars and cables. when its being charged, path of least resistance, those batteries will get the most power. so you might want to keep a close eye on each battery when you first start charging them to see whats going on. i ran into this using lead acid batteries now all my cables are same length so each of the 4 separate battery banks charge equally. best of luck, SD.
Thank you SD. Very good points. The battery has been in the bus for a little over a year and I am happy to report that it has been doing very well. The cables in this video were only for mock-up and testing. The real cables are all the same length and much larger with super fine strands (premium welding cable). Our BMS system ensures the battery stays perfectly balanced and the cells are usually within 0.005 volts of each other.
Nice build i plan to do this same thing or to source chinese batteries for a similar build . For the record those gloves you were using are useless not only because they offer no real protection but because 48v dc is considered a safe voltage. The only real danger to you is if metal tools bridge the connections on a few cells causing a thermal runaway , even then the cases on those cells are supposed to help mitigate that .
The gloves is to prevent finger prints on the bus bar which can least to corrosion
Some battery combo to live with of grid .thanks
Using 4 Tesla modules would produce the same results in series/parallel with simpler wiring/bus bars. But they are almost twice the price and 4 would total only 21.5 kwh. The batteries would also weigh 220 pounds... a little more than you say these weigh. Also, the Leaf batteries are designed to deliver car-level power output with only air cooling. The Leaf batteries seem to be the way to go! And re-jiggering things is fun anyway...
Thank you Eric - Telsa modules are great and we did consider them before going this route. With the Telsa modules you do not need to run the liquid cooling for the small loads that we are putting on them. One thing to consider is that the Tesla modules run 6S for their 24V setup which is a little weak with most inverters today. 2 in series gives us 12S which is on the lower side of the working voltage from the Victron Quattro (which is 38 - 66V) - With 14S we are more "in the middle" of that range with our Voltage typically hanging out around 56V or so.
Very nice job. It's nice to see how well this part of the project was planned out, especially with the battery banking. Did you use the existing hardware to attach the buss bars? If it was changed out, you might want to consider some No-Ox at all the cell connections.
I'm anxious to see the completed electrical install. Good luck!
Hi Tony - I did use the existing hardware to connect the bus bars - The original battery came with much smaller bus bars but a thick plastic cover - so the screws were long enough to work - I will look into the No-Ox product regardless - thanks for the tip!
My $0.02 - I second the no-ox, or di-electric grease on the bolts since they are a different metal. Either works great, one is conductive, one isn't, and there is this HUGE debate about which to use. But both of them protect from corrosion, the di-electric just doesn't aid in conduction (which should be fine since you have a large copper to copper surface area). Since the bus bar is copper and the battery terminals are copper you don't *need* it there, but it won't hurt.
Really curious to learn how this worked out. Amazon info. I’ll continue watching! Thanks for all the detail.
Thanks Daniel. We have been running this battery for nearly three years and it's performed flawlessly.
That is a whole lot of power packed into that.
Just checking in to see how the modules are holding up? I have a few modules looking like they are going to low voltage, is there a way to check each module internal resistance without disassembling the entire pack? great video! Thanks~
Modules are holding up great they still charge and discharge within 0.05V of each other and have been really great for us.
How long does it take you to charge your Nissan leaf batteries in this configuration?
You have used a thick busbar to connect cells in parallel which isn't necessary and then using the same busbar to make the series connection which has to take the full current across a single point each time you change polarity, limiting current and spending money where you'll get no benefit instead of concentrating you resources more on the series connections 🤔
i just subbed sweet channel you have going here ,im throwing out my lead acids and going with this type battery in my solar system for sure .cant wait to see end product
Thank Jeff - welcome aboard - I am working hard on figuring it out and trying to share as much as I can.
Hey friend how did they work out for you as I'm considering this setup as well?
You clearly have done your research (and I have not) but I am surprised you are stacking the packs vertically on top of each other in a few rather than using single height alongside each other. I would imagine this will make thermal management more difficult as the top row are going to be heated up by the row beneath. Do you have a plan for active temperature management ( I do know the Nissan Leaf range currently do not).?
Hi Norman. The Nissan Leaf pack in the car does not have active heat management (they do have heating for when it gets too cold)- we have A LOT of leaf cars out here in Arizona where the asphalt temperatures can reach 160 degrees. That being said ... we all know that heat is pretty much the enemy of electronics and batteries - so the bay these fit into is cooled by a dedicated 5000 BTU air conditioner. I have 3 temperature sensors on the battery as well as an external air temperature monitor which updates and will set an alarm if it goes above a set temperature.
concerned by this project : how will you do individual cell balancing ??
Thank Oliver - this video is pretty old and we have actually installed and been using this battery for over 2 years now. For balancing, we use a BMS that will monitor and balance the cells. It technically does not balance each individual cell. We chose to put the battery in this configuration because cells connected in parallel will naturally just balance themselves (each "cell" in our battery is made up of 14 discrete "cells"). The cells in series need balancing. In the almost three years, we have been monitoring this battery, we have never seen the cell voltages drift more than about 0.05 Volts apart between cells.
Hey, you're really making progress now! Thanks for documenting it.
I don't think I've ever seen a... 2p2s7p7s pack before. (Do I have that right?! Ha!)
I think you'll be much happier at 48v. Let's stay in touch on rec bms versus others; I'm still deciding as well and am interested in what you may have come up with.
I'm not too thrilled about all those big, exposed bus bars. Hopefully you can cover those up when you're not wrenching on the battery, or maybe you've already got it safely installed in the bus by now and shielded. Even those little meter probes you're testing with in this video could instantly get plasma-balled given how close those bars are. Be careful and keep the eye protection on if you can!
One other bit of critique for you: you have a different wiring topology for your odd-man-out 3p+4p pack that spans the two racks. Because of that, the resistance may vary just a tiny bit, and so you may see a gradual degree of imbalance specific to that portion that you don't get on the other 6. It sounds like you're leaning towards active cell management, which may be able to compensate for it semi-automatically... but either way, I'd encourage you to watch those cells, specifically, extra carefully at the start to see how they make out. (In the same vein, fusing those interconnects would dramatically change the resistance topology and probably throw things really out of whack.)
Hey Ben, good to hear from you. I think 48V will be a much better fit as well :)
I JUST ordered the BMS from REC 2 days ago - they were pretty great to work with. The ORION setup you showed me looked very sweet it was hard to choose between the two. With any luck, it should be here in a couple of weeks.
Yeah, the 3p+4p may have a tiny bit of additional resistance - but the BMS should keep it in balance (REC does active balancing so I will report on that as it continues to happen). The wires in the pictures are "just for show" the real wires will likely be 2/0 cables to help cut down on the resistance.
Yes, we are looking for something to cover up the exposed bus bars - they look really sweet but do pose a threat to anything metal that comes near them. We have seen a few rubber covers that would "snap" on that might work - still working through that.
Thanks for reaching out -
I am impressed with REC as well. I have an inquiry out with them and am waiting to hear back.
Thanks for sharing. I hope to learn something about restoring my RV from you guys. Do you know where to find wiring diagrams for older RV's?
Love your project. I'm looking into Chevy Volt batteries and came upon your project. But I have a caution for you.... what happens when ONE cell shorts? As I understand it, it is customary to fuse each battery to the buss bar so it can take itself our of the circuit. Natually, that will lead to an imbalance when charging, but *that* is solvable. Nice work though!
Yes - this is all pretty experimental. I am not exactly sure what would happen if one cell goes bad - I guess it depends on how it goes bad. It should show up in our BMS which "cell" (really a set of 7 modules) goes bad because it will start reaching the "stop charging" voltage first. Time will tell and I will keep an eye on everything - hopefully by the time these go bad we will be ready for an upgrade anyway :)
Very neat build so far - loving he Nissan Leaf idea, will share your Chanel around :) 300th sub.. like round numbers
HBPowerwall thanks! We are having fun learning as we go.
Gimi a sec i'll share your project around a little :)
HBPowerwall that would be awesome! We are pretty new to this RUclips stuff and still trying to figure things out - any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
Didn't look like to got too many subs extra, i'll try a plug on youtube :) I like these types of projects. Shared on facebook.com/groups/Secondlifestorage
20 more - almost 7% gain :) - that's not too shabby ;). Thanks man I appreciate your efforts
Most trucks have riveted parts I guess they treat rvs like a truck but u can get a air reviter from harbor freaght!
Nice work. What is the total cost for this project and what is the output kWh?
cost for the battery was $2500 plus another $300 to ship it. We used another $100 or so in copper to get them all connected
عندي 21 حبه بدي اوصلهم على الطاقة الشمسية نضام 48 فولت ممكن تبعثلي تفاصيل اكثر او كتلوج مرسوم لو سمحت
Hi, I know it's been a while ago, but you know, for a newborn baby every news is new... anyway, would you mind to give me some more info about what happened during the "few hours" around 5:26. I mean what did you do to make the modules ready to flip them to the correct direction? Nice trip what you have done recently though.
They ended up fitting OK after a little messing with them. I was going to drill out the those metal brackets but I ended up leaving them in because I thought drilling them out might affect the structural integrity of the battery cells.
I would tape off that metal bracket that you have all the batteries hooked up to cuz that's a short jump to get a short!
SolarizeYourLife funny enough, we are in the process of covering and protecting all the copper bus bars as we speak. Shouldn't be any way that we can short anything now.
Thanks for the great video! I am trying to build a similar system with 42 batteries. Did you charge each cell before connecting them together? If so, could you please tell me what charger you used?
Use aluminum for the bus bars. Way cheaper and more available. Just make them 50% bigger to make up for the difference in conductance.
Aluminum is a good option. We stayed with copper because copper is what was originally on there and it was easy enough to source.
How many of these modules would I need to do 300 volt?
Where do you find batteries and how much?? Never talked about if it's practical.
I found the batteries on a salvage yard search engine. I called them up and they faxed over some paper work. We spent $2500 on the batteries, another $150 "core charge" and $150 to ship them to a freight center. So for $2800 we got 24 kWh of battery power (about 2000Ah in a 12V configuration). They are very practical if you are willing to take the time to learn how everything works and do everything safely. We oversized most of our wires, added a BMS to ensure the battery would never be allowed to take on too much charge or discharge too deeply, protect it from temperature extremes, and balance the cells. We have had this battery in for nearly 2.5 years and it has performed extremely well.
how much ampere ?
I know I’m very late to the party here but enjoying your videos on your bus build. I live full-time in a 2000 Monaco dynasty and I have upgraded it with 800 amp hours of lithium batteries. (Lossigy) and I love them along with 1100 watts of solar using a Victron mutiplus II. I have done a lot of upgrades to my coach, but nothing close to all of the work that you guys have put into your bus. Just curious, what is the motorcycle in the background of this video?😊
Good eye - That motorcycle was my baby ... it was a 1995 Bimota SB6. Here is a photo of her I took for when I put her up for sale: photos.app.goo.gl/iH8r7kDYwBhdZDCg9
@@BeginningfromthisMorning Very sweet bike. I raced a couple of different Porsches in years past so those are just memories now.
I am working on a battery pack using 14 leaf Gen1 batteries in series. Do you know what would work for a BMS and charger for this setup? End voltage is 104 volt
Hi - yes there are BMS systems that can handle that. The BMS we chose will do up to 16S but it sounds like you are more like 28S. Orion BMS makes a BMS that is more focused on the auto industry which often have much higher voltages and they have from 24 Cell all the way up to 180 Cell. www.orionbms.com/products/orion-bms-standard/
Hey, great video. I'm looking to buy 48 modules from a gen 1 leaf for my house battery wall. The seller says that gen 1 batteries will degrade forever while gen 2 batteries degrade to a point and then die with a short circuit, not a big deal in a high voltage pack but if used in parallel to get 48 volts they're a fire hazard as the other batteries in that bank will deliver unlimited amount of current trying to bring it to voltage. Do you know if that's true?
Fascinating build, I'm really enjoying your progress!
You have me considering leaf modules. I have a switch on my dash so that if my chassis batteries die, I can use the house battery to start the coach. Can't use it if I go 24 or 48 volt.
So, 2 leaf packs for "12" volts? I could start off with 4 for a 2 kwh pack, and add 2 at a time to go as large as I need.
Limiting the charge to 3.95 would keep it at 15.8 max, within a 12 volt inverter max range of 16 volts, and 3.0 volts would be 12 volts, but I have read you can go down to 2.5 without damage, which is 10 volts, but I wouldn't want to go that low.
I know staying under the max voltage of the module is healthier for it, and with a programmable mppt setting the parameters should be fine. The inverter charger I'm looking at has a 14.4 lithium charge profile option, which would be fine if I plugged in for some reason.
I know my cables would be more expensive, but a 4,000 watt pure sine would be the biggest I would go. 3,000 would probably be plenty.
Also not sure how much those charge parameters would reduce overall capacity. I wouldn't get the full watt hour capacity per module, but I'm not sure how the math would work out.
So is this a horrible idea, or could it be done? Not messing with 24v-12v converters is appealing.
Thank you Subwoofer 101. You are correct the "use my house battery to start the vehicle" switch does become a bit more tricky when you switch to 24 or 48 Volts. 15.8 seems a tad high for 12V systems but the batteries would LOVE 3.95 for the max (they should last longer). 3.0 is getting them down pretty low. When they reach about 3.5 or 3.4 or so it does the hockey-stick thing and you are pretty close to needing to recharge. As you are aware it is all a trade-off 4,000 watts is quite a bit to ask from 12 volts (pushing a lot of amps). What are you planning to run off the inverter? Do you plan to charge the house battery off the alternator? How much solar do you have feeding the batteries? You are correct that you will not get the full capacity since you are limiting the upper end but it should perform pretty well. So, in short, it is not a horrible idea - it can be done. The tradeoff for not messing with the converters is that you are going to be pushing 2X the amps of a 24 Volt system or 4X the Amps of a 48V system.
@@BeginningfromthisMorning Good to know about the hockey stick point in the voltage, that's an important factor.
I'm running a legitimate home theater in the RV, which draws about 300-500 Watts continuous at full tilt. 8,000+ Watts of subwoofer peak power (2,400 RMS) at the moment, but thankfully the magic of Class D amplifiers with good capacitance means pretty low continuous draw.
The apartment refrigerator draws about 100 Watts and it's intermittent. Basic florescent lighting, CPAP, fantastic fans, and other incidentals. Might try to install a mini split down the road, but I can't figure out how to do it without looking rigged.
24 volt would probably make more sense. I'm concerned that 15.8 volts might fry some of my 12 volt lights/fans.
Just picked up (4) new 310 watt Q cells duo G5 split cells, so 1,200 Watts for $500, no complaints there. Good for shading, half the panel can be shaded and still produce.
Love your solar rack btw, brilliant!
I could probably make it work with the 4 GC2 batteries in there now, but I'd much rather have a surplus of storage. I could also stand to shave some weight. I'd love to get up to 10kwh, but 6 might be more than plenty. I have 2.5 kwh usable now.
Still have to actually run everything to see what I truly need. Have a 1200 watt inverter as a test mule until I decide which voltage I want.
Very nice setup so far, i am new to your channel will back and watch the first part, I am a electrician and I am looking to go off grid with a lithium power. Do you know what your amp hour is for your set up, or wattage
Hi Edgar - The system is just over 24 kWh (49 modules @ 7.6V nominal @ 66.2 Ah = 24,578.4 Wh). I had to buy an extra Nissan Leaf battery module to get the 14s14p configuration. The nominal voltage for the system is 53.2 V and we are running a 5000 Watt inverter. Amp hour wise we are 462 Ah @ 53.2V
مرحبا ممكن كتلوج لتوصيل بطارية 5 كيلو نضام 48 فولت لو سمحت
I"ll i can say is Wow Wow
طريقة التوصيل عملي بتفصيل لو سمحت
Camerawoman sighs of boredom are epic LOL!
@Beginning from this Morning - I wanted to take the time to thank you for your detailed videos. I have watched them all and they helped me a great deal in building the battery bank we are using to power our community funded off grid Broadband Internet tower. We went with 2 banks of batteries each bank is 4p7s and the then the 2 banks are connected in Parallel across an A B A/B switch for purposes of working on one bank at a time without shutting down power to the Access Points.
I do have a question about your charge settings. We will be charging our banks from 10 327w panels 2s5p and I have been finding conflicting information on the web for the proper charge controller settings for these batteries. Have you shared your charge controller settings on here anywhere? BTW, We are using an outback power Radian 4048 system.
Awesome Jason! We run a Victron 250/80 SmartSolar MPPT controller - Here are the setting we are currently running with: Absorption voltage: 57.50 V, Maximum Absorption time: 30m . Float Voltage: 57.40V. Equalization Disabled. If you have an option set the "curve" to linear. Our charge controller also accepts input from our BMS so it will often ignore these settings and "listen" to the BMS. I hope that helps - keep me posted on your progress!
@@BeginningfromthisMorning Yes, That is a big help. I have not worked to get my Batrium speaking to the Outback FPR4048 yet but it is on my list.
how much does the entire battery weigh? any way of telling? looks massive but probably soooo much lighter than a led acid battery of that volt/watts.. nice work!
Focused on the Road the battery weighs about 420lbs if I remember correctly including the custom frame we built. Each individual module weighs about 8 lbs. With us using our battery to 80% and a standard led acid 100ah battery being used to 50%, you would need 32 led acid batteries to be equivalent to what we have. That would probably weigh close to 2000lbs.
I think you know if you put on of the plate incorrectly (a bang)
I always be very careful when putting them on as unlike gell battery's lithium battery can go thermal nuclear or blow holes in the bars or cables when a short happens (I assume there going to be a somthing like 100-250A fuse in there)
Thank you for the comment Lee - Batteries - especially these can be very very dangerous. We have a 300A Class-T fuse coming out of the battery and a bunch of other breakers where we branch out for power.
Great videos on the battery banks. I custom building and expedition vehicle and want to do something very similar. Have you figured out how many Amp Hours you have with the 48 volt cell? 60?
Sorry, closer to 400 Ah? Forgot you used all 48 Modules
I believe it is JUST shy of 500ah (something like 498) @ 48V - It's basically and entire Nissan Leaf pack + one more module (to make a 14p14s configuration)
Thank you Sean - Good luck with your expedition build. We have been pretty happy with these batteries so far (but we have only been putting them together so far). From everything we read they need to be compressed (the reason we have the large threaded rod through the packs). If you are using it like us you should also strongly consider getting a BMS solution (video on that coming soon). Do you have a link to your build?
Thanks for convincing me to use 2x tesla batteries lol awesome work!
Telsa batteries are also a great choice.
These you can puncture and not blow up. LOL Tesla modules if you puncture them you’re done for.
Was there a reason why you,change it from 24 v to 48v?, like you said at the start.Was it due to charging it?
Fook Utube hi, yeah we ended up changing plans from the part one video. After more research, we found that if we switched to a 48v setup, there would be more options for BMS, 48v to 12v converters, only have to buy one solar charge controller, smaller wire because lower amp load.
I'm considering buying some Leaf batteries soon. It's been two years since this video was made. How are the batteries doing these days?
They're doing awesome! We are using them to power air conditioners, power tools, refrigerator, electronics as we are still building out the bus and they are doing exactly what they were designed to do. The BMS keeps them in check and balanced and we haven't had any issues at all. The cells are typically within 0.01 volts of each other.
Will there be a big electric dynamo added to the RV for quick charge or the only option will be solar?
Hi Brian - a dynamo used as an electric brake would be amazing ... but that is far too ambitious for us if we ever want to get this thing on the road. The battery will be charged via solar as you suggested but also via shore-power hookup via 50 amp plug-in chord if we are at an RV park. We are playing with the idea of charing it via the Generator on the main motor because it is capable of producing over 200 amps of power and we just use it for the running lights and keeping the starter batteries charged.
Beginning from this Morning using the engine's alternator will not save you anything unless it only turns on when you are coasting with the engine braking. Otherwise you will be using the same amount of extra fuel as running a stand alone generator. I drive a van on Service calls for a living. I've thought about welding a pulley on the driveshaft and connect an alternator to it via a belt then you apply the brakes or use a paddle switch to turn on the alternator to charge the batteries when slowing down. I was going to see if I could produce enough power to run my house at night. But carrying the extra weight may offset any savings. I haven't gotten around to the experiment yet. It might be better to find an old 8kw generator for the project instead of an alternator
Wow! that sounds like a cool idea - kind of like regenerative braking. If you get this setup I would love to see it. I had a very similar thought about the fuel consumption. Thanks for the input.
Great idea, I am not too worried about the weight, hybrid cars have been charging batteries with dynamos since a long time.
Now that's a battery bank bro! Looks like you did a great job. If you want to join in, we have a FB group for camping/youtube channels (over 200 channels) called Camping RUclips Community Support. Feel free to come by and share your videos.
How much did everything cost you, minutes the machinery to make it?
Also, dimensions - H, L, W - and weight would be interesting to know
I found your channel by watching The Bus Grease Monkey work on your bus. My question is simple - how the heck did you figure this all out?
Thank you Al. It has been a great pleasure to work with Scott the Bus Grease Monkey. Honestly I have always had a fascination with electricity and the way things work. My first exposure the Lithium batteries was in about 2004 with model airplane batteries. They were far far more dangerous than the stuff we use today.
If one cell goes bad will it disrupt the entire set-up? Just asking because these where engineered to be individual batteries.
It depends on how it goes bad. Since each cell is tied in parallel with 6 other cells - if one goes bad it will likely just lose the capacity of one cell.
I just finished watching your journey fixing the under side of your bus with The Bus Grease Monkey. Wow, that was a lot of work! What type of metal are the bolts used to bolt the bus bars onto the modules? Was that a used/new Nissan battery? Great videos! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you Tom - We had a ton of fun with Scott and Kelly. We used the factory bolts with the bus bar modules. This was a used Nissan Leaf battery from a 2013 with about 30,000 miles on it.
Use clean rubber gloves whenever touching the copper bus bars, not just during assembly ...
Why?
@@thisisme0214 The acid from your hands corrodes the copper bus bar ...
Any gloves are a good idea - we did give it a final clean when we were finished before we covered it all up. I also went in and performed some routine maintenance about 2 weeks ago to be sure that all the bolts, lugs, screws etc were all tight and secure - everything looked great. No signs of any kind of oxidation or excess heat on any of the battery terminals.
Buenas noches
Was it cheaper to buy the whole battery module compared to buying individual cells? I love the idea of the leaf cells but I can’t seem to like the idea of spending 3-4 k for batteries.
Yes - I bought the entire battery for $2500. I think you will pay more for modules. Another advantage of buying the entire battery is that those cells will be perfectly balanced
Can’t imagine what those batteries cost
The blog post has a full cost break down. The battery was $2500 from a salvage yard + $150 core charge and $150 freight charges to get it to AZ. So $2800 all together.
@@BeginningfromthisMorning wowza
Yep you should have gone with the 42 cells LOL !
I have a question about the way the center terminals are all tied together in each battery. Should they not be connected so as to only read each cell individually?
The batteries are connected in parallel before then being connected in series. All 14 cells in the 7 modules are acting like one giant cell.
great idea with the leaf batteries, how do you plan to charge a 48v battery bank from a 24v alternator on your bus?... or are you not going to charge from the engine as you drive?... I'm thinking of lithium batteries on mine as well but they are pricey!!!
Hi James - I have been a fan of your bus project and channel for a while now, thanks for chiming in. We do not plan to charge the battery bank from the engine. Our bus is actually 12V so the climb to 57ish Volts is even steeper. The batteries will primarily be charged from our solar array or the shore power. There were too many headaches with trying to charge it from the engine. The solar array we are fitting is pretty substantial so we are hoping that will keep the batteries charged up. Lithium can be pricey - we got this battery from a salvage yard for $2500 - which seems like a lot until you price out 2000 Ah worth of lead-acid (not to mention the added weight). I know it is not an apples-to-apples comparison because this is a used battery but we should be able to get many, many more cycles out of this battery than even brand new lead-acid batteries. The way RV systems use the battery is very gentle when compared to their life powering a car. This system should run everything we need, including the air conditioners and still use less than 5% of the load they were designed to handle. The temperature monitor shows it never really getting very hot - even when charging it with 52 Amps. I have a BMS unit to keep tabs on everything and keep everything balanced and safe. I would love to talk it over with you if you have questions - there are also several really good groups I belong to that I can point you to if you want more information.
@@BeginningfromthisMorning you could easily add a 48V alternator to your engine if you need to, depends on your usage, if you are plugged in or able to charge with solar that's the best solution anyway, I have a 225 amp. 24v alternator already on my bus so charging from that is a no brainer, but I'm planning on traveling quite a bit so the engine can charge the batteries while driving, my inverter just arrived today even though I'm a ways away from installing, I'm definitely interested in any info you can share on lithium batteries for an RV, I haven't had a chance to watch everything you have posted yet so most of my questions may be answered already, you guys are doing a fantastic job on your bus... look forward to watching more of your videos, thanks for sharing
My list of questions is rather long... :-)... but I would love to pick your brain once I get a little closer that part of the build.... Thanks
Absolutely - glad to share any knowledge I have acquired along the way. I am happy to report that the battery has been working very well - I have friends with this exact configuration and they are also reporting excellent performance from the battery as well.
Great video. What is the storage capacity in KWH of the 49 battery cells setup you have here?
Thank you Ilyas - the theoretical maximum for this would be just over 25 kWh of power.
@@BeginningfromthisMorning Thank you for your answer.
Hola
Well Done Yea getting the configuration set up is the Haywire part Nice job
Thank you Bob - The system continues to perform amazingly well. We will try to do an "update" video here in the next few weeks since we are in the dead of summer in AZ with 114 degree temps we are powering 4 air conditioners with this battery and solar and running great all day long.
4 AC units. That is awesome. Obviously there’s not enough solar panels on a bus to do that. Must be a hybrid system plugged into the grid. All Victron Energy components if I remember correctly. Nice work. I got stuck because I have a 24 volt Victron inverter and Leaf modules don’t make a good 24 volt battery. May buy the 48 volt model like you have. Or just use my Leaf modules in a 48 volt golf cart or maybe 48 volt electric scooter.
nice work. I want to do the same and your work is the inspiration for it!
A question: what's the deal with having to compress them? first time I've heard it talked about.
They come "compressed" from the factory - they have the metal plates on the end of the row of 24 and then on the tops and bottoms of the two stacks of 12 - If you watch the first video (where I take them out of the factory metal container) you can see the plates I am talking about. All I did was take a measurement of how "compressed" they were and noted it down ... then when I put the pack back together I put it back to the same spec. Same with the other bank I made with just threaded rod from Home Depot (adding 1 that I had to buy from eBay). Just made sure they measured the same distance (+1 more module of course)
so is the compression necessary for operation electrically or just from a mechanical stability standpoint? Obviously we wouldn't want them to shift any or the fireworks might begin early!
From what I understand it is to prevent the cells (if you look inside the metal modules the cells are actually 4 "pouches") from "bulging". I am not 100% sure so we just put it to the way it was from the factory. There is not an extreme amount of compression but we did have to use a ratcheting tie down strap to even fit the original threaded rods back through the pack.
great, thanks!
@beginningthismorning. Any chance you could publish you schematic drawing. Only reason being your verbal discription makes no sense. Only speaking as an electrical engineer who has been asked by a friend to watch your video. Parallel parallel series? I get that each "module" aka battery is a dual cell battery. Your busbar configuration is where you are loosing me. Please can I see the diagram rather. Much appreciated. Love what you doing here and a great project. Keep up the good work.
Hi Braden - of course. Each battery module is actually made up of 4 cells wired in a 2s2p configuration internally (hence the three terminals [positive, negative, sense]). We wired 7 modules in parallel (essentially creating a 2s14p configuration) then connected them in series with another "7 modules in parallel" until we had 7 "7 module packs" in series (giving us a final configuration of 14s14p). It is important to note that I have wired them in parallel first instead of wiring 7 modules in series THEN connecting those modules in parallel to give us the same final configuration) I have a high-resolution diagram here: www.dropbox.com/s/9xpxlsghtbfhvkn/REC%20BMS.jpg?dl=0 that should show you exactly how the batteries are wired. The blog post that accompanies the video does a little better job of explaining it: www.beginningfromthismorning.com/house-batteries-part-2/. I also go over it again in part4 beginningfromthismorning.com/house-batteries-part-4/.
Nice Video. How is the battery and your Solar setup now
Battery setup is all wired up and installed in the bus - it is working really great. I have a video of us running the air conditioners and it handles those really well. Solar is waiting until after we get the bus painted - then we will build the racks and get that wired up.
I know nothing about this stuff. But I'm learning. How many amp hours will that battery be?
Hi Mike - the pack is just over 24 kWh which in 12V terms comes out to about 2000 Ah.
Are you a sailmaker ? Moto tag is JIPE.
I have been using 6v golf cart batteries for 15 years in my cabin.
I was considering buying a used Prius auto and just doing
a plug in transfer when I arrived at the cabin. Comments??
Hi Jwayne - Thanks for following along. I am not a sailor - this is my first time doing anything like this. The thought of using an electric car for the battery (and keeping the car usable) is interesting. The nice thing is the car will start the internal combustion engine and keep the battery charged if they get too low. I have heard of one guy who was attempting to do this with a Prius that he was going to pull behind his Skoolie. He is an Electrical Engineer and I think he was having some challenges with the setup. Here is the forum post detailing his work: secondlifestorage.com/t-Mobile-24kWh-Leaf-Battery-3-6kW-Solar-Build
Where did you get your BMS? PLEASE answer when you have time.
Hi G. Montserrat - We got the BMS from REC-BMS. We emailed them with what we were trying to do and they were very helpful and responsive. We ordered pretty much the entire system from the BMS, precharge controller, contactor, shunt, temperature probes, fuses etc. We detail the entire thing on our blog post that also has the BMS video: beginningfromthismorning.com/bms/
Could you leave a battery pack assembled for a home backup?
Yes - or we could use the RV as a backup for the house. We plan to sell the house and travel for a couple of years when we are done with the build so we have not given it too much thought but with a little effort that could be made to work nicely.
In the Ebike world, we call it a 7P7S
I tried to look that up and while I agree with you - I couldn't really find any official docs on how to qualify the battery. (my battery is actually a 14p14S but I understood what you meant)
Total weight?
Total weight came in about 420 lbs for the entire battery
Is it necessary to use a bms when using two Nissan Leaf modules for a 12 volt Application?
Anytime you are using Lithium you should really be using a BMS. I have lost track of the number of expanded cells or fires I have seen (some very serious sending folks to the hospital) because someone thought "Oh I will be able to just check on them every few days". The problem is humans become complacent - and then a few days becomes "oh once a week" or "once a month" then SURPRISE there is a fire or the cells have expanded (if you are lucky). Honestly I wouldn't even consider doing Lithium without a BMS.
I like the video but........ I'm worried, does anyone knows about high voltage dangers ?
No gloves, no isolated tools.
I'm surprised no one gets injured or worst.
Low voltage DC won't harm you. 50V might tingle a bit. Over 100V might pose some danger. I've disassembled a 2013 Leaf pack before with just some thick rubber gloves. I'm still here. Thats around 400VDC