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Glubux's Powerwall (2016)
- koolba 2y agoWhile very interesting, that seems like it would be one hell of a fire hazard as well. Especially for the ones that are tightly packed in the middle of each bundle.
- misnome 2y agoYeah, my first thought on reading the article was that it didn’t detail his fire control systems..
- extrapickles 2y agoThey keep the power pack in a shed away from anything too flammable. They could lose the shed, but it would be unlikely to take the house with it.
- rtkwe 2y agoThat's the neat part about lithium fires you just can't, they're self oxidizing so there's not much you can do to definitively put them out the best option is usually to flood them with water to cool them down and contain the damage they cause.
- em3rgent0rdr 2y agoYeah. Commercial home solar battery power as I understand is done with safer chemistries, such as lithium iron phosphate, which while they have a lower energy density (which is not a big downside for a stationary building) don't have the thermal runaway issues that labtop lithium ion batteries have. I wouldn't want to live next door to the DIY labtop battery array enthusiast.
- rtkwe 2y agoHe seems to be doing it fairly safely by having it housed in a building a whole 50m away from the main dwelling. A fire from there could spread to the house or elsewhere but it's no longer a metal fire so it's a lot easier to deal with and just contain the fire in/around the shed. I'd probably add a nice gravel buffer around it to help that and live in a reasonably well hydrated part of the country so there's not as big a fire risk from embers.
- em3rgent0rdr 2y agoGreat if you are a skilled electrical engineer who owns a bunch of land somewhere that doesn't have any fire risk.
- johnisgood 2y ago> Despite being an unusual system, with recycled and homemade components, no major problems have been reported, such as fires or swollen batteries, which is a common issue with some second-hand electronic devices. That said, one should be prepared for it.
- rtkwe 2y agoAFAIK 18650s like he's using never swell as they're in hard metal shells not pouches like most consumer electronics, so they don't have the ability to swell until they're catastrophically damaged. He's built a small building 50m away from his house to hold it anyways so it can probably be safely allowed to just burn, it's not like fire departments have much better options than waiting for it to burn out and hoping it doesn't reignite anyways.
- bigfatkitten 2y ago> AFAIK 18650s like he's using never swell as they're in hard metal shells not pouches like most consumer electronics, so they don't have the ability to swell until they're catastrophically damaged. They do swell, but they swell at the terminals rather than at the sides.
- tomxor 2y agoThey don't look tightly packed compared to the constraints of being inside laptops and phones where they are given millimetres to expand.
- theandrewbailey 2y ago> This growth forced the creator to build a separate warehouse, located about 50 meters from his home, to store the batteries and the new charge controllers and inverters. The hazard appears to be accounted for.
- TheBlight 2y agoYeah wind has never been known to blow fires 50 meters.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Sharlin 2y agoOr toxic exhaust for that matter.
- timbit42 2y agoHow do you know the prevailing wind direction in his location?
- PhunkyPhil 2y agoHow do you know that a favorable wind direction will eliminate the risk of a fire hazard?
- elif 2y agoMy thoughts as well, and that's coming from someone who sleeps directly above 2 powerwalls
- bee_rider 2y agoSounds like it is out in a shed. Also the guy who made this battery pack has the incentive to not burn down his house, whoever made yours has the incentive of one more day on the assembly line… I dunno, wouldn’t judge him too harshly.
- em3rgent0rdr 2y agoCommercial solar home battery use safer battery chemistries which don't experience thermal runaway like lithium ion labtop batteries do..
- ge96 2y agoIf you like this stuff Jehu Garcia on YT does this Those scooters in the streets get discarded/buy em in bulk and re-use the batteries for ex
- RajT88 2y agoWhere can I get one? I have seen that the Chinese manufacturers who made the scooters for Bird, etc. have been taking advantage of the discarded units by selling conversion kits to turn them into normal eScooters.
- ge96 2y agoI'm not sure where, I've just seen some of his videos where he takes apart scooters
- tecleandor 2y agoFrom what I've seen, some people buy them from Police or city auctions. Scooters that are "towed" because they're left in an inappropriate place, often are not picked by the companies that own them, so they're left for the city to auction them or whatever.
- silisili 2y agoSitting congressman Massie also has a few videos on YT about buying a wrecked Model S to scavenge its battery to power his house. Not quite the same as it's just one big battery, but cool idea nonetheless. They are rather short and show the setup more than the construction and nitty gritty, IIRC
- moffkalast 2y ago1000 years is pretty old for a battery, I'm surprised they still work /s
- dylan604 2y agoI wonder if we've had to re-learn how to make batteries like they did in the 11th century similar to how we had to re-learn the Roman concrete formula.
- thecosas 2y agoAnyone have links to some of the actual posts this person made? The article is a bit light on actual details, sourcing, etc. beyond citing their username/alias.
- jerlam 2y agoThe link in the article to the forum is broken, here's the correct one: https://secondlifestorage.com/index.php?threads/glubuxs-powerwall.126/ https://secondlifestorage.com/index.php?threads/glubuxs-powe...
- xnx 2y agohttps://secondlifestorage.com/index.php?threads/glubuxs-powerwall.126/ https://secondlifestorage.com/index.php?threads/glubuxs-powe...
- twalla 2y agoLink to the primary source because the article is light on details and has a broken link: https://secondlifestorage.com/index.php?threads/glubuxs-powerwall.126/ https://secondlifestorage.com/index.php?threads/glubuxs-powe...
- thecosas 2y agoThank you for finding this :-)
- metadat 2y agoMuch better read than TFA, the submitted link seems written by an LLM with pronoun confusion, swapping between "he" and "it". The tail end of the thread is particularly interesting: https://secondlifestorage.com/index.php?threads/glubuxs-powerwall.126/page-14 https://secondlifestorage.com/index.php?threads/glubuxs-powe... I'm curious what prevents the whole contraption from certain eruption into flames over time: https://secondlifestorage.com/index.php?attachments/image_rvvpen-jpg.16014/ https://secondlifestorage.com/index.php?attachments/image_rv... (image)
- fnordpiglet 2y agoWhat’s even better is that’s an entire community of people doing this. Some of those power walls are astounding.
- due-rr 2y agoThe whole thread is so wholesome. Recommended reading :)
- dang 2y agoWe've since changed the URL (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43552105 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43552105).
- hidelooktropic 2y agoSo not an April Fools joke?
- timbit42 2y agoNot unless it's an 8 year long one.
- scott113341 2y ago"I made 14 kWh more during lockdown" https://secondlifestorage.com/index.php?threads/glubuxs-powerwall.126/post-62012 https://secondlifestorage.com/index.php?threads/glubuxs-powe... ^ has a wild picture of full setup
- MrBuddyCasino 2y agoEverything worth doing is worth over-doing. He should start doing mad scientist experiments and produce ball lightning, the amperage could be sufficient.
- orbital-decay 2y agoThat fire extinguisher looks ridiculously useless for a setup like this. Good thing it's a separate shed, at least.
- sethhochberg 2y agoNot gonna do you any good if the batteries themselves start going off, but if something else has ignited in the cabinet and the batteries are not yet on fire... you'd be glad to have the extinguisher, I bet
- timewizard 2y agoThe fire extinguisher is in the wrong place entirely. If the setup is on fire are you really going to reach _in there_ to grab the extinguisher? There's no protection over the bus connections. Any falling conductive item is now a spark hazard. Using spring loaded alligator clips as test leads apparently for monitoring. I hope that's not a permanent configuration. Everything is bolted down and I see no inline disconnects or even any fusing except on low voltage sections. There are exhaust fans but I can't tell if there's inlet fans. From this one picture, which may not be fair, this is not a safe setup. I would feel uncomfortable with this on my property.
- hinkley 2y agoLet us hope that all the wires above the battery packs are of the same polarity. I can't tell for sure if that's the case but I hope the two that are closest together are just book-ended.
- pftburger 2y agoIn other news: Man burns down house using 1k old laptop battery (cells) Thank the powers that be no one will give my neighbours a permit for that.
- downboots 2y agoThey should also have enough skill for a fire suppression system
- iancmceachern 2y agoThis is so dangerous, and not covered by insurance.
- function_seven 2y agoAll the best things in this world aren't covered by insurance :)
- iancmceachern 2y agoI design hardware for a living, it's a objective fact.
- rsync 2y agoI can only speak for the United States, but, generally, homeowners insurance “covers stupid” as they say in the biz..
- ianferrel 2y ago>the solution came with rearranging and adjusting the cells to ensure the packs worked more efficiently. >Glubux even began disassembling entire laptop batteries, removing individual cells and organizing them into custom racks. This task, which likely required a great deal of manual labor and technical knowledge, was key to making the system work effectively and sustainably. This kind of thing is cool as a passion project, but it really just highlights how efficient the modern supply chain is. If you have the skills of a professional electrician, you too can spend hundreds of hours building a home battery system you could just buy for $20k, but is less reliable.
- supportengineer 2y agoThere HAS to be a way to automate this process and make it work at scale.
- beAbU 2y agoYes, with cheap third world labour, the same way many other technological marvels of the modern era are "automated".
- harvey9 2y agoThis can't be done remote so you will need to bring that labor to where the work is.
- kowabungalow 2y agoThere's already a pipeline sending old electronics to cheap labor for possible refurbishing, recycling and/or incorrect disposal. A small percentage they repackage into replacement laptop batteries and ship back, but they could also send more of them back as a value UPS with different value add parts. Personally, I expect there to be a massive conversion to USB-PD as the primary power in the cellphone only regions.
- 2y ago
- nottorp 2y ago> A man powers home for eight years using a thousand old laptop batteries ... a single charge for each? And speaking of applications that are too smart for their own good, why does Firefox start a drag operation when I click on a link instead of allowing me to select the text?
- recursive 2y agoA thousand old laptop batteries and bunch of solar panels. The headline is a touch nonsensical as-is.
- louwrentius 2y agoI would highly recommend not to go this route but to buy LFP prismatic cells. Much safer, stable chemistry that isn’t as sensitive to heat. Look at Off Grid Garage (Andy) or Will Prowse YT channels for more info.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- EGreg 2y agoWhy not just dig a hole in the ground and make a gravity battery? Would be much more reusable without all the lithium garbage ... and also probably more efficient... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery And the most efficient way would probably be to just have credits with the rest of the city grid. Sell electricity to them when you have a surplus (from solar) and then pay for electricity when you need it. These credits are a lot more efficient than storing the actual electricity in a battery hehe
- tecleandor 2y agoBut how expensive would be to dig a, I don't know, 1000 by 6 feet hole in the ground? I have no idea of an equivalent gravity battery...
- thfuran 2y agoThe average US household uses about 10,000 kwhr per year. That's roughly equivalent to the gravitational energy of dropping ten tons down a 200 mile hole.
- numpad0 2y agoholes in the ground are just wells, and gravity batteries are just dams. don't reinvent the square wheels, please...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- passive 2y agoMy sad brain keeps insisting this headline contains the phrase "thousand year old laptop batteries", which said brain also assures me is impossible.
- not_a_bot_4sho 2y agoI came here to either find this comment, or make it myself.
- dredmorbius 2y agoYour brain is not alone.
- lenerdenator 2y agoSomething tells me his home insurance agent didn't know about this.
- frakkingcylons 2y agoIt'd be interesting if they added this to the standard questionnaire - does your dwelling have sprinklers? ... oh and how many watt-hours do you have in battery storage?
- system2 2y agoI like how the article only shows a blurry RC battery charging station instead of the real stuff he did.
- ferguess_k 2y agoI wonder if there is a more practical tutorial to route a power generator into the house with sort of a power switch. I don't know the exact phrase but basically I can route a few things like the fridge or the lights to this switch so they switch to the generator when there is an outage. I know it can be done because I asked an electrician. But I dropped the idea when he said it could cost a lot (if done by a professional).
- BrandoElFollito 2y agoThis is not difficult - you need to dedicate a few circuits (cables) and have them end on the generator (or UPS for some). It requires planning but the cost is not especially high (more cables must be used)
- ferguess_k 2y agoThanks. I think I got the name of the device, it's called ATS (Automatic Transfer Switch). Is this the things I should install?
- eldaisfish 2y agotake the other person's advice - get an electrician.
- ferguess_k 2y agoThanks, you know what, I'll just use a long industrial grade cord...I guess the lights and fridges can wait a few minutes :D The only issue is central heating for winter as it's pretty harsh in Canada, but that's a bit too much for a generator I think. Maybe a few smaller heating units instead.
- BrandoElFollito 2y agoI did not do anything that complex. I dedicated some lines (cables) to certain devices and they are behind a UPS (generator in your case). Nothing fancy. And by "I" I mean "a professional electrician" :) - I just did the design of what I want where.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- yapyap 2y agoThat is gangster!
- ChuckMcM 2y agoIt's all fun and games until one of those thousand batteries decides to go exothermic :-). This is a really amazing story and I'm impressed by the diligence and amount of effort they put into recovering and reusing all of these batteries. A couple of dendrites though, a lightning strike, there are things outside of their control that could turn the building holding this collection of batteries into a very impressive incendiary device. If you've ever seen a fire at a battery factory, it is both fascinating and scary af. People are still trying to assess the long term damage from the Moss Landing grid scale battery fire in California.
- sizzle 2y agoI had an 18650 flashlight and saw a video of them spontaneously turning into a flare with rocket thruster like flames and got rid of it immediately. These batteries are scary powerful when it gives off the magic smoke.
- ChuckMcM 2y agoThat they are, energy is energy. I was part of a Battlebots team and that is where I learned the smell of various rechargeable battery chemistries when they burned :-). We also had an exothermic adventure with a battery pack we built, fortunately it was not at an event, it was in earlier testing, but it forever gave me a healthy respect for those batteries.
- elicash 2y agoFolks are correct this is dangerous. But you could imagine a world where batteries were required to be built in a way that this type of tinkering of individual cells and matching them was safer. If it could be done, would certainly would be better than turning batteries into "black mass."
- Kaytaro 2y agoThe 2nd quote is when I realized this article was written or assisted by AI. Not that it's a big deal, that's our world now. But it's interesting to notice the subtle 'accent' that gives it away.
- dartos 2y agoWhat about it gives off the AI smell to you?
- endtime 2y agoNice try, ChatGPT. More seriously, for me it's the "likely".
- ziddoap 2y agoUsing "likely" is indicative of AI now...? Absurd. The only thing as annoying as people using AI and passing it off as their own writing is the people who claim everything written not exactly how they are used to is AI.
- cyral 2y ago> This task, which likely required a great deal of manual labor and technical knowledge, was key to making the system work effectively and sustainably. This is obviously AI. The writer should know that it either required manual labor or it did not, not maybe (AI loves to not "commit" to an answer and rather say maybe/likely). It also loves to loop in some vague claim about X being effective, sustainable, ethical, etc without providing any information as to WHY it is. That and it being published on some blog spam website called techoreon. Edit: For fun, I had o1-mini produce an article from the original source (Techspot it looks like), and it produced a similar line: > This ingenious approach likely required significant manual effort and technical expertise, but the results speak for themselves, as evidenced by the system's eight-year flawless operation. What these sites are doing is rewriting articles from legitimate sources, and then selling SEO backlinks to their "news" website full of generated content (and worthless backlinks). It's how all those scammy fiverr link services work
- zeroq 2y agomodern day coal mining
- swiftcoder 2y agoAside from the obvious fire risk, is this approaching the size where one would have to be concerned about arc flash?
- quailfarmer 2y agoNo, arc flash risk is a function of voltage, and these cells aren't all wired in series, the capacity is expanded by building out more capacity in parallel.
- neuroelectron 2y agoThis is silly and clearly fake.
- OkGoDoIt 2y agoA man powers home via solar panels and a thousand old laptop batteries. Makes a big difference! My first thought on seeing headline here was confusion, I thought maybe he was using residual charge from used laptop batteries or something.
- dang 2y agoWe've since changed both the URL and the title (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43552105 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43552105)
- hoockernews 2y agoscott's tots groan... but wait they're lithium!
- jms703 2y agoThese April Fool's jokes are getting ridiculous. Almost had me for a moment.
- djmips 2y ago[flagged]
- GcryptUser 2y ago[dead]
- blatantly 2y agoDon't try this at home kids. I'd at least keep those batteries at least in a dedicated steel structure 100m from the house.
- em3rgent0rdr 2y agoWhy are lithium ion phone and labtop batteries still legal considering their saftey risks? There are safer battery chemestries that aren't quite as energy-dense. But phones and laptops were capable-enough 15 years ago and performance-per watt is constantly improving. Sure, we might not be able to light up all the pixels on our screen and stream gigs of data constantly and won't be able to train AI models when our labtop is not plugged into the wall, but we sufficed just fine on the performance of last-decade's mobile devices.
- reassess_blind 2y agoPhones and laptops were not capable enough 15 years ago for what we expect of them today.
- gloosx 2y agoBy that logic, we would have to ban cars, gas stoves and even kitchen knives. Everything has risks — its about managing them. Lithium ion batteries are widely used because their benefits outweight the risks when handled properly. Its like saying, “Why are candles still legal? They can start fires.” Well, because people know how to use them responsibly.
- Gerardo1 2y ago> considering their saftey risks The safety risks are marginal and you interact with plenty of other things/systems daily that are at least as dangerous. > here are safer battery chemestries that aren't quite as energy-dense ^ that's the answer. > But phones and laptops were capable-enough 15 years ago They absolutely weren't. > we sufficed just fine on the performance of last-decade's mobile devices. I don't want to suffice. All that said, I do think battery research is probably one of the most important things "we" can be doing (and energy storage in general), so I'm all about putting in the money and time to find improvements.
- Workaccount2 2y agoBecause the actual risk is so far overblown. Why do we still let kids go outside when there are so many kidnappings? The samsung battery debacle around the note 7, which made headlines for weeks, was from 0.003% of phones catching fire.
- voidmain0001 2y agoHere’s a 2017 page from Vice https://www.vice.com/en/article/diy-powerwall-builders-are-using-recycled-laptop-batteries-to-power-their-homes/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/diy-powerwall-builders-are-u... that refers to Glubux as being French. Since the posted article doesn’t say, I wanted to know the climate where Glubux lives and the loads he has on the system. I guess I can find more about Glubux from the secondlifestorage.com site.
- bsoles 2y agoI am a DIY electronics enthusiast, but the Internet made me scared of line power applications. If one of those batteries develops a short circuit and the house catches fire, no insurance company on Earth would pay for damages, so they say.
- gridder 2y ago.
- jakonl 2y agoThe installations public statistics are interesting to look at. Seems there was a recent addition of a generator not mentioned in the article or the forum. I’m curious for an update from Glubux: https://vrm.victronenergy.com/installation/13552/dashboard https://vrm.victronenergy.com/installation/13552/dashboard
- djoldman 2y agoAs someone completely unqualified for this type of work, this looks scary AF.
- Gathering6678 2y agoFirst thing to come in my mind is fire hazard... "Despite being an unusual system, with recycled and homemade components, no major problems have been reported, such as fires or swollen batteries..." But when it eventually happens, without a proper fire extinguish system, I would assume every thing would go up in high-temp flames with no easy way of putting them out?
- nyanpasu64 2y agoThe photos show soldering to Li-ion battery terminals. Doesn't that cause internal heat damage as opposed to spot welding?
- ironbound 2y agoAnyone built a home power system with Sodium-ion Battery Packs?
- zejn 2y agoI find it amusing how a lot of people immmediately recognize 1000s of old laptop battery cells in a wooden shed a fire risk. But they were as much of a fire risk (if not more) before being recycled, they were just spread out along the e-waste bins! Every time I hear of a waste processing plant fire, I wonder if there was a (lithium) battery involved. Maybe from a single use vape, or a child's toy.