8 ms·

>the solution came with rearranging and adjusting the cells to ensure the packs worked more efficiently. >Glubux even began disassembling entire laptop batteri

>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 ago
There HAS to be a way to automate this process and make it work at scale.
- beAbU 2y ago
  Yes, with cheap third world labour, the same way many other technological marvels of the modern era are "automated".
  - harvey9 2y ago
    This can't be done remote so you will need to bring that labor to where the work is.
    - kowabungalow 2y ago
      There'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.
      - lifeisstillgood 2y ago
        Does USB-PD mean USB power distribution ? And yeah - some LEDs and a usb wire around the ceiling solves lighting a house more sensibly than a three-phase converter under the stairs and enough power going through a light switch to kill me …
        bmicraft 2y ago
        It means USB Power Delivery and is a standard for negotiating custom-other-than-5V voltages from a USB Type-C power supply and communicating to the device how much current it is allowed to draw. It's why you can charge your phone with your laptops power brick without anything exploding, and why most laptops can charge (very slowly) from pretty underpowered phone chargers now.
      - harvey9 2y ago
        I was referring to installation
    - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
      Building large battery arrays out of old recycled cells does not require bringing the workers to the battery cells, any more than building iPhones requires you to bring the workers to where they mine ore. Large-scale product development often involves shipping materials and half-finished products around the world multiple times.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  But will the scale justify the huge investment?
- joshvm 2y ago
  You would be amazed how many battery packs are multiple 18650s in a trenchcoat. Even EV battery packs use them. Though it does raise the question - wouldn't an old EV battery be a better solution than stripping apart laptops?
  - ianferrel 2y ago
    Probably, but EV batteries are large enough that there might be an industrial recycling process for them, while old laptop batteries are basically free because it's too much labor to extract useful value from them.
    - edaemon 2y ago
      I'm pretty sure most industrial recycling methods for lithium batteries involve grinding them up, so pack size isn't as much a factor as sheer volume. I think there just wasn't much juice for the squeeze until demand from EVs made recycling worthwhile. Here's a video inside a recycling plant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2xrarUWVRQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2xrarUWVRQ
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    >You would be amazed how many battery packs are multiple 18650s in a trenchcoat $50 of 18650s in a $500 trenchcoat with DRM protection. So wasteful.
    - HPsquared 2y ago
      "Cheaply made, not cheap to buy!"
    - 0_____0 2y ago
      When battery packs that have a non-zero chance of literally killing your users are commonplace, it actually does make sense to vendor-lock the battery. Believe it or not there is actual engineering that goes into making batteries beyond spot welding them to an interconnect and stuffing them into $.50 of ABS enclosure.
- hermitShell 2y ago
  The problem is likely cost effectiveness compared to just replacing a whole group of cells, compared to one single cell. The unit economics of getting the remaining life from single used laptop battery are not very good. There's certainly lots of potential value for someone willing to do the work, if they can afford the opportunity cost, or if a business can source extremely dirt cheap cells and cheap high skilled labor.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  There is a lot of liability in sticking your name on a hodge podge of random used lithium cells.
  - dheera 2y ago
    I feel like for home battery backup there needs to be some kind of lower energy density solution that has zero fire risk. Weight is not a factor for home energy storage, there is no need for lithium cells.
    - tinbucket 2y ago
      Weight is not a factor for home energy storage, there is no need for lithium cells. That depends on your living situation. I live in a third-floor apartment, so weight is very definitely a factor.
      - bmicraft 2y ago
        Weight always is a factor since heavy batteries cost more to transport, period. It's always relevant, not least for the installation too.
        dheera 2y ago
        We're talking on the order of millions of kilograms for the building materials that needed to be transported to build it. The batteries needed for backup power for its occupants won't come anywhere close to that, even at far lower energy density than lithium.
      - dheera 2y ago
        The apartment building can have unified power backup in its foundation/basement. If you reduce the energy density by a factor of 10, the weight for power backup needs will still be far lighter than the concrete.
    - etskinner 2y ago
      It seems unlikely that there's any practical chemical batteries with 0 fire risk. But I do think there should be home energy storage that doesn't involve chemical batteries. Where are all the pumped hydro, flywheels, and compressed air storage for consumer use?
- idiotsecant 2y ago
  You would never do this in a production product. You need batteries with similar internal impedances or undesirable things happen. This is the battery equivalent of the guy who welds two car front ends together and drives it around. It's cool and quirky but not a useful product for most people.
- _ea1k 2y ago
  From what I've heard, it is more economical to recycle the raw materials than to reuse small packs. Reuse of vehicle sized packs seems to be pretty common, though. I'd guess that a DIY home backup could be built pretty easily from used vehicle batteries.
  - garciasn 2y ago
    The dude has a warehouse/workshop to do this work and house the system. I’m super impressed by what he’s accomplished, don’t get me wrong; but, what he’s done just isn’t viable for 99.99999999999% of people. Give me an array and battery system that can pull off the grid and/or array and power most of my home without me having to think a whole lot or pay a vendor thousands to install while making the total cost under $1000 and I’ll do it. Until then, it just isn’t financially viable when my electricity costs are well under $70/month average across the year. Recouping the costs for install of solar systems are estimated at 30-40 years as of 4 years ago when I researched it. I’m sorry, but that’s just not worth it for me and most others.
    - speerer 2y ago
      I enjoyed noticing that your percentage (1×10⁻¹³) was so precise that it excluded the man himself (he is 1 in 8×10⁹). I don't want to detract from your point. I just wanted to appreciate the hyperbole.
      - garciasn 2y ago
        It's April Fools, so you have to pay close attention today; glad you caught my hilarious joke.
    - _ea1k 2y ago
      Sure, but it does get a lot simpler if you start from modules instead of cells. Nothing will get around the requirement to have electrical knowledge. Cost is always an issue. These rarely make sense from a pure $$ sense, as everything in electrical is expensive. You could burn up that $1000 budget just to get a subpanel installed. Usually the value proposition is some combination of savings, combined with the ability to backup critical loads. A generator could do that too, but a proper generator setup isn't cheap either, and it wouldn't save $$ at all. Battery solutions sometimes beat that.
- raincole 2y ago
  Of course, but you will also 'scale' the safety implications.
- dehrmann 2y ago
  Isn't the problem with parasitic charging? Suppose you had a bunch of used 18650 cells. To scale the electronics, they'll be wired up in parallel and/or series so the charging logic can be shared, but since the batteries are wildly mismatched, it results in parasitic charging.
  - sightbroke 2y ago
    That is why you sort them. Some recent research into that: https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/2025-01-8130/ https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/20... You can also consider maintaining packs together to avoid complicated disassembling processes.
    - dehrmann 2y ago
      > maintaining packs together (This might already be happening, but I haven't heard about it) The big thing EVs need right now is standardized battery packs. It reduces replacement cost, takes away anxiety that a replacement will exist when you need it, and enables down-cycle uses like stationary storage.
      - sightbroke 2y ago
        I think that may be a trickier proposition than it appears. Certainly a standard form factor for a pack would be helpful for a specific manufacturer (similar to building multiple cars on top of the same basic frame). Some of the issues I think one runs into is battery chemistries are rapidly changing so even if the shape of the pack remains the same the performance of it is rather different depending on what is put inside. Then even with standard form and chemistry one pack to another can be rather different depending on the history of it's use (age, charge cycles, driven hard). There is second life storage applications currently, and still more research going into it now. Personally I think smarter controls and smarter diagnostic and pack sorting will be more useful.
- rolandog 2y ago
  Standardizing battery packs would probably help with the automation; like with USB-C.
- numpad0 2y ago
  Buying a used Nissan Leaf and using V2H feature in CHAdeMO is it. Or you can remove and use its well-reverse-engineered minimum nominal 24kWh semi-removable battery. But no one wants a Leaf, so there's that.
cjbgkagh 2y ago
$20K for a home battery backup for someone capable of doing DIY would be far larger than what I assume he has built here. AFAIK the cheaper end is around $340 (2016) per kWh at 20 kWh that would be $6,800. In 2025 at $100 per kWh it would be $2K. If it's worth it would largely depending on a persons post tax required rate of return and how long it would take.
- gwbas1c 2y ago
  I spent almost as much as that for a 2 Powerwalls and installation in 2019. (Granted, I got a 3rd back from various incentives that probably weren't available for DIY.) DIY (like this project) is only "worth it" if the person doing it enjoys the work or values the lessons.
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    There is a spectrum of DIY and the sweet spot depends on the person. Since I'm good with electronics my sweet spot is buying premade packs.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- adamhartenz 2y ago
  If you took that same time, and invested it in working at Target, or Amazon etc, would you have more or less money than it would cost to buy an off-the-shelf battery? There are obviously other pros and cons.
  - Transfinity 2y ago
    I think Target isn't the right comparison here - the skills required for this project are worth much more than minimum wage bagging groceries. If you assume something like $50 an hour (on the low end for a skilled electrician), you get to the $6800 number in the parent post pretty quickly.
    - 2y ago
facile3232 2y ago
> but it really just highlights how efficient the modern supply chain is This "efficiency" relies on the assumption of writing off the entire battery set at sale. That's not impressive at all.
pbasista 2y ago
> spend hundreds of hours building a home battery system That is, in my opinion, the worst feature of this entire project. It is cool and nice and fun. But it takes a lot of time to research, acquire skills, get tools and build. > you could just buy for $20k I agree with a broader point but that particular price is extremely high and far from reality. A reasonably good 18650 cell has a capacity of ~12 Wh (~3300 mAh * ~3.7 V = ~12.2 Wh). The battery mentioned in the article consists of "more than 1000" such cells. Let us assume 1200 cells. That would mean it has a capacity of ~14.4 kWh (1200 * 12). It is possible to get a pre-assembled steel battery case on heavy-duty wheels for 16 LiFePo cells, with a modern BMS with Bluetooth and wired communication options, a touchscreen display, a circuit breaker and nice terminals for ~ $500. And it is also possible to get 16 high quality LiFePo cells with a capacity of ~300 Ah each, like EVE MB31, for significantly less than $100 each. This means that for less than ~$2000, it is possible to get all components required to assemble a fully working ~15 kWh LiFePo battery. - That assembly would take a few hours rather than weeks. - It will have new cells rather than used ones. - It will be safer to use than a battery with Li-Ion cells. - It will likely take much less space. - It will be easy to expand.
- fragmede 2y ago
  > - It will have new cells rather than used ones. This is not a feature. Our Earth is a limited resource, and being able to reuse batteries instead of discarding them to the trash is a desirable property.
  - beacon294 2y ago
    There's even more to the riddle. Lithium recycling, cost of the power loss in old cells. Power transmit cost. Cost of power generation on site.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    Pick used EV or industrial batteries. This must be much more efficient due to a larger cell size than in laptops. OTOH used laptop batteries can likely be obtained for effectively zero monetary cost, while used EV or solar backup batteries still cost quite noticeable money per kWh. With laptop batteries, you pay with your time; if you for some reason have an excess supply thereof, or you just enjoy this kind of work as a pastime.
immibis 2y ago
You can read it the other way around: with labour and knowledge, you can save $20k. And with even more passion and commitment and with business skills, you could earn $20k at a time.
hinkley 2y ago
That guy who was gaming a bug in the lottery in New England, near as I can figure was making about $20-30 an hour for his troubles. I suspect he may have made more off of selling the movie rights than off of the lottery. He made more than he would have working retail for sure, but maybe he could have done better with another job if he weren't fixated on sticking it to the Man. This battery thing feels a bit like the same sort of sentiment. That said, any task you can do while talking to a friend or binge watching a TV show cannot be accurately accounted for in cost by just how much the clock moved.

supportengineer 2y ago

There HAS to be a way to automate this process and make it work at scale.

beAbU 2y ago
Yes, with cheap third world labour, the same way many other technological marvels of the modern era are "automated".
- harvey9 2y ago
  This can't be done remote so you will need to bring that labor to where the work is.
  - kowabungalow 2y ago
    There'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.
    - lifeisstillgood 2y ago
      Does USB-PD mean USB power distribution ? And yeah - some LEDs and a usb wire around the ceiling solves lighting a house more sensibly than a three-phase converter under the stairs and enough power going through a light switch to kill me …
      - bmicraft 2y ago
        It means USB Power Delivery and is a standard for negotiating custom-other-than-5V voltages from a USB Type-C power supply and communicating to the device how much current it is allowed to draw. It's why you can charge your phone with your laptops power brick without anything exploding, and why most laptops can charge (very slowly) from pretty underpowered phone chargers now.
    - harvey9 2y ago
      I was referring to installation
  - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
    Building large battery arrays out of old recycled cells does not require bringing the workers to the battery cells, any more than building iPhones requires you to bring the workers to where they mine ore. Large-scale product development often involves shipping materials and half-finished products around the world multiple times.
potato3732842 2y ago
But will the scale justify the huge investment?
joshvm 2y ago
You would be amazed how many battery packs are multiple 18650s in a trenchcoat. Even EV battery packs use them. Though it does raise the question - wouldn't an old EV battery be a better solution than stripping apart laptops?
- ianferrel 2y ago
  Probably, but EV batteries are large enough that there might be an industrial recycling process for them, while old laptop batteries are basically free because it's too much labor to extract useful value from them.
  - edaemon 2y ago
    I'm pretty sure most industrial recycling methods for lithium batteries involve grinding them up, so pack size isn't as much a factor as sheer volume. I think there just wasn't much juice for the squeeze until demand from EVs made recycling worthwhile. Here's a video inside a recycling plant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2xrarUWVRQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2xrarUWVRQ
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  >You would be amazed how many battery packs are multiple 18650s in a trenchcoat $50 of 18650s in a $500 trenchcoat with DRM protection. So wasteful.
  - HPsquared 2y ago
    "Cheaply made, not cheap to buy!"
  - 0_____0 2y ago
    When battery packs that have a non-zero chance of literally killing your users are commonplace, it actually does make sense to vendor-lock the battery. Believe it or not there is actual engineering that goes into making batteries beyond spot welding them to an interconnect and stuffing them into $.50 of ABS enclosure.
hermitShell 2y ago
The problem is likely cost effectiveness compared to just replacing a whole group of cells, compared to one single cell. The unit economics of getting the remaining life from single used laptop battery are not very good. There's certainly lots of potential value for someone willing to do the work, if they can afford the opportunity cost, or if a business can source extremely dirt cheap cells and cheap high skilled labor.
Workaccount2 2y ago
There is a lot of liability in sticking your name on a hodge podge of random used lithium cells.
- dheera 2y ago
  I feel like for home battery backup there needs to be some kind of lower energy density solution that has zero fire risk. Weight is not a factor for home energy storage, there is no need for lithium cells.
  - tinbucket 2y ago
    Weight is not a factor for home energy storage, there is no need for lithium cells. That depends on your living situation. I live in a third-floor apartment, so weight is very definitely a factor.
    - bmicraft 2y ago
      Weight always is a factor since heavy batteries cost more to transport, period. It's always relevant, not least for the installation too.
      - dheera 2y ago
        We're talking on the order of millions of kilograms for the building materials that needed to be transported to build it. The batteries needed for backup power for its occupants won't come anywhere close to that, even at far lower energy density than lithium.
    - dheera 2y ago
      The apartment building can have unified power backup in its foundation/basement. If you reduce the energy density by a factor of 10, the weight for power backup needs will still be far lighter than the concrete.
  - etskinner 2y ago
    It seems unlikely that there's any practical chemical batteries with 0 fire risk. But I do think there should be home energy storage that doesn't involve chemical batteries. Where are all the pumped hydro, flywheels, and compressed air storage for consumer use?
idiotsecant 2y ago
You would never do this in a production product. You need batteries with similar internal impedances or undesirable things happen. This is the battery equivalent of the guy who welds two car front ends together and drives it around. It's cool and quirky but not a useful product for most people.
_ea1k 2y ago
From what I've heard, it is more economical to recycle the raw materials than to reuse small packs. Reuse of vehicle sized packs seems to be pretty common, though. I'd guess that a DIY home backup could be built pretty easily from used vehicle batteries.
- garciasn 2y ago
  The dude has a warehouse/workshop to do this work and house the system. I’m super impressed by what he’s accomplished, don’t get me wrong; but, what he’s done just isn’t viable for 99.99999999999% of people. Give me an array and battery system that can pull off the grid and/or array and power most of my home without me having to think a whole lot or pay a vendor thousands to install while making the total cost under $1000 and I’ll do it. Until then, it just isn’t financially viable when my electricity costs are well under $70/month average across the year. Recouping the costs for install of solar systems are estimated at 30-40 years as of 4 years ago when I researched it. I’m sorry, but that’s just not worth it for me and most others.
  - speerer 2y ago
    I enjoyed noticing that your percentage (1×10⁻¹³) was so precise that it excluded the man himself (he is 1 in 8×10⁹). I don't want to detract from your point. I just wanted to appreciate the hyperbole.
    - garciasn 2y ago
      It's April Fools, so you have to pay close attention today; glad you caught my hilarious joke.
  - _ea1k 2y ago
    Sure, but it does get a lot simpler if you start from modules instead of cells. Nothing will get around the requirement to have electrical knowledge. Cost is always an issue. These rarely make sense from a pure $$ sense, as everything in electrical is expensive. You could burn up that $1000 budget just to get a subpanel installed. Usually the value proposition is some combination of savings, combined with the ability to backup critical loads. A generator could do that too, but a proper generator setup isn't cheap either, and it wouldn't save $$ at all. Battery solutions sometimes beat that.
raincole 2y ago
Of course, but you will also 'scale' the safety implications.
dehrmann 2y ago
Isn't the problem with parasitic charging? Suppose you had a bunch of used 18650 cells. To scale the electronics, they'll be wired up in parallel and/or series so the charging logic can be shared, but since the batteries are wildly mismatched, it results in parasitic charging.
- sightbroke 2y ago
  That is why you sort them. Some recent research into that: https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/2025-01-8130/ https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/20... You can also consider maintaining packs together to avoid complicated disassembling processes.
  - dehrmann 2y ago
    > maintaining packs together (This might already be happening, but I haven't heard about it) The big thing EVs need right now is standardized battery packs. It reduces replacement cost, takes away anxiety that a replacement will exist when you need it, and enables down-cycle uses like stationary storage.
    - sightbroke 2y ago
      I think that may be a trickier proposition than it appears. Certainly a standard form factor for a pack would be helpful for a specific manufacturer (similar to building multiple cars on top of the same basic frame). Some of the issues I think one runs into is battery chemistries are rapidly changing so even if the shape of the pack remains the same the performance of it is rather different depending on what is put inside. Then even with standard form and chemistry one pack to another can be rather different depending on the history of it's use (age, charge cycles, driven hard). There is second life storage applications currently, and still more research going into it now. Personally I think smarter controls and smarter diagnostic and pack sorting will be more useful.
rolandog 2y ago
Standardizing battery packs would probably help with the automation; like with USB-C.
numpad0 2y ago
Buying a used Nissan Leaf and using V2H feature in CHAdeMO is it. Or you can remove and use its well-reverse-engineered minimum nominal 24kWh semi-removable battery. But no one wants a Leaf, so there's that.

cjbgkagh 2y ago

$20K for a home battery backup for someone capable of doing DIY would be far larger than what I assume he has built here. AFAIK the cheaper end is around $340 (2016) per kWh at 20 kWh that would be $6,800. In 2025 at $100 per kWh it would be $2K. If it's worth it would largely depending on a persons post tax required rate of return and how long it would take.

gwbas1c 2y ago
I spent almost as much as that for a 2 Powerwalls and installation in 2019. (Granted, I got a 3rd back from various incentives that probably weren't available for DIY.) DIY (like this project) is only "worth it" if the person doing it enjoys the work or values the lessons.
- cjbgkagh 2y ago
  There is a spectrum of DIY and the sweet spot depends on the person. Since I'm good with electronics my sweet spot is buying premade packs.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
adamhartenz 2y ago
If you took that same time, and invested it in working at Target, or Amazon etc, would you have more or less money than it would cost to buy an off-the-shelf battery? There are obviously other pros and cons.
- Transfinity 2y ago
  I think Target isn't the right comparison here - the skills required for this project are worth much more than minimum wage bagging groceries. If you assume something like $50 an hour (on the low end for a skilled electrician), you get to the $6800 number in the parent post pretty quickly.
  - 2y ago

facile3232 2y ago

> but it really just highlights how efficient the modern supply chain is This "efficiency" relies on the assumption of writing off the entire battery set at sale. That's not impressive at all.

pbasista 2y ago

> spend hundreds of hours building a home battery system That is, in my opinion, the worst feature of this entire project. It is cool and nice and fun. But it takes a lot of time to research, acquire skills, get tools and build. > you could just buy for $20k I agree with a broader point but that particular price is extremely high and far from reality. A reasonably good 18650 cell has a capacity of ~12 Wh (~3300 mAh * ~3.7 V = ~12.2 Wh). The battery mentioned in the article consists of "more than 1000" such cells. Let us assume 1200 cells. That would mean it has a capacity of ~14.4 kWh (1200 * 12). It is possible to get a pre-assembled steel battery case on heavy-duty wheels for 16 LiFePo cells, with a modern BMS with Bluetooth and wired communication options, a touchscreen display, a circuit breaker and nice terminals for ~ $500. And it is also possible to get 16 high quality LiFePo cells with a capacity of ~300 Ah each, like EVE MB31, for significantly less than $100 each. This means that for less than ~$2000, it is possible to get all components required to assemble a fully working ~15 kWh LiFePo battery. - That assembly would take a few hours rather than weeks. - It will have new cells rather than used ones. - It will be safer to use than a battery with Li-Ion cells. - It will likely take much less space. - It will be easy to expand.

fragmede 2y ago
> - It will have new cells rather than used ones. This is not a feature. Our Earth is a limited resource, and being able to reuse batteries instead of discarding them to the trash is a desirable property.
- beacon294 2y ago
  There's even more to the riddle. Lithium recycling, cost of the power loss in old cells. Power transmit cost. Cost of power generation on site.
- nine_k 2y ago
  Pick used EV or industrial batteries. This must be much more efficient due to a larger cell size than in laptops. OTOH used laptop batteries can likely be obtained for effectively zero monetary cost, while used EV or solar backup batteries still cost quite noticeable money per kWh. With laptop batteries, you pay with your time; if you for some reason have an excess supply thereof, or you just enjoy this kind of work as a pastime.

immibis 2y ago

You can read it the other way around: with labour and knowledge, you can save $20k. And with even more passion and commitment and with business skills, you could earn $20k at a time.

hinkley 2y ago

That guy who was gaming a bug in the lottery in New England, near as I can figure was making about $20-30 an hour for his troubles. I suspect he may have made more off of selling the movie rights than off of the lottery. He made more than he would have working retail for sure, but maybe he could have done better with another job if he weren't fixated on sticking it to the Man. This battery thing feels a bit like the same sort of sentiment. That said, any task you can do while talking to a friend or binge watching a TV show cannot be accurately accounted for in cost by just how much the clock moved.