AVR Freaks

He managed to scavenge 4,480 working batteries! I wonder how many dead batteries he had to go through.  I'm guessing he didn't factor his time into his costings.  Pretty cool project but more a labour of love than a money maker.

He finds discarded solar cells by rummaging through garbage cans.  ​  He tried hooking up a kangaroo to a treadmill, but it didn't work out.

There's a term for 4480 reused 18650-style batterys wired together: It's a car bomb. 

No really, those little 18650 suckers have a lot of energy in them and each has the ability release that energy at 20-50C. 

This is an admirable project and I wish the best to its designer.

However, just one screw up and he's faced with a "power wall" that has enough energy stored in the cells to burn his arm off before he knows that it has happened.

I once tried to use a 18650 to replace a NiCad battery in a 1980's style telephone console (long before iPhones).  The main module continued to charge the 18650 after it had reached its 4.0V/@90mA fully charged threshold.  It exploded with a force that was a loud as a 9mm pistol shot.  Put the fear-of-God in me.  The neighbors thought that I had committed suicide by gunshot.

The only way that I personally would deal with 4480 used 18650 batteries is to connect each one to a TP4096 Lithium-Ion charging module board. 

I live in an apartment and pay about $33 a month in the summer for electricity.  I'm not going to screw around with 4480 used mini-bombs in order to save $33 a month. Thanks anyway.

I had in mind something more like this:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...

But yeah, in theory one can gather enough rechargeable batteries and hack up something cheerful to take advantage of variable utility pricing, but if it were that easy, the utilities would be doing it!  I'm with Simonetta (#9): I don't want that anywhere near my soldering iron, or my house, for that matter.

S.

PS - Wonder what it does to his power factor.  Generally utilities don't mind too much residences that act a bit weird, but acting THAT weird might get you some nice people coming by to point out that getting power from the utility is a privilege, not a right, and can be revoked for a list of reasons...  One of which they'll make stick.  S.

What does he think is going to re-charge all those rechargeable batteries?  I saw no mention anywhere of solar, or even of a treadmill except in the comments here. 

I didn't play the video.  S.

PS - Note that he left off the expensive bits - Aircon, hot water, and cooking.  No, he's using the grid to cook his rolls.  S.

PPS - My turn:  What is a Chicko Roll, and do I really want to know?  S.

Even if he were feeding the battery power back into the grid, why would power factor be an issue? You'd just use a solar grid tied inverter as these really don't care what supplies the DC. As for charging, a few kW of solar cells would suffice. The benefit of batteries is being able to store the solar in the daytime and use the energy at nighttime. Over here you get SFA for sending power to the grid, so if you've got solar, then you want to use it.