All right, this video is sponsored by PCB way more on them later, but right now I Want to show you this better. This right here is one of the best batteries around. It's affordable, it's super easy to set up, you can do it yourself, You don't need to hire anybody to install it, and it's just big enough to back up your entire home. What you're looking at here is 20 kilowatt hours of energy.

That's what the average American Home uses in one day. All you have to do is install these in these rack mount here and then connect that to an inverter and then the inverter into a home panel and then you're ready to go. When the power goes out, then this battery takes over and it Powers your home and when the power comes back on, then the inverter just charges his battery back up and it leaves a charge for the next time that you need emergency power. This system is modular.

Each one of these ones is 5.1 kilowatt hours and it costs about Seventeen hundred dollars. This is a rack mount that is standard for many Industries and so you can keep adding. You can add an extra one here. This is a five unit rack, right? We only have four in here.

You can keep adding more of these, You can build one of these racks, you can put another one next to it and you can just do 40 kilowatt hours. 60 kilowatt hours. Uh, 100, 200 kilowatt hours depending on your needs. This system is very modular and you can just keep adding.

Add Seventeen hundred dollars per unit. This system costs about 350 dollars per kilowatt hour and that is a a very good price for a turnkey system. Something that it's ready to go. You install it in there, you connect it to your inverter and you're ready to go.

But what if I were to tell you that you can build a DIY battery that is just as compelling as this one, but for half the price? Let me show you this right here. This this is a DIY project and I'm going to show you how you can build it. each one of these slightly smaller than that, but it's only six hundred dollars. So for about half the price, you can get the same 20 kilowatt hours worth of battery, but only for about 3 600 bucks.

Let me show you how we can put this together and how you can build this very easily. Okay, so here are the three main things you're gonna need for this project. The box. It's a hundred dollar box that you can find on the link on Amazon then our PCB kit and this one.

You can get it like this, just bare and then you can I'll give you all the links so you can get all the components so you can put it together or you could just get it from us already all uh, populated with all the connectors, the fuse, and all this other stuff so you could just install it in here. And third, you will need 18 of these packs also available at Jack 35 links in the description. So once you have that, then the next thing is just to install the PCB kit into this box. Okay, so the PCB is comprised of two different pcbs.

One is a template so that you can drill all the holes exactly at the right spots so that you can install this PCB which goes inside of the box. Now right if you get the unpopulated kit, you're gonna get it like this. and what you have to do is you have to break the two Pcbs uh from each other right? They have these little connecting little things and then over here too. and there's a set of instructions here that will let you tell you how to use a thing and it starts with break off both terminals.

positive and negative. Here's a positive. here's the negative and then break off the charging port. Here's the charging port Place template in front of box face and then drill out.

Uh, all the four and a half millimeter holes, then drill out all the eight millimeter holes, drill out all the charging hole using a step uh, bit and then you could also just watch this video right here. The project right? So those were people who find and buy this before watching this video. So we're gonna do all of that. If you get the kit that.

it's already populated so it's gonna come like this, the board's already gonna come loose and then these are gonna come loose too. and then it's gonna have this Hardware here right? You're gonna have to put that Hardware in there if you get the unpopulated kid. But if you get it populated then you already get it like this. And then this is the charging port and it just has cables in there stuck in there.

So let's drill the holes in the Box Okay, so the template goes right here. You're gonna use this. the glocking thing it has. The template has a hole, you're gonna use that as a guide and then I have some tape here just to lock it in place so you just eyeline it right.

Just just use your eye to kind of line it up so it's not crooked and then you put the tape on there. Now you're Frida then drill your holes. Here's a four and a half millimeter drill bit. Next we're gonna do the eight millimeter holes.

Next we're gonna do the step drill. the step bit drill. uh here. but you're gonna need a small hole first.

So I didn't want to change this and put it on the drill. Okay, so after you clean up all the metal shavings now, you just remove the template. Okay, maybe not that violently, but there. Now you have the holes that you are going to need to install.

that guy in here. So let's install that. Okay, so if you get the kit, we're unpopulated, this is where you have to get it too, right? You have to get this little charging port with two uh, Xd60 connectors Like that. You have to get these, break them out of here, and then put them in here.

These ones are just different color, but you know you could just use the white ones in there and then you solder this in here. and then you have to put these little screws, the black one or the negative and the positive. And then you have to put these little, uh, standoffs on this thing and then connect the 18 Xt30 connectors. The male connectors or these are female connectors, male I don't remember which ones.

Uh, these are male connectors and then these other little ones in here. Uh, the fuse and then the Xt30 right here to charge right? So once you have it like that, the next thing that you have to do or the first thing you have to do is install the charging port right in here. So you stick it in there and then put four screws. All right.

Just like that. Next, you'll put this big one in there and then just put the eight screws. This has uh, standoffs here and they go like this and all the holes should line up if we did this correctly. Okay, we're gonna use M4 Screws to install that in there.

Next, we have to put the Uh terminals positives on this side, negatives on this side and you could tell by the markings right here. Here's the positive. Here's the negative. We start with a positive and the way you put these is you break it down to the parts right, the screws and stuff and then what we have to do is put this through.

here. you hold the nut inside on the inside. it just has to stick out enough to put the other nut in the back right. So you use the one in there to hold it and this is just gonna sandwich the whole the PCB there.

Oh next is the isolators. These are plastic isolators. They go in here so that it doesn't touch the edge of the Box. Okay, so now you put a nut that and then put this in here and then you repeat this on the other side.

Okay last you gotta pull out the little cable for the meter. that's the cable that is attached right here and then the the uh, you gotta use two-sided tape right here to attach the meter to the front of that box. Okay, so you connect the little cable here, make sure that it's uh, straight, push it in there and there it is. Now it's stuck in the front there.

Okay, last step is you gotta connect all the batteries inside. You just connect this little white connector to the wide connectors and then the black connectors to the yellow connectors right here. Okay, one thing to notice here is that these are kind of backwards. Um, if you look at the colors of the connectors, you, you don't have to match the colors of the connectors of the cables.

They have to be backwards. See how? the red, the black and the red are on this side and then the black and the red are on this side and then the yellow and The Wider on that. So this is how you have to plug it in. I Couldn't find the right connectors that had the right color scheme in the right order so I had to order these and now you just have to do this.

It's kind of confusing, but you just have to pay attention to that foreign and that's it. They're all installed now. One thing you will have to do is because this won't close here. You will have to remove this fan right so that you can move these three sets from the middle here and make them all the way to the back.

So let's do that. Now we're gonna reinstall this back in here with the little cover just so dirt and stuff doesn't go in there. Okay, now we can push these batteries all the way to the back. There we go.

The last thing to do is to put the cover and there it is and there's the battery. Now let's just charge it and then we can use it. Okay, to charge it, you just need any charger that it's made for 36 volt batteries that goes to a maximum of 42 volts, right? And I Put it right here that this will handle up to 50 amps because then that just gets distributed to all the cells to all the individual battery packs. In this case, I'm going to be using a variable power supply.

charging it are about 10 amps so that is the working battery right there. It's about three and a half 3.6 kilowatt hours and it's about six hundred dollars worth of Uh materials in there. So if you do the breakdown, it's about a hundred and sixty six dollars per kilowatt hour, right? You connect your charger in here and then you connect these to your inverter and these packs have a built-in BMS So you don't have to worry about a PMS they're just individually BMS in there, right? And so uh, you make six of these and that will be about 21 kilowatt hours and they will come in around three thousand six hundred dollars as opposed to the seven thousand dollars that this system will cost, right? But I know what you're saying? What is the catch And uh, you would be right. There are some caveats here.

The the difference between this battery and that battery over there is that that's 48 volts and this is 36 volts On 48 volts, you have a lot more option and I think better quality inverters. We're at 36 volts. you have a more limited Choice when it comes to inverters. Another thing is life cycles.

Those are Lithium iron phosphate batteries and they will last four thousand Six Five thousand Cycles These are rated at full duty cycle and full depth of discharge for 1 000 Cycles Now in an application like this like storage, the demand is a lot more gentle and so you could expect 1500 to maybe 2 000 Cycles on these batteries right here, right? And so yeah, if you use them every day, you're looking about half the lifetime of that so you don't need 20 years lifetime out of your batteries, then you can get about the same amount of battery for about 50 percent of the cost with going this way. By the way, all of my projects are open source and you can actually get these for less than six hundred dollars if you order all the parts and all the components and you put them together. Let me show you how by going to Pcbway.com and then downloading the files there and clicking on the links for all the components there. Okay, this is Pcbway.com Here is the project file and this is where this is what the PCB looks like, right? So what you can do here is order the PCB by adding it to the card here.

You could also download the Gerber file and then order this on another PCB Uh, you know website that makes Pcbs right? but it's so much easier just to order it here. And then here is the list of all the parts. Look, the pigtails are right here. When you click on them, it takes you right to the pigtails where I bought them right.

Uh, the connectors. Some of those are going to be at AliExpress because this is a better price and sometimes this is the only place where you can find stuff like that. but even uh, the fuse, the nylon, all the little screws and nuts. Everything that you will need including a lot of stuff that it's only available as sort of like a back.

Master Card this uh store. This website has all kinds of like custom screws and nuts and and washers and stuff and even the tools that you will need like this eight millimeter drill bit and the four and a half millimeter drill bit. These are linked in here so you don't have to go searching for them. So if you order all this stuff yourself right and then you order the PCB you can definitely pay less than six hundred dollars to build that battery pack.

so that's gonna be it for me. If you do decide to build this project, send me pictures I Want to see your setups. It keeps me motivated to keep building some of these projects. I Want to thank you and I want to thank PCB way for sponsoring this video video and we'll see you guys on the next one! Bye.