All right, hey guys today, i want to talk to you guys about something new batteries. Batteries um i've been seeing a lot of comments online uh that are basically this that people are saying like. Why are you guys still messing around with diy batteries? Isn't it like easier just now, just to get lithium on phosphate, the price is low. Now the quality is high and it's just a lot easier to buy those batteries.

Why? Why are you still messing around with diy batteries right and so today i wanted to see if that is true, maybe argue the point that maybe there is still worth it to play around with diy batteries right. So this right here is a lithium-ion, phosphate battery cell right and these are very, very popular. There's a lot of good things about these they're long-lasting. There are cheap, finally right or cheapish um around three hundred dollars, so 200 or 300 a kilowatt hour right.

So that's! That's affordable, that's way less than they used to be, but here is the problem uh, all those people that that say that are might be missing a few key points for the average. You know battery buyer right. So if you buy these, you have to buy them in china. I right now.

I still can't find anyone that stocks these in the united states and that doesn't tack on another two like another hundred or 150 dollars per kilowatt hour, right uh, so basically they're buying them for three hundred dollars a kilowatt hour and then bringing them in and then They're, just passing all the costs of bringing them in and storing them and stuff to you, and so by the time you get them, yeah you're, paying like four hundred dollars to kill one hour right. I still haven't found someone that uh has brought enough of these. In a big enough load that then, that price gets lower right. So you still in order to get these at a decent price or less than 400 a kilo an hour uh.

You have to order them from china from aliexpress alibaba right and usually it takes a couple months at best and six months and worse. I ordered these sometime last year and i have to wait about three months to get them and to tell the truth. I didn't know if i was gon na get them or not. I was just like well, you know paid my money kind of forgot about them because you know uh.

I got a bunch of things going on and eventually, three months later they showed up right. So so that's number one um. So if you have a lot of time and you uh can plan a battery build or whatever, and then you don't mind waiting uh three up to six months or whatever right now, the shipping lines, you know that there's a new war that just started in the World that's gon na have all the effect in uh, worldwide shipping, trades, shipping lines and stuff right, so uh, yeah, you're gon na have to wait some time for these because they're coming from china right. The other thing is that if you look online at all the people who are uh, there's a bunch of youtubers that that are just reviewing these types of cells right, you get to see that they keep trying to buy from a bunch of things and even sometimes They buy like battery from one seller, one time and it's great and then they buy it again and then the second batch is crappy uh they're kind of hit in this right, and so you don't really know what you're getting because well, not everybody's honest over there.

In china, unfortunately right and so sometimes you think you're getting something because you've gotten it there before and then you might not, so you might get lucky and maybe those people that are saying like yeah, i bought a bunch of batteries that were great. They were cheap uh. I didn't have to wait that long. Well, maybe that's anecdotal right.

Maybe they got lucky, but you know just because they got that doesn't mean that you're going to get the same experience buying from there right, and so that is a thing that you have to keep in mind. If you want to do this right, here's the other thing i just reviewed a battery from jacob there's. Also signature solar. I those are the only two companies that i know, but they are actually getting large quantities of batteries into the united states and then they're stalking them here and then they're selling them.

But the problem with those well there's no problem. The the the thing with those is that they're not uh cells right. They are battery packs, already they're, put together into a box, uh they're already packaged in 48, volts or 12 volts, or you know, 24 volts or whatever so they're kind of plug and play batteries right and that's great, but you know the cheapest ones. I just uh reviewed one, or maybe the second cheapest, one that you can get right now and it's still like around 300 uh dollars a kilowatt hour, 300 300 plus dollar dollars to kill one hour right, and so, even though they are stock here in the united States i was looking at the what their website and the one for example, that i reviewed you have to pay a flat shipping of 200, which is quite a bit of money when you factor in the shipping yeah, it comes out to around 372 dollars a kilowatt Hour now, let's look at what we can diy and how much work and how much money it would cost.

Let me show you very quickly right. I spent like two hours this morning, just looking around when i had in the shop to see if i could put something together - and i did all right so here we go. This right here is the jacket per battery that i reviewed last week right and it's 5.1 kilowatt hours and it cost about 371 dollars with shipping included right once you get it to to your door 371 dollars per kilowatt hour right. So this right here is just a box that i found amazon and i bought it.

It's like a hundred dollars for this box and it's already well, it's a it's. I think it's about. I think it's a rack, mountable box, but i don't know it's a bit different size and and width right. So i think you can put these on a rack mount, but i think it's for like a security system or something like that right, because it's got this little key here, that you can open and whatever so 100 for this box uh this right here.

It's a product that we make and we sell at jack 35 is called a megalodon gold x, and i have two versions of it. I have the master, this is the master, and this is the slave. The master has a meter with the little screen here that lets. You know the voltage of the battery and also the stuff uh and the slate doesn't right.

The slave is just uh it's to be used in conjunction with this right, but this is like 150 bucks and what it allows you to do is just basically like a power strip. It's a combiner. It allows you to combine these batteries a bunch of these which, and these are scooter batteries. They have 20 cells in there that have 10 watt hours each or 2600 milliamp hours, and they have a built-in bms right - and i have you know just taped two of these together and then i've done a bunch of them like this.

Four. It's really easy to handle them and use them in in sets of fours like this right, and so this combines up to 28 of those. Now the box, you can't fit 28 in this box. You can only fit 18 of them and let me show you how you fit them in there.

So here is a set of four. All i did was just put tape on them like that, and it's a lot easier to handle. I removed the fan that was in here so that it doesn't so the batteries can fit better. So that's four, that's eight, that's 12., 16 and then 2 18 right.

Look at that bam. So now all you have to do is just connect all of these batteries. In there into these connectors, and then you close this uh and then what i did was just drill two holes in here and uh put some uh terminals and now you'll have a three and a half or three point six kilowatt hour battery. So i've connected all of these right uh there.

You have some extra ones, because again this will do uh up to 28 of these, and this is only 18.. You see those lights right there blinking. That means that some of these batteries are right and then the ones with the reds are those are being charged by the ones that are higher voltage right. So once after a few minutes, everything will stabilize and balance, and so then, after that, then you can just use your battery.

You don't have to worry about this. This will just short itself out they're all connected in parallel, so the the ones that are lower voltage will eventually suck some energy from the ones that are higher voltage and then they equalize and then, when you're charging and discharging, then they all go up and down By you know together, so then you can just close this all right. So there we go. Look a couple of hours of work here that i did uh and look at the battery.

I mean this doesn't look like a diy thing. It looks pretty good once you put the cover on this one right here. It looks just like that. You know sure it's not as fancy.

It doesn't have the communication things in here. It doesn't have the little screen, but you could add a screen here. You could add a meter for like another 50 bucks right, um, add a meter that measures the current that goes in and out. I even have that built into the board, that's in there uh and so yeah that wouldn't be too hard.

So here we go three and a half kilowatts 3.6 kilowatt hours. This is a 1c battery, so you can remove about 3.6 kilowatt right. That's about 90 amps uh! This is a 100 amp, so this is also a 1c, but this is higher voltage right. So this is 48 volts.

This is 36 volts right. So what are the downsides right? There's got to be something right. This just can't be just as good for way less money uh. Well, there is uh.

This is 48 volts, which is a standard voltage. It works with a lot of like high quality whole house size. You know industrial, inverters and stuff. This one right here is at 36 volts and you can't change it, because these are 36 right, so changing them would have to mean undoing a bunch of the work.

That's already here, this already has their own uh internal bms right, and so it's a distributed bms in here. So it's capable just as capable of this one c continuous right, um, then cycle life is another one. This one right here is rated at 4 000 uh cycles, where these lithium cable oxide batteries are rated around a thousand cycles right so 25 of the battery life on these right so um. Will that make a huge difference? Well, yeah! I can right, if you're cycling these things day in day out, like once at a a day, then yeah.

This is 20 years, and this is you know like five years or something like that. But here's the thing since this is way cheaper. You could just add more battery, so twice the battery. That way you cycle once every two days, for example, and then you'll extend the the life of this.

You know double right and so there's that so then it'll last twice as much right, but even then you know it's still half the the life of this one. So if life uh cycle life is a thing that is very, very important to you, then yeah just go for that one right, but but there's a lot of times where systems are only there for backup, for example right and so, if you're building a backup. Why do you need something? That's got 4. 000 cycles.

You don't you know you're paying a premium for that stuff right. So you can pay. You know half the price for this and it will be good. It will last just as long as this would last because you're not cycling day in day out right and so the there are applications where you can use these.

So let's talk about the prices, the costs right. This is like i said this is, i think, the second most economical battery that comes in this format. Right, i think, there's one that sells uh, but for fifteen hundred dollars right plus shipping, which is about two hundred dollars. This one right here at jacker uh, is seventeen hundred dollars, plus two hundred dollars flat fee shipping right so you're, looking at nineteen hundred dollars, uh, which comes out to be about 371 dollars per kilowatt hour right now, this one right here, uh, it's got 18 of These packs and these packs are 20 each right.

So that's 360 dollars. The box is a hundred dollars the dongle, which is that that pcb board that's got all those connectors and stuff. That's a hundred and fifty dollars, but if you get the one with the uh, the master, the one that has the other the the meter or whatever that'll be 175 dollars. Well, you still so now you're around 635 dollars right for this battery right here.

So if you divide that by 3.6 kilowatt hours, which is how much energy the battery can hold now you're looking at a hundred and seventy six dollars a kilowatt hour, now add uh shipping to that and then you're somewhere around probably two hundred dollars a kilowatt hour. So what do you say is diy still something that you find attractive or that sounds good for you or are plug and play batteries the way for you to go right, so there are other benefits for doing diy. One of the ones that i haven't mentioned yet is the fact that by doing these diy projects, we keep these batteries from going back to china, and china will extract more value off of those they will resend them back to us and then uh basically get us To pay more money, america is their number one customer when it comes to consumer electronics right. So if we don't use those batteries that are still good and usable, and if we just let them go back to china, then they can squeeze more more profit out of these product from us right.

And so then we are essentially sending a bunch of money. Still back to china right so if you're patriotic, if you feel that you know americans should have more jobs and americans should uh keep their value here, but then you know this doing. This is a good thing. It's also good for the environment, because if these don't have to go an extra round trip to china, then uh.

It's good for the environment right we're not using all that energy in diesel yeah, sending the ship going back to china, and then they you know repackage it and send it right back to us kind of thing, and there are other benefits of doing diy, that i'm Going to touch on here on this video, but if your diy post it in the comments, if you are up to building something like this post in the comments, i have a bunch of these projects that are similar to this right. Where i'm building like a thing. So that you can use it uh, so you can put in a box, so you can put connectors you can put stuff and then squeeze all the life, all the usable life out of these products that are already built, they're, already sold and they're already here in America right, and so they shouldn't be going to the trash they should be going back to china. They shouldn't be going to landfills.

They shouldn't even be broken down to be recycled for the commodities right. They still have usable life, so we need to stop being so. Wasteful and that going the diy route will help you do that right. So thank you for watching this video we'll see you guys on the next one.

If you are interested in doing that project right there, i will put the links to all the little things that i use to make that one battery, in particular in the description, this video right. Okay, thank you. Bye.