Build a DIY Lithium LiFePo4 Headway 12v Battery replacement

so usually the question goes how do I make a 12 volt lithium battery you know I don't know that changes today because today I'm gonna show you how to make this 12 volt lithium battery let's get started so here is the 12 volt lithium challenge toe bolts are generally automotive lead acid batteries they have been around forever and they are achieved by using 6 2 volts cells inside of a box with two big terminals they are cheap they are heavy and they don't last very long in energy storage applications now lithium on the other hand they are expensive but they are light small and they last a very long time the problem is that the most common type of lithium has an operating cell voltage of 3.7 volts and using 3 or 4 cells doesn't quite match the 12 volt standard so no matter how many you use you end up wasting about 30% of the capacity to mismatch voltage but there is one type of lithium chemistry that operates at a 3.3 volt nominal and put in 4 cells in series makes a 12 volt that is compatible with 99% of all the equipment out there designed for light acid batteries then of course is lifepo4 or lithium iron phosphate it's an old chemistry that it's not as energy dense or as power dense as the most popular lithium cobalt oxide type of cells but what it lacks on density it makes up in safety as it's almost impossible to make one of these cells catch fire and cycle life as they are commonly rated in the 2,000 to 5,000 cycles to 80% state of charge which translates to many many years of operation now traditionally these have been really expensive but every day we are finding more and more sources of lightly use second hand overstock repurposed cells and it so happens that right now battery become a recycler and a retailer of lithium cells in the USA has a lot of lipo for headway cells at really good prices so we are going to use these to build our very own 12 volt lithium battery that hopefully will come in around half the price of a commercially available one so here are all the parts that you will need they are all listed in the description of this video alright so the first thing you have to do you're gonna grab one of these plates you're gonna cut it in half right I said you make a mark about a quarter inch and then you use another one of these plate and then you mark it like this then you do the same thing on this side you'll use some of these there we go so now you have to replace plus one that's cut in half now you start assembling your batteries okay one very important thing here do not connect these backwards and whatever you do do not short these cells each one on a dead short can do about 300 amps times 8 that equals a very bad time unless you're looking to melt stuff then it would be a really good time with fireworks you know but you probably don't want that so do not short these alright carry on with the bill here I'm using some captain tape between the four separate groups of cells to further prevent a short between them the only thing here preventing set short is one thin layer of cell wrapper so anything you can do is very helpful [Music] and there we go there's our battery pack right there so you need to go negative positive negative positive negative positive negative positive and to better understand how this works here is a visual diagram of how the entire battery is going to be wired all right now that we test it and everything works it's time to put it in its box what we're gonna do here is we're gonna cut off some of these plastic here so that we can embed this thing further down and there to allow room for the batteries to be there right so we've gotta cut all this plastic [Music] all right so here's what I did I added cardboard in between these cells because remember if the covering here or the shrink-wrapped on any of the cells if they were to you know wear off or whatever and they were to touch adjacent cells here then that would be a short same thing here and also in between here but here they are kind of separated by the screws here everything is tight here it was just this was kind of floating and stuff and so that's the reason not for nice layers there so that we prevent shorts [Music] [Music] right here I'm charging it for the first time there's a 12-volt computer power supply then I'm using one of these guys constant current constant voltage two-stage DC to DC but it's make to charge batteries and then here I have a meter I'm charging at 18 amps so about 240 watts charging the battery thing it'll stop at around thirteen point six that's when the battery is completely charged okay after a couple of hours this stopped charging the charging is zero if I increase the voltage here that doesn't charge so that means the BMS actually stopped and disconnected the battery right so the cells are probably overcharged right because this one I wasn't checking out to see what the voltage but at fourteen point seven yeah each cell is about three point six six so that's about the upper range of the cells that you want to hit so yeah this battery pack it's fully charged now we can discharge it put it through spaces all right testing the battery turning on this guy there we go 41 amps on that battery so this is supposed to do 200 amps continuous 60 but I think that was uh that was this thing okay so we actually max that this not the battery so there we go to kilowatts off of a two kilowatt inverter let's see how that battery does there [Music] there you go at full continuous power of 200 amps this battery will give you 401 hours 12 volts that's about 35 amp hours now if you were to use it at 50% loads then you'll get around 701 hours or 60 amp hours now let's look at how it did thermally [Music] what is that 52 degrees so the terminal was around 65 degrees look at that it was about 60 degrees and inside there this is where it connects to the pack and then this is where it connects to the pack so those two connections are heating up right but of course this is running the battery at a hundred so that's the idea of what what we're gonna get all right time to see how well we did cost-wise first 32 of the battery hookups headway cells come in at 336 dollars the BMS 96 73 the battery box of $52 busbars custom aluminum ones $39.99 and then there's another $20 of miscellaneous cables and stuff comes to a grand total of five hundred and forty-four dollars so that's what it takes to build a lithium 12-volt battery replacement alright so I hope you have enjoyed this build if you are interested in any of the components I use here they are listed in the description down below now I'm actually giving away this battery I just built all you have to do is go to my 300,000 subscriber giveaway video and comment there I want to thank batter hookups comm for sponsoring this build and I want to thank you for watching and for finally subscribing it was about time I mean you already watch all my video just click the button go ahead just do it with that I say thank you and we'll see you in the next video bye [Music]

Channel: jehugarcia

Views: 761,444

Keywords: diy, renewable energy, li-ion, lithium, battery, tesla battery, powerwall, samba, van, 18650, dead battery, LiFepo4, battleborn, 12v lithium, Build a DIY Lithium LiFePo4 Headway 12v Battery replacement, DIY Lithium LiFePo4 Headway, Headway 12v Battery, Headway 12v Battery replacement

Id: 5IPnQieycyA

Length: 10min 46sec (646 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 10 2019