Hello forum!
Inputting a search for 'EV battery solar storage' brings up plenty results for people using their EV car batteries to store excess solar power, but they are still using their car as an EV car.
I am in the UK and am in the late stages of fitting a solar panel array and since I have space, I can add as many panels as is appropriate. However, since the government feed in tariff is insultingly low, for the moment I am only putting in a straight solar only system with no storage, to meet my daytime needs (home office) and not much more. I have excellent south facing space.
However, with a few additional panels I can generate a decent excess and divert that to a battery/storage.
A little investigating has left me understanding there are 2 clear options, but I am interested in a 3rd.
1) Buy an assembled off the shelf battery storage solution. I am rounding off here but a 5kw battery costs about £3,000 in the UK. To me this is crazy! My whole array is costing less.
2) Buy individual LiPo cells as I did with the panels from legitimate sources in China for a lot less and build my own. In round numbers I can expect to build about twice the commercial capacity (so 10kw) for about £2,000. Twice the size for about 2/3 the price. Better, but still not compelling.
Enter option 3.
It's hard to ignore the value in 2nd hand/used EV (electric vehicle) batteries. A few examples:
A really neat, nearly new 1.3kw VW eGolf/BMW i3 battery is only £125. Buy 4 of those and I would be spending about £500 on the batteries for a 5kw 'set'.
A full 13kw Mitsubishi Outlander EV battery, I can pick up for about £1,400.
I am in a technical field as a career and I am not so naive as to believe its a simple interface between the battery and the inverter, but a quick google seems to indicate that there are compatible BMS (battery management systems) like SIMP which are capable of communicating effectively with a large number of EV batteries by BMW and VW and even Tesla. Right down to individual cell management with temperature and charge state etc.
All the usual caveats in place, I have no desire to turn myself into a crisp but I am genuinely interested to know if anyone has done anything like this or even if it is possible?
Can I use a second hand EV battery to store my excess solar power and how do I find out more?
Inputting a search for 'EV battery solar storage' brings up plenty results for people using their EV car batteries to store excess solar power, but they are still using their car as an EV car.
I am in the UK and am in the late stages of fitting a solar panel array and since I have space, I can add as many panels as is appropriate. However, since the government feed in tariff is insultingly low, for the moment I am only putting in a straight solar only system with no storage, to meet my daytime needs (home office) and not much more. I have excellent south facing space.
However, with a few additional panels I can generate a decent excess and divert that to a battery/storage.
A little investigating has left me understanding there are 2 clear options, but I am interested in a 3rd.
1) Buy an assembled off the shelf battery storage solution. I am rounding off here but a 5kw battery costs about £3,000 in the UK. To me this is crazy! My whole array is costing less.
2) Buy individual LiPo cells as I did with the panels from legitimate sources in China for a lot less and build my own. In round numbers I can expect to build about twice the commercial capacity (so 10kw) for about £2,000. Twice the size for about 2/3 the price. Better, but still not compelling.
Enter option 3.
It's hard to ignore the value in 2nd hand/used EV (electric vehicle) batteries. A few examples:
A really neat, nearly new 1.3kw VW eGolf/BMW i3 battery is only £125. Buy 4 of those and I would be spending about £500 on the batteries for a 5kw 'set'.
A full 13kw Mitsubishi Outlander EV battery, I can pick up for about £1,400.
I am in a technical field as a career and I am not so naive as to believe its a simple interface between the battery and the inverter, but a quick google seems to indicate that there are compatible BMS (battery management systems) like SIMP which are capable of communicating effectively with a large number of EV batteries by BMW and VW and even Tesla. Right down to individual cell management with temperature and charge state etc.
All the usual caveats in place, I have no desire to turn myself into a crisp but I am genuinely interested to know if anyone has done anything like this or even if it is possible?
Can I use a second hand EV battery to store my excess solar power and how do I find out more?