For more info on how to connect a LEAF battery to a BYD compatible inverter: github.com/dalathegreat/Batte... Massive thanks to all my Patreon supporters. Like the content? Consider becoming a supporter: www.patreon.com/dala
I think it is not necessary, because the converter has its limit and will not overload the wire in any case. And if there is a short, even the bigger fuse inside the battery will blow.
@@wasserdrucker6227 The wire run is too long to fit under the tap rule, and you’re a brave soul to trust “The inverter wont overload under any situation” The National Electric Code isn’t concerned with what that inverter is designed to do. Its concerned with what happens to that wire when something goes wrong. 250A fuse protecting 50A wire? Thats just asking for trouble. When you already have a junction box a 50A fuse is cheap insurance.
I just paid entirely too much for an offgrid solar setup last year with a 20kWh pack that doesn't last at all long. Zack/Dala: Would love to see a step by step build on your youtube channel sourcing a cheap used larger capacity/ tesla battery and have it set up to charge from the panels primarily with a power company charger as backup. Not looking to power the grid.. just looking to be as energy independent as possible.
Thanks for sharing this, its suddenly a lot more attractive to do a battery upgrade in older leafs when the old battery can be re-used as is. Much love!
I was very confused by the simplicity of this ("just plug the DC into the inverter") because I'm so used to every inverter being @ 48v. Took a while to dig up that the Fornius is a HV DC inverter, using 150v - 455v for the battery connection side.
I start using Nissan leaf battery for my solar 48-volt system since 2014, you know what? 3 years ago, I bought 2 used Nissan leaf battery and dissembled them to built 16 - 48 volt stack battery bank and now this concept that is wonderful, I no longer need to dissemble. All I need now the inverter will work with this concept, my Growatt have few years on it, its time to looking at the replacement and new idea to get free energy from the sun, my current system is 2 Growatt 5k inverter, 16 Nissan leaf̣ (48volt stack), 10KA industrial transformer to convert 230V into 110V. You are right used Nissan leaf battery are not expensive like other life4 battery sell by some solar outfit
On se mestari tekemään näitä. Tuo lähestymistapa on oikea. Vähemmän purkua, vähemmän kaikkea turhaa työtä. Uusien johtojen teko on paljon helpompaa kuin akun purku. Tuolla voi säästää ostosähkössä paljon. Hyvää työtä!
My Nissan Leaf battery waited 1.5 years in my garage for something like this. Thanks Dala, great job 👍💡👍 I also have 30kWh, in the same places rust began to get to it 😆😆😆
For the precharge resistor and that stuff you should use a cable, something like a 7G1.5 and terminate it inside the box, also why not use a microcontroller with a few relays for the startup sequence? One last thing, put a fuse in the junction block ~32A and maybe protect the 10 mm² HV wires a little better. Love this kind of projects, hope it keeps getting better
@@DalasEVRepair you can use that LilyGo that you already have, to pull double duty, CAN to ModBus converter and the startup sequence. You just need some extra relays that can make the contacts in the right order, connected to the LilyGo. There are some relay modules already on the market for these kinds of things.
@@rabulea1987 Love that idea! Do you ever think about sharing your knowledge? I subbed to you just in case! ;-) I just paid entirely too much for an offgrid solar setup last year with a 20kWh pack that doesn't last at all long. Would love to see a step by step build on your youtube channel sourcing a cheap used tesla battery and have it set up to charge from the panels primarily with a grid charge backup. Not looking to power the grid.. just looking to be as energy independent as possible.
Make sure the fireproofing you add is _extremely robust_ . Maybe get a sheet-metal shed to put at a modest distance from your house, and run wires from there. Fire departments don't actually "put out" lithium battery fires. They just dump massive amounts of water on them to cool them off somewhat until the battery has burnt up all it's fuel, to hopefully keep the blaze contained. Some have suggested that EV batteries don't belong within 20 meters of any flammable construction. That may be excessive, but the fire can easily melt a car down to a puddle. There are longer lasting batteries with lower power density which are better for non-mobile use.
Ever since I saw the home batteries made from Leaf cells I wondered why they did not take the high voltage out and use it like you did and now with high voltage MPPT built in chargers it will be even easier. Congrats.
Very cool! If a person has the technical skills, this is a great, inexpensive option. EV batteries which have lost their resiliency and peak capacity for use in a vehicle can still be used for many years in the less demanding environment of home solar.
Well done, this provides an excellent second life for degraded Leaf battery pack after pack in car is upgraded. 😎 Figuring out how to make use of the Nissan electronics is so much better than spending hours dismantling a pack and then configuring a 48 volt pack. ☮️
@@DalasEVRepair Do you know if the leaf battery pack could be rotated and wall mounted for people with less room to mount it like this? - or would that be a problem?
@@markreed9853 The leaf battery pack has no active cooling system - some others use coolant to control the battery temperature. Since the individual battery cells are essentially "solid state" they don't care which way up they are. there are actually walkthroughs on installing a leaf power pack in a pickup truck, upside down over the rear axle so the humps don't intrude into the bed area! Hope that helps!
@@daveyburgess I thought the leaf battery had air cooling and the batteries have a liquid electrolight so not solid state. I would also think as energy storage the batteries would not get as hot as not under as much strain compared to in an EV.
I've wondered for some time now, if the market would not have reached a point by now where you can buy and assemble a modular system, consisting (in very general terms) of the following components: * A standard inverter/control box that would do the power conversion, interface with any grid control device, etc. * A battery specific interface box, that would convert the batteries' voltage/current/communication lines to standard values/protocols that could interface with the inverter/control box. * A used EV traction battery So, in your situation you'd buy the inverter control box, a "Nissan Leaf" specific interface box, and you'd have the Nissan Leaf battery. Someone else, who may have a BMW i3 battery available, would buy the same inverter/control box and "BMW i3" specific interface box, and be in business. Of course, this would have to made in large numbers to be affordable, and the legal and safety stuff of trying to commercially sell something like this would be a nightmare. It would, however, provide a large market for used and moderately-degraded EV batteries, silencing the "butbutbut EV batteries will end up in landfills so they suck"-crowd once and for all.
Nearly six minutes of fantastic nerdery, custom wiring, OSS, and tinkery and then smash cut to 5:53 This is a true plug and play solution. 😂 Fantastic work. I'd love to do this.
Thanks Dala, this is the kind of content I’ve subscribed for. To be able to use the car battery “as is” without messing with it, use the original BMS plus the sealed box should be really useful.
The sealed box however prevents you from analysis past the original BMS or around the original BMS (e.g. with a faulty BMS) directly at cell level or PCB level. It also disallows visual inspection for problems like corrosion, humidity (think of a previously flooded pack), burns on the board, visually bloated or blown capacitors, charred or sticking contactors, and so on. Also, you cannot easily change modules and cells or the BMS board or broken contactors. It is essentially a black, sealed box. In other words: you really have to trust this BMS. Even after let's say 10 years in its first life in a car with whatever environment. And you cannot choose a favourite kind of cells or chemistry. Old Leaf LMO or NMC and Tesla-used NCA chemistry is not the best for stationary use with many cycles. Old Leaf packs are passively cooled, but with Tesla batteries or modules, you would have to add a cooling circuit if the original environment was wanted. I still like the idea as a low-cost alternative, but both sides should be considered when going this way with 2nd life EV packs.
@@MooseOnEarth no cooling would be required. It's highly unlikely that a house would draw the high current that the car did. Maybe 1/10 the current used. If that.
@@kevinroberts781 In that case however you have to check, whether the original Tesla BMS can cope with the absence of TMS components. It may check, whether all expected sensors send plausible data and also check that all expected actors act upon the media they act uponand that then sensors do indicate successful operation of the actors. The original BMS is typically in direct communication with the original TMS. And now, all this communication would have to be emulated Dala and the EV hacking community will likely figure that out, but once people use such solutions, they should be aware of a mixture of Tesla routines and surrounding glue code and emulated components, that are not actually present. In other words: people are on their own. That's ok, if they are aware of it. But they better are aware of it.
Keep adding inverters, Dala! Ones you've already verified don't seem to be available in the US market. Would love to see you get the SMA Sunny Boy Storage series (SMA Sunspec Modbus) to work!
Hi well done that's a great work but i just wanna mention to you not to forget the wiring size for AC and DC, the fuse, isolation switch, and SPD in case of lightening, also draw a digram it will help. Thanks
Very cool stuff! Next you got to connect your Leaf direct to that inverter via DC to charge and discharge. Defeat pack to ground current leakage test module in your Leaf and you should be good to go.
A bit gutted by this video. A month back our 30kWh Leaf was written off. I searched for options for home storage but all seemed to involve striping the pack down to cells so I did nothing about it. Salvage cost I could have paid for the car was £2,900. If I'd seen this video then I may have gone for it - particularly as packs on eBay seem to be about £5k. Oh well, such is life. Great 'inventing' and video, many thanks. ps, would be interested about the question someone else asked about storing packs vertically rather than flat - any potential issues? > Just seen this is already answered - you think fine vertical. Cheers.
You could buy at least 16 kWh of brand new lifepo4 cells for that price, which will have a vastly greater cycle life and use an off the shelf BMS. Nothing lost IMHO, these leafs packs degrade relatively quickly and are a poor fit for powerwall use as they have weird voltages. Also I wouldn't put a cobalt based battery chemistry in my home, they are far too fire prone.
Love it, nothing makes me feel better than let the Big Energy people tell the public the way you should become energy independent and you just do what works for you, the more people learn how to do it yourself the better WE THE PEOPLE are thank you.
This looks easier then I was expecting. The trick will be having a compatible inverter. Now I'm keen to see other expand on this work with demonstrations for other inverters. Thanks for posting Dala. Well done.
I just got the lilygo and will try connecting it to my older Fronius Symo inverter....our old 2012 leaf is due for a battery upgrade soon so hope to use the removed battery for storage!
@dominicwild3189 its compatible with tesla, byd and fronius wall batteries so should be fine, I've connected the lilygo to it and is does communicate, just waiting to get my hands on a battery now....
Great stuff again! I’ve been looking for a solution for a while, but most involve rearranging the cells - I even found a custom made BMS with all the connectors but it is only for the 24 kWh LEAF. This solution is much cleaner and universal!
I hope that a project like this will be available for my Bolt EV whenever it reaches end of life in 10 years or whatever; I'd love to be able to reuse the battery as a house backup and storage rather than recycling with the rest of the vehicle, because I'm confident the battery will still have plenty of life/value left at that point.
last time I saw this, a used LEAF battery costs almost the same as brand new LFP cells with the same capacity. in other words, you are better off with LFP because it has several times the cycle life and much more flexibility for installation than the EV battery. It also helps recycling the old LEAF batteries to extract various metals in it for better use
Nice one 👍 I was curious about the inverter and HV battery but it seems it takes wuite a wide DC voltage range which is perfect for this re-use - unlike 48V systems which require more up and down conversions. I guess the only snag I can see here is playing around with HV DC 😬
This is excellent, thank you for sharing your project. I have been toying with the idea of building a backup power system because the grid is so poor here and I work remote. This looks exactly like what I need.
I think i watched this Video 5x 😀 This is soooo awesome. Bought a used Leaf Batterie last week. Iam going to do the same. Thank you so much for sharing.
Mind sharing how much did you pay for the battery? I’m getting more and more interested in this stuff, but i’m not able to find where could i buy a used car battery? Thanks
Suggestion: buy one of these cheap DC-DC step down converters and power your Lilygo board through that converter directly from the battery pack. They are cheap and have wide input ranges and the output voltage you require. I use a couple to run my 12V camper compressor fridge and other 5 and 12V gear from a 48V LiFePO4 battery pack. Very efficient and cost effective.
just make sure you use a fuse in the reducing wire box to limit the amount of amp that can pass in the wire to prevent a short (accident) at the end and burn everything
With the amount of used EV batteries that are going to flood the market this could be an awesome way to put a comfortable, off-grid mökki literally anywhere in Finland!
Just stumbled on your video, thank you. I just had a thought to hook up my DIY EV battery to a MC4 input on spare Solar Inverter , my only concern is exporting power to the grid at night which would be wasteful. (FIT is only $0.05 kwh , buy for $0.25 kwh) Maybe I just plug it in when we are cooking . Battery is 28kwh @144v Inverter is 10A DC input , = 1.4kw / hour
I’ve watched this a few times trying to get my head around it. I’m looking to do a conversation like Regen EV’s fastleaf, but the vehicle will be primarily battery storage for an off grid property. I’d like to have a way to fairly easily disconnect and move the vehicle. If I used the aux port for the heater as the output to the grid, I could keep the main power to the motor connected? For the canbus plug could I use a jumper to just put a second connector somewhere accessible? Any advice would be appreciated.
Hi Dala, I admire your skills and inventions. I would not be able to set it up by myself, but if there is any plug-and-play kit on the market in the future, I would buy just the kit, inverter, and used leaf battery, which would be huge.
All the parts needed are listed in the Github link in the description. It is very cheap, and I want to keep it that way. I also don't want to be liable or have to give support about this, so it is best to keep it as an open-source project!
@@DalasEVRepair understandable. Although I think for less tech savvy people it would be great if it could be simplified even more. Like, could we use the liligo to do the startup sequence? Can the liligo be powered directly from the Leaf battery? Keep up the good work btw 💪
@@matroosoft4589 no, this is why the leaf and all other EV have a 12 VDC aux battery. Something has to run the control circuits safely to then command the HV system. It's a horse before cart problem here 😅
@@matroosoft4589 you could absolutely use the esp32 on the lilligo together, with some relays (maybe just mosfets, need to study a bit), to do the start-up sequence. i'm sure Dala or someone else will get to it before I do a battery upgrade and free up my old leaf battery but if not I'll take a stab at it then.
Well done Dala. What you have done is genius. If I can source a battery I will definitely give this a go. On a different topic. Why is it not possible to repack a leaf battery with after market cells and reuse the existing wiring to these cells ? I know it would be difficult to match the physical size but the newer cells would make up for this all be it with slightly less range.
Wrong BMS parameters, reduced crash safety, more dangerous charging, harder to insure etc. Anything is possible, but this needs to be done by a company and not a DIY job
Good question; one company is taking the cell upgrade approach for the Mitsubishi triplets but has been slow getting to market. Cell upgrade involves many hours of labour, so a higher capacity Leaf battery pack from a crashed car is probably more cost effective, if you can find one. ☮️
Replacing cells is something I do in my shop. It is easy but if you have to ask these types of questions, you shouldn't do it. Be sure to wear 5000 volt gloves.
Nicely done. Eager to see your fireproofing solutions. My understand is that the leaf’s battery chemistry is fundamentally safer than other EV battery chemistries. Also, the onboard BMS is fairly robust and should prevent overcharging throughout its usable life. As long as the battery pack remains sealed, with no opportunity for water to enter, the risk of fire will be close to zero. But, it’s always good to plan for the worst.
The onboard BMS won’t protect anything, it will simply flag an alarm which Dala’s equipment must act upon. The only way to render the battery safe in a fault condition is to disconnect the HVDC lines using the contactors which Dala hasn’t implemented. Very much work in progress compared to other efforts.
short of placing the battery in a tub with a solenoid valve to fill it with water in case of fire, the only fireproofing you can do is use fire bricks, aerated concrete, expanded clay etc to make sure the heat cannot reach anything flammable and let it burn out.
@@beartastic-ftw never mix electricity with water. CO2 fire extinguisers, proper chemistry study need, and preventing explosions and presence of fire fuel nearby...
@@InternetListener hes right, the only way you can put these fires out is to keep it cool and let it burn out, so firefighters tend to stick them in a big tub full of water. As seen here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qwxZu3nVOZ0.html and ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KzJ6LperQUk.html
Hi Dala do you have any thoughts on making this for available as a package for people off grid? I have thought I could just run a 12v invertor straight from the leaf 12v battery as the main battery also feeds into (charges) the 12v. Would this still work if I swapped the cars 12v battery for a larger capacity 12v leisure battery?
Stumbled upon your video by chance and I must say this is very neat! It is a bit on the riskier side for my liking but still amazing that you can go off-grid. All the power to you! I wonder something though. How do/did you make sure the used Leaf/Tesla battery pack is in good shape and there are no problematic cells that's gonna burn the house?
Perfect idea - I do think you need more solar panels to fill the EV battery - love the arduino - we use them for remote data logging on environmental monitoring - any thoughts to connect to a more recent current/live/real EV via the 400v DC CCS connector?
> . . . any thoughts to connect to a more recent current/live/real EV via the 400v DC CCS connector? < I want to do that too! Boosting my 4kW, 215 Vmpp PV array to 400+/- volts with a boost-mode DC-DC converter is no big deal. Getting the car to recognize and accept charge from what I will call "PV-->EV DC slow charge" will take some effort. Are these communication protocols and signals(codes) published somewhere? I already found the pin outs.
My knowledge may be out of date but CCS never used to support v2h. Dropping chademo for CCS killed a lot of v2g and v2h startups in the UK. Maybe newer implementations of the CCS standard supports it now.
Huge gap in the market for someone to create a kit , with all of this.. so the home user can buy a used leaf battery, and incorporate it into their traditional solar setup.. like givenergy.
Well the parts are below 50€, so better to just have it open source! Not many companies that would like to take on the liability of a project like this!
Love my leaf 30, it's great even thou it's battery has lost a third of its range :) I would love battery upgrade . Hope it happens here in Scotland. Do mine please :) you are a total expert :) the power wall is amazing . But firstly need to get better range from leafykins
Fantastic! Can I make a request to look into - the possibility of also providing communications with a Renault Zoe battery? They are pretty cheap in the UK at the moment - the scrap yard up the road has a 50kWh one for sale for £4800, which is about the same price as a 5kWh battery from myenergi (inverter aside!)...
The Electric Viking, Sam Evans, talked some time ago that the price "nowadays" of the cells are about 100 USD per kWh, and the price goes constantly down. This means, for sure, that the prices of used batteries will go down, maybe not that fast as desired. But the path into the future is quite clear! If you want to follow, without googling to much, the development of new battery technologies, I think The electric Viking is a good source. New technologies mean normally lower prices per kWh. 😉
Dala, that is something I would like to do for an off grid application, but could explain it a little simpler for us that are not as advanced as you. Especially the part how you can charge the 400volt dc battery pack safely. Also, can this be used with your 48 volt system that you already have installed?
The solar inverter is charging the 400V battery either directly with the solar panels, or it can also charge from the grid. All the magic happens inside the Fronius Gen24. This is very different from the 48V battery I built a while back. I would not recommend the 48V anymore, this is soo much better and easier to use!
@@DalasEVRepair It appears the key here is that Fronius Gen24 is capable of charging a high voltage dc battery, right? Watching the video I was trying to figure out how you were converting that high voltage battery to 48 volts. I have a Sol-Ark 12k and I'd have to find out if it is capable of charging HV DC batteries.....Evidently I'm "old school" having broken my leaf battery apart three yeas ago and configured it to 48v :)
@@DalasEVRepair The best of the Nissan Leaf are the 24kWh batteries from 2013 and up There is much more degradation in 30kWh batteries, but as an energy store at home, they are going to a well-deserved long-term retirement where they will have like in paradise - much lower charging and discharging current 😉
