Introduction and first steps in my Nissan Leaf Cell Powerwall

Hi, I’m David, and I plan to build a power wall. I have been contemplating it for some time – Interest in the project started after discovering Peter’s 18650 based power wall on his Youtube channel – HBPowerwall.

At first, I started sourcing 18650’s and was lucky enough to obtain about 500 new old stock Samsung 2600msh 18650’s. 

On their own, however, this wasn’t enough cells to complete my project – So it kind of stalled for a while.

In June 2018 I had solar installed on my house – I ended up with 33x 300w panels and Enphase Microinverters. 

North Facing Array
West Facing Array

It became very obvious soon after the install that I was going to be exporting a stack of unused power (sometimes 30+kw a day) and that the return on investment would be rather poor – given the cost of the system and vs reduction in power bills. I thought could reduce my bills further if I was to capture the excess power and to use it after the sun had gone down in the afternoon, so I started researching power walls again by watching lots of youtube videos. It became obvious that I just didn’t have the time to build the power wall from 18650 cells.

There are a few alternatives to building a power wall from 18650’s and I’ve listed some of the options below.

  • 18650 – 14 Packs in Series – 48V
  • Headway Lifepo4 cells
  • Winston Cells
  • Generic Chinese Lifepo4 cells
  • Lead Acid
  • Nissan Leaf cells

In the USA Nissan Leaf cells seemed to be readily available cheaply on eBay, however, due to them being classed as a hazardous material shipping to Australia seemed impossible. I tried to source locally but couldn’t find them in enough quantity nor for a good price point. So I gave up for a while.

The search continues…

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