These HUGE Batteries weight more than 200Kg!

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]These are batteries.

[00:00:03]Yeah, huge batteries. And since they are so huge, they should have a lot of voltage, right? Because according to the laws of engineering that I've just [music] made up, size is the only measure of success. Let's see. Let's see. Let's see.

[00:00:16]>> What? Only two volts? Well, yeah. These are solar batteries, and each one of them will cost you brand new around $3 to $4,000.

[00:00:24]>> God damn.

[00:00:26]>> Don't believe me? Check it out.

[00:00:29]and I have six of them. So, according to my math, that's $24,000, right? Let me ask you something. Do I look like a Wall Street guy? Yeah, I know I don't because I don't have a jet plane. That's why I bought these batteries for the incredible price of only $80 a piece.

[00:00:49]>> Huh?

[00:00:49]>> How so? Well, we will see that and more before a quick message from the sponsor of this video, PCB Way. PCB Way is creating high-quality PCBs for prototyping and for a very low cost so everyone could use their services. So don't hesitate and for only $5, order your PCBs in just a couple of minutes and improve your projects. I've used their services for years and the PCBs are just as I wanted them to be. The finished surface is perfect. The solder mask as well. The size, the VAS and the markings are precise.

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[00:01:53]So you see these are not brand new. They have almost 15 ears and the previous owner changed to lithium batteries. They still have some ears inside of them. So I bought them because why not? In any case, only the lead inside of them already cost like $80. So in all scenarios, I don't lose money. Even if they fail, which will do eventually, I can still use them as very heavy paper weights for all the data sheets I never read. Anyway, my first problem is how can I move them?

[00:02:22]Each one weighs more than 200 kilos.

[00:02:25]That's almost two of me. Yep. I should try a new diet.

[00:02:29]>> And by the way, each one had an initial capacity of 3,753 amp hour.

[00:02:35]>> Damn. [screaming] >> Yep, you heard me right. 3753 amp hour and I have six of them. So, that's more than enough to supply my house for like 2 days or 20 minutes if I use this to heat my house.

[00:02:49]And that's what we will talk today. I'm starting a new solar panel system because I want to get 100% self-sufficient. That's actually my dream because why rely on perfectly professional and functional electrical grid when you can rely on a lot of optimism and vintage blocks of lead. But first, I need to get these batteries into my workshop. But how? How to lower 200 kilos batteries using this? Well, I bought this for only $60 and it can lift 1,000 kilos. Then I've made these two rails and this will go on this which is something that I'm welding right now.

[00:03:33]Guys, I know this is a mess, but I think the lift is ready.

[00:03:38]I've already tested with myself and yes, it can lift me.

[00:03:45]>> [snorts] >> Nice.

[00:04:30]Guys, look at me. I'm all sweating. And it took me two days to lower just one battery. This is a lot harder than I thought. It weighs a ton and I'm scared so that it will fall and I had to take extra precaution. But yeah, now I know how to do it. Hopefully in a few hours I'll lower the other five.

[00:05:21]It's done. And it only took me four hours. Look at my hair. Yeah, I still have to move them in the other room, but that's easy because the floor here is flat. But yeah, first I'll take a shower and then if I have time I'll keep recording. Finally, I have them down here. So, let me talk you through my idea and the problems I might encounter and all the options that I have with these batteries and why I've made all the effort to store them down here and not upstairs. But first, why only six batteries? You see, the previous owner had not six but 12 of these batteries for a 24vt system. But my uncle who is the guy who told me about these batteries broke two of them because they are very heavy. And obviously the concept of lift with your legs does not apply to the 200 kilos batteries. But as you already know a solar panel system will go with 12 volts, 24 volts, 48 volts and so on. So with only 10 batteries of 2 volts which is 20 volts, I can't do anything. That's why I only bought six of them because with 20 volts it would be too easy and as an engineer I really have to complicate things. But having only six will come with some downsides. Let's talk about those problems. But let me take the batteries into the pit.

[00:06:42]This system will take some time to be made and today we are just putting on the basis and then slowly build the entire system because it's quite difficult to make it or as my insurance company will say the scene of the future accident. Okay, so problem number one maximum peak power. If I want to get 100% self-sufficient, I must cover the same amount of power that my electric company will give me. Right now, I have a contract of 4,900 watts, which is something very common here in Spain.

[00:07:11]Now, that is almost enough. Sometimes it's not if I have the boiler, the washing machine, and maybe the air fryer at the same time, but I can still manage that if I just shower once a week. So, once again, using a quick calculation, 5,000 W at 12 volts of the batteries, that equals to 400 amps. And that's a huge problem. That's why solar panel systems for that amount of power are never 12 volts. This will be a special case because I just want to use these batteries because they worth so much. I don't want to throw them out. But it's not recommended to have a 12 volts power system for so much power. For a simple inverter like this one of maybe 1,000 W peak, that's not a problem. 12 volts is not a problem because it can easily handle 100 amps. But it's very difficult to find a solar system or solar inverter of 5,000 watts that will work at 12 volts. Very difficult or maybe even impossible without violating several laws of thermodynamics. So what is my solution? By the way, this is not recommended. Actually, if you show this to an actual electrician, he might actually cry. But after gathering so much information and also talking a lot with an AI and taking into consideration all the safety features, this is what I thought. So the problem is a lot of current. You don't want to use thick wires like my fist for your inverter. So my solution is to use multiple inverters and then divide my house into branches.

[00:08:32]One branch for the workshop, another branch for the kitchen maybe and the heater and another branch for all the electrical outlets. Does that mean that I have to rewire my entire home? Well, yes and no. If you remember one year back, I've already rewired my entire home because this is a new bought home.

[00:08:49]So I had to make the electrical system and so on. And luckily I already have the needed divisions that I need for kitchen, for the heater, for my workshop. I actually have two panel electrical panels. So maybe with some minor changes, I can still have all the branches separated without sharing the neutral wire and they will only share the ground, which is the green wire. So obviously it can be any inverter like this one. This 1,00 W inverters are good for some low power, maybe your caravan, maybe just saving some heating power for your water. But in this case, for 5,000 watts, they probably just make some magic smoke and die. So, after hours of searching online and talking to Google AI, I selected this inverter here, the Fenix 3 kW hour from Victron. Is very, very high quality and it can deliver constant 2.4 kW of power and picks up to 6,000 W, which is enough for me for making this project. And yes, I'm taking engineering advices from a chatbot because what could possibly go wrong?

[00:09:49]and is very very important to be only an inverter, not a hybrid like this one that has the inverter and the MPPP charger inside of the same unit. We can't have that. So why we can't have that? Well, because that's the next problem. Because imagine that we manage to get the power that I need for my home. But how can we charge these batteries? Well, again, if I want to get 100% self-sufficient, I don't need to care only about the peak power, but al also the used power during the day in order to know how much I need to charge the batteries. Luckily, in my case, I have this IoT device installed into my electric pan panel upstairs, and this monitors all the power that I use during the day. And as you can see on the app, I use around 15 to 18, maybe 20 kilowatts hour of power each day. Let's say an average of 18 kW hour. 18 kilowatts hour at 12 volts will be 1,500 amps hour or maybe 40% of the batteries which is a little bit too high. It's a lot better to just charge your batteries between 10 and 20% each day. But luckily when you have a lot of sun you are charging the batteries but you are also using that power directly connected to your home. But the problem is once again not how much you charge the batteries but again the current we had working we are working with 12 volts. So maybe if you get five hours of full brightness of sun to charge that amount of power, you need like currents of maybe 300 amps. So yeah, it's very scary working with a 12vt system because the current values are very high. These solar panels can easily deliver more than 70 volts. So for example, if I were to charge the same amount of power for maybe 48 volts, that would be just 75 amps, which is way easier to handle. But where's the fun in that? So again, my solution in order to handle such big amounts of current is to place multiple MPPPD chargers in parallel. But wait a minute before you go crazy, that was the problem that we had with hybrid chargers. You can place chargers in parallel. That's not an easy task. If you were to connect multiple chargers to the same battery, they will all try to set the voltage to let's say 14 volts. So they will start fighting each other because this code of MPPPT will try to set to one voltage. This will think it is a different voltage.

[00:12:03]They are not in sync. So yeah, they will start fighting each other. It's like putting three politicians into the same room and make them agree on the temperature. But the solution is to use speciallymade MPPPD chargers. And I found this smart solar charger from Victron once again that has a special option that will do just that. This charger have Bluetooth. So if I were to have three of these chargers here on the wall and connect it in parallel to the same battery, they would talk to each other. they have a special option for that to charge the same battery and agree on the code of the MPPPD charging process. So that's great because in that way I can use one for 100 amps, another one for 200 amps and another one for 300 amps without using huge antique wires and without hitting the charger too much. So three of these chargers could easily charge my batteries. And we don't need to use huge cables. We can just use regular normal size massive cables. But not just that guys, but this makes this system scalable because as I told you, this will be a system that I will build in time because I don't have enough money to build the entire system at once. So in this way, I can just buy one charger and then another charger, install it as an extra and then another charger and like that maybe in one year get to those 500 watts that I need for my home. So yeah, that means that it's a bargain buying this $4,000 batteries for just $80. So my idea is to just buy one charger and for now just use one inverter and use it here in the workshop and also buy some extra panels because right now one of that panel like 500 watts is for like $60. Yes, they are very cheap. So the idea is to then just add another charger and more extra panels and when I'm charging the batteries enough just buy the inverters and then change my entire house to use solar panels instead of power from the electrical grid. So let's see what to have in mind and also make a part list.

[00:13:55]So prepare your wallet. Okay, so batteries. Yeah, we already have that.

[00:13:59]But then the connections between the batteries are made with these kind of clips that you can see right now on the screen. And luckily my batteries have four connectors for each side. That means that if you want to pass let's say 400 amps, you can just use clips of 100 amps. So you don't need a huge bar, just four smaller bars. That will save some money. Before we go with some more parts, let's see something that you should have in mind and you should never do. Even if the batteries are brand new or old, always add Vaseline to the connectors in order to avoid sulfate decoups.

[00:14:30]Cable symmetry. You must use the same length on both sides in order to equal the voltage drop on each side. You can have a long wire here and a short wire here. Also, total insulation. Any exposed wire must be insulated. Always use screw terminals and maybe even use a hydraulic screwdriver to press them because at 400 amps any loose screw might be a fire hazard. You have these caps here if you want to refill the batteries, but always fill them with distilled water. Never refill old batteries with new acid. You don't want to do that. If you don't have enough ventilation for your chargers, you must use forced ventilation system with a fan or something like that because if you get from maybe 180 volts to 12 volts, that will dissipate a lot of heat. Make sure you use special DC fuses for your solar panel side and AC fuses breakers for your AC power high power side. Make sure that you have earth connected to your solar panel support. Proper insulate all your wires. On the other side, things that you should never do with these batteries. For example, never fully tip the batteries because if you turn it down, all that debris that we have on the bottom or that residue might short circuit the entire battery and it will be dead. Never use thin wires for 12 volts because we have a lot of amperage. Never merge different technologies. You can't use acid and lead with lipo and different other types of batteries. Never do that. If you hear some bubbling from time to time, especially when you're charging, that means that the chemistry is alive.

[00:15:54]That's okay. But if you hear too much bubbling, that's something to be concerned. The rule of 12 volts is not for everyone. Only if you have huge batteries like this one and you know how to handle this kind of currents. So yeah, I don't recommend this to everyone. I will have my inverters here on the wall. And for the inverters, if I keep them with 100 amps, I don't need very thick wires. But if I have three of those inverters connected to the same battery, from the batteries to the inverters, I still need something that is called a bus. So for that, I will use very thick bars of copper. So from the battery, I will make that bus with very thick copper rods in the middle like this. And then from the rods to the inverters, I can use some thick wires.

[00:16:35]In that way, the bars will handle the high amount of current, but the thick wires will only handle like 100 or 150 amps. For that, first I wanted to use a copper rod as this one that you can see on the screen that I bought for my solar panel system that I wanted to make outside in the field. But after talking a lot with Google AI, I've decided that it's a lot better to use copper plates.

[00:16:55]We had to make some calculations because at 12 volts even a 0.5 voltage drop down between the bars it's a lot of power waste because you lose that power. So you don't want any kind of voltage drop down between your bars. So that's why it's a lot better to use very very thick bars especially for the bus for the high current side of the system. So to have minimal losses we calculate around 400 mm squared of copper. So that's like 40 by 10 mm rod. So, basically, I'm changing the entire wiring of my house with pure gold. Yeah, that's crazy.

[00:17:30]Luckily, that thick bus will only go from here to the middle bus and from here to the middle bus. In between, we will have those plates and then from here, I'll connect with the normal wire, which is also expensive because it's still copper wire, but not that thick.

[00:17:44]Okay, you will have the full part list on the screen or maybe below in description. But for now, we have the batteries, we have the connection, the rods, the insulations, and then some wires that will go to the inverters. We still need the inverters, which are this one that I've selected from Vicron, and also the MPPP chargers. Now, we can pass to the panels. Now, my panels can deliver like 70 volts. And since these MPP chargers can handle 250 volts, I can place maybe three of them in series. And with that, I can lower the gauge of the wires that I should use. Because with maybe 80 volts, you can use a lot thinner wires and also save some money.

[00:18:20]So then we need the panels. I'm planning to buy more of these panels of 500 W because they only cost $60 and have maybe 12 panels or maybe even more. So yeah, that's another part that should we should buy. Increasing the voltage is the best thing that you could do for lowering the price because you can use thinner wires. So yeah, that's the best thing that you could do. And what more?

[00:18:40]Well, safety. safety because YouTube requires me to at least pretend that I care about it. I'm just joking, guys. We need three uh breakers. DC breakers for the panels and AC breakers for the rest of the circuit. Since I'm planning to put three panels in series and then have three groups of three panels to have 12 panels in total. That's why we need three breakers. And this should be of 220 volts or 250 volts, 20 amps and two poles. Then we need fuses and not any kind of small fuse. We need mega 125 amps fuse for each output of the MPPPD chargers because we handle a lot of current. And I also prefer just burning a fuse instead of seeing a star in my own workshop. Then obviously each sector of the house will have different bakers for the kitchen, for the workshop, and so on. We need to use MC4 connectors and probably I will add some active cooling with some aluminum plate and maybe a fan because the chargers especially will get very hot. That's why having the batteries down here was the best place.

[00:19:40]This room here has a constant temperature all year round because you don't want the batteries to freeze in winter and get very hot in the sun in the summer. But here we have constant temperature and not just that I have a lot of ventilation. So since the battery need constant temperature, this will be the best place. These batteries I like some highmaintenance indoor plants except if they leak they can literally melt my shoes. extra. Probably I'll need a bigger panel and a newer one because this is, as you can see, very bad. I bought a bunch of new stuff. I'll probably need some metal bars to make some more room for the panels on my roof and who knows what else. But for now, more or less, this is the list. I'm also planning to add this automatic switch between the inverter's output and maybe an output from an gasoline generator just in case I run out of power because nothing makes me more committed to green energies than burning fossil fuels. And for safety, I will have an independent Wi-Fi here with a SIM card just to be always connected. I have here a smoke and fire detector. And I'll have some controllers like this one that I can control with my smartphone in any case.

[00:20:46]So I can monitor the power output at all times. In that way, if my workshop were burn out, I can just sit comfortable in my couch and watch the disaster from my phone. So guys, as you can see, just by having a 12vt system, you get a lot of problems. It's an engineering nightmare.

[00:21:01]But hey, the batteries were cheap. Now guys, the good part of this system is that I can always repurpose all the parts for a new system. Just say that in 2 or 3 years I have to get rid of these batteries, which by the way, just by selling them to this scraper, I can already get the money for the lead instead of them. Maybe I change to a different system with 24 volts, 48 volts. All the parts that I'm buying work with that voltage and makes my life a lot easier. So all the invest investment that I will do right now is something that I can use in the future as well. So yeah, this system is something that I don't actually recommend. Actually, even Google AI told me a lot of times that is not something usual that you should do. And by the way, recently I've just got my air conditioning and solar panel license to work here in Spain. And it's something that I would not do for any of my clients. But in my case, since I had this opportunity to buy this battery so cheap, I just wanted to try it and also put myself to test and see if I can work and have all the safety features in place. And hopefully you will learn something new with this kind of series because in the future I'll start adding parts like the rods, the insulators, the inverters. And probably I will find a lot of errors and issues and fix that.

[00:22:11]And with that you could learn how to make your own system maybe a lot better, maybe using a lot more voltage. And that's the main idea of my videos.

[00:22:19]Something that I do doesn't have to be to be perfect. The main idea is to teach you something because otherwise I wouldn't be making videos. I would just make the project for me and that's it.

[00:22:28]The idea is to share with you my errors and with that learn at the same time. So guys, I just wanted to share with you my idea. Below you will have the new website with all the part list and my schematics that I'm planning to make. I don't have the schematic yet. Sorry if you thought this video will be like the finished system already is not because this will take some time. As you can see now below, if you go to electrons.com, I have a new design. It's a lot better.

[00:22:53]I've been working like four months to make this design. You can even upload your tutorials. So hopefully the full schematic and the part list, the fuses, the cables, everything that I use, you will have it below and maybe help you understand a lot more what I will do here. And if my videos and my website helps you, consider subscribing. Maybe give me a like or comment below because that's the best way to support my videos. YouTube recommends me a lot if you comment below or engage with the video. And if you want to support me even more, you have my Patreon page below. Thanks again and keep up you