Off Grid Energy Storage Using Recycled Electric Car Batteries

We would really like to one day run our backup servers, and maybe even some of our principle services from our location in #Wānaka, #Otago.

In order to make this feasible we will need a reasonable amount of off grid storage to ensure we can keep everything up in a power cut.

Gwilym’s 2016 Nissan Leaf blew a cell (or at least looking at #LeafSpy that appears to be what happened) a few months ago. This has lead to a roller coaster ride of What Ifs and Why Nots.

The current thinking is this:

1. The #NissanLeaf is a great car, awesome heat pump, nice to drive, rugged, with the only thing being wrong with it the battery. Replacing the battery makes sense if it’s less expensive than buying a more modern car to replace it.
2. There are now 50 kwh/350km #CATL cell kits available for the Leaf, by purchasing one we solve our car problem and also contribute to Repair over Replace which we like.
3. We will have close to 20kwh of spare old cells left over from the Leaf.
4. It’s time we put some solar panels on our house anyway (Lloyd has them and I am jealous).

So the plan right now is to see if we can use the old Leaf battery cells to provide interim power in a new solar setup.

Questions we’re researching are:

1. If we get a modern Solar Controller/Inverter like the SigenStor with V2L functionality could we use that to establish a standardized interface between the Solar system and the Battery.
2. #Vivne, the company that sells the Leaf battery replacement kits, also offers a Kit to put the old cells into a battery configuration. Details are a bit scarce but it is a great idea, we could just use the chassis container that the Leaf has but a vertical configuration on wheels would be easier.
3. There are some really clever people, The Infinite Monkey Lab, in #Raglan of all places who are building interfaces for end of use car batteries so they can deploy them at grid scale. Maybe their interfaces are usable in this context?