for several months and it has been a fun and exciting experience They recently purchased a huge lot of batteries and there are some very interesting batteries included. The plan is to evaluate them for resale or salvage . Some of the ones I found interesting A water cooled prius type NIMH 10 cell 12 V block a smart EV pack made from huge 50AH flat modules like the Leaf only bigger with water cooling Plug in lithium packs from prius lexus mercedes packs rav4 EV 2013 version made by tesla and the list is long bottom line we will be dissecting them to determine if parting out the modules or selling the packs intact would be the best way to save these valuable resources. we have over a Mega watthour of NIMH and lithium packs.
I intend to use some of them for my solar energy storage, in my electric telephone truck, yard buggy and solar trailer. High performance batteries this blog starts at the bottom with newest entries at the top
144V Insight or civic NIMH replacement HV battery pack
insight or civic replacement pack ?
In playing with the NIMH 12V packs I decided to see how well they would work if set up as a 12 module (120cell) pack) I cut the bands on the stock 8- module subpacks and pulled out two of the 12V modules. I reassembled the sub pack as a 6 module assembly. A cut off wheel on the right angle grinder cut the bands. I used my big spot welder and some pipe clamps to clamp the sides tightly as I spot welded the end back on. The connector bloks and tubing for the cooling system was scavenged to make up the final assembly. I big pack can make 2 insight packs. Of course the pack needs to have a mounting system , attachment for the relay board and computer modules designed and built but the surplus modules are pretty reasonable compared to the cylindrical cells used in the stock battery, so this is a possible battery replacement solution for the guy with lots of time good fabrication skils and not so much money.
(Posted 8/14/2016 by mikey)
dual NIMH batteries extend range in small mobility scooter
dual battery 16AH scooter battery
The stock lead acid batteries used on mobility scooters are 12AH the mercedes 12V NIMH are only 8.3AH I decided to put in a DPDT switch and have two 24V NIMH packs in my scooter pack. Bank A and Bank B Charge bank A , flip to bank B and charge again to fill them both. this will give a total of 16AH.and provide plenty of range. A friend also had a mobility scooter which had dead 12Vlead acid gel cells and we built him a dual NIMH pack as well. We both had a chance to try the scooters out and found that a long day outing hardly drained one of the two packs. Since these NIMH batteries were designed to last the life of the hybrid mercedes they were pulled from, they should give years of reliable service with the light load that the scooter will require
(Posted 8/14/2016 by mikey)
long life replacements for lawn tractor and mobility scooter batteries
there are so many 12V products that the potential to use these modules is awsome. Started with replacing the 2 prius packs that were running my lawn tractor the module fit diagonally and started the mower more strongly than a new lead acid (lower internal resistance) My lawn takes a couple of hours to mow with 10 or more stops to empty the grass catcher bags. The battery did a great job and was maintained at 14.4v by the tractors voltage regulator.
A 24 volt mobility scooter that was designed for gel cells was a drop in replacement as the gells were set up end to end and with only slight modification these dropped right into the scooter
simple removing the buss bars and cutting the bands and we have 24 nice NIMH replacements for small 12V lead acid batteries I would not recommend using them at high temperatures without cooling like under the hood of a car as they may overheat and swell when floating at 14.6V this pack was in a spot where air cooling did not make sense so a complete water cooling system was used instead These cells are capable of over 100A discharges and high charge rates for light loads no cooling is required
since the modules can be water cooled they can be tucked in any available cavity as long as as some hoses, a coolant pump and radiator with fan is included.
was thinking that an insight pack with these modules and a voltage divider to fool the BCM may make a cheap replacement for the DIY guy with more time than money
(Posted 5/27/2016 by mikey)
12 volt 8.3AH NIMH with water cooling mercedes ML hybrid
Cobasys NIMH
Now here is an interesting battery it was made by Cobasys the company that killed the EV-95 batteries
this 12V module was part of a battery pack the ML hybrid it consist of two racks of the 12V modules a smaller 8 module or 96V nominal and a longer rack with 16 or 192V nominal test show the cells work well in several applications
(Posted 5/27/2016 by mikey)
The plug in and EV packs are too big to handle
48V section
As you can see from the photo above these EV packs can weigh 1000 lbs or more. Packs like this which have a very high quality build and cell quality, but are so big and heavy to handle.
The heavy rav4 pack is made up of smaller modules which are manageable. Many DIY guys like me would love to have a nice 48V lithuim pack to replace the high maintenance lead acid used in most golf carts.and other motorized toys. Or maybe a 12 or 24V pack to replace the lead acid packs on most elecric toy cars that kids love. or a flat nissan leaf module for that electric mini bike gocart or skateboard.
The GreenTec guys will provide the whole pack or smaller sub packs and rate them for AH number of cells and voltage, with or without a BMS module. This Blog is where we will show any aspect, cooling system, BMS details of the different packs that we thing you will find interesting.
