Tesla car battery

Glen0664

I have bought a Tesla battery from a Tesla car 
I have 4 265 watt Canadian solar panels attached to a 20 foot shipping container home 
How do I get from the panels to the charge controller to the inverter to the electrical panel 
This unit was pulled out of a 2015  Tesla model S with 5,000 miles on it.
Has anyone attempted this type of model ? 
Please help as I am building these for affordable housing for our area in Manatee County FL 

Has balance wires but does not include BMS (battery management system

Tesla Battery 24v module 4.5kwh 384 panasonic 18650

Here is our model

 https://youtu.be/B_7lBFM8SGI

Minimalist 20ft Shipping Container Tiny House

Here is a model I have looked at...Thoughts 
https://youtu.be/xH5cAuaCYKw

Can You Use Tesla Batteries For Off Grid Solar? 18650 DIY Powerwall Lithium Ion Home Battery

BB.

A couple of questions... How much energy (Watt*Hours per day) do you plan on using? Just running a single refrigerator (standard energy star) on a 1,000 watts of solar panels (plus a little for lighting) is pushing it in winter:
http://www.solarelectricityhandbook.com/solar-irradiance.html

Saint Petersburg
Average Solar Insolation figures

Measured in kWh/m2/day onto a solar panel set at a 62° angle from vertical:
(For best year-round performance)

Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun
4.60	5.30	5.98	6.40	6.62	5.98
Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
5.57	5.54	5.41	5.66	5.07	4.46

• 4*265 Watt panels = 1,060 Watt array
• 1,060 Watt array * 0.61 Li Ion off grid system eff * 5.0 hours of sun per day (excluding winter) = 3,233 Watt*Hours per day

Utility power or backup genset? 3.3 kWH per day is what I would suggest for a "near normal" electrical experience for a full time off grid home running very efficiently (fridge, lights, washer, water pump, laptop computer/LED TV).

You show an A/C unit--That itself is usually no small load.

-Bill

mike95490

A tesla battery without the BMS and Thermal Management system is a bomb waiting to ruin your day.  That battery is made of hundreds of little cells about the size of a AA battery.

bill von novak

Glen0664 said:

I have bought a Tesla battery from a Tesla car 
I have 4 265 watt Canadian solar panels attached to a 20 foot shipping container home 
How do I get from the panels to the charge controller to the inverter to the electrical panel 
This unit was pulled out of a 2015  Tesla model S with 5,000 miles on it.
Has anyone attempted this type of model ? 
Please help as I am building these for affordable housing for our area in Manatee County FL 

This is absolutely positively NOT something you should be trying.  You run a very high risk of starting fires and killing people.

See if you can return the battery.

oil pan 4

That's just about the worse solar panel and battery combination you could possibly come up with.
Why?

MrM1

Where's the OP??  Was this just a "commercial" for the Tiny shipping Container house?

Dave Angelini

There was a flash at first and then the gas probably took its toll.  

softdown

OP seems to be a beginner trying to do advanced stuff. I anticipate possible fireworks.

There are kits for newcomers. Might start there.

BB.

The original poster has yet to return... Let's wait until (if) they return with more information....

-Bill

tr0y

mike95490 said:

A tesla battery without the BMS and Thermal Management system is a bomb waiting to ruin your day.  That battery is made of hundreds of little cells about the size of a AA battery.

I was looking at this as well. I agree a BMS is necessary and reasonably easy to do. As for thermal management a simple radiator, pump and temp sensor would not be very hard to wire up. I have seen these in the Model S and they get worked really hard like scorching hot, way to hot to touch when the car is under load. It does seem as if quite a few people do have this battery funning in mobile OTG applications and of course many DIY home storage systems. 

A vehicle application is going to be really heavily tested to avoid something like a fire. Cars are set to much higher standards that dwellings. 

mike95490

tr0y said:

mike95490 said:

A tesla battery without the BMS and Thermal Management system is a bomb waiting to ruin your day.  That battery is made of hundreds of little cells about the size of a AA battery.

I was looking at this as well. I agree a BMS is necessary and reasonably easy to do. As for thermal management a simple radiator, pump and temp sensor would not be very hard to wire up. I have seen these in the Model S and they get worked really hard like scorching hot, way to hot to touch when the car is under load. It does seem as if quite a few people do have this battery funning in mobile OTG applications and of course many DIY home storage systems. 

A vehicle application is going to be really heavily tested to avoid something like a fire. Cars are set to much higher standards that dwellings. 

I'm gong to disagree with about a BMS being reasonably easy to do, and with

"cars are set to much higher standards than dwellings"

A robust BMS that will preserve the batteries and not kill the charge controller is rare, and likely not DIY

A modern dwelling in California requires smoke detectors, automatic indoor water sprinklers, and a tesla battery cooking off will emit fumes that will kill you (after several days of agony)

tr0y

@mike95490

Housing, current code does require quite a bit of that, sprinklers are county dependent depending upon what version of the codes they are using. As someone that has done a ton of remodel work ( I have a CA and NV unlimited GC licenses and a NV electrical contractor license) while some brand new construction may be safer, most places people live are far from it. 

I know that you know a ton about solar and I assume some sort of EE or other type of engineer, I am an software engineer as well and reasonably well educated. 

Why is a BMS so hard ? There are quite a few out there that look as if they will handle this and if you search GItHub there are some you can run on any number of machines or appliances. 

Thoughts ? http://evcomponents.com/lifepo4-bms/72v-24s-lifepo4-150a-300a-evc-bms.html

I am not asking to get shot down but for hard factual reasons why this would not work ? It appears that thermal runaway is the biggest issue, followed by over voltage / charging leading back to the same thing. 

While I ask quite a few dumb questions here, I am not quite a dumb as I look ...

. 

bill von novak

tr0y said:

I agree a BMS is necessary and reasonably easy to do. As for thermal management a simple radiator, pump and temp sensor would not be very hard to wire up. I have seen these in the Model S and they get worked really hard like scorching hot, way to hot to touch when the car is under load. It does seem as if quite a few people do have this battery funning in mobile OTG applications and of course many DIY home storage systems. 

A vehicle application is going to be really heavily tested to avoid something like a fire. Cars are set to much higher standards that dwellings. 

Well, that may be true.  But look at the number of EV fires we've had so far - about 30 - and that's with a total penetration of about .2% in the US.   There have been no deaths from the fires - but that's because it is fairly easy to leave a burning vehicle.

Now, as you mention, this is a battery that is armored, crash tested and has several layers of protection - and that has hundreds of man-years of design going into it.  A homemade BMS will simply not have the same level of protection.  (And saying things like "a simple radiator, pump and temp sensor would not be very hard to wire up" suggest that you're not looking at putting much rigor into such a design.)

If you're going to try this, I strongly suggest you do it in a fireproof outbuilding, like a concrete shed.

mike95490

tr0y said:

@mike95490

Housing, current code does require quite a bit of that, sprinklers are county dependent depending upon what version of the codes they are using. As someone that has done a ton of remodel work ( I have a CA and NV unlimited GC licenses and a NV electrical contractor license) while some brand new construction may be safer, most places people live are far from it. 

I know that you know a ton about solar and I assume some sort of EE or other type of engineer, I am an software engineer as well and reasonably well educated. 

Why is a BMS so hard ? There are quite a few out there that look as if they will handle this and if you search GItHub there are some you can run on any number of machines or appliances. 

Thoughts ? http://evcomponents.com/lifepo4-bms/72v-24s-lifepo4-150a-300a-evc-bms.html

I am not asking to get shot down but for hard factual reasons why this would not work ? It appears that thermal runaway is the biggest issue, followed by over voltage / charging leading back to the same thing. 

While I ask quite a few dumb questions here, I am not quite a dumb as I look ...

. 

Why is a BMS so hard ?

  for 1 cell, it isn't       if you don't share space with a cell, it isn't    If you  order the RIGHT bms, it isn't

 (you linked to a lifepo4 BMS. That's not a tesla chemistry, get that wrong, you are up in flames)

All of a sudden, you have a BMS that has to monitor the thousands of cells in a tesla pack.  Maybe a couple hundred sensors to possibly go bad.  Have you ever had a solid state device just "go bad" and stop working.  A radio, a LED flashlight, a kids toy walk-i-talki  ?  When a BMS goes bad in 4 years and destroys a bank of cells in the middle of the pack, that's tough.    I have 4 dead, premium brand tablets that just stopped working, no abuse, dents or scratches. My cell phone is still going strong.

And the 2nd most important thing, how does the BMS communicate to the charger, that the battery is full and to shut off ?  Many solar chargers have no provision for such a signal. Many integrated inverters have no provision for such a signal.

The most important thing is when you are charging at 30A, and a cell approaches full, how much of that 30A, does the BMS bypass around the full cell ?  Most will bypass 1 amp. leaving 29 amps still going into a full cell.   In an EV charger, there will be a control signal, and the charger throttles back to 1A till all the cells fill up.   But off grid, the washing machine is still running and pulling 9 amps from the 48V DC bus, and if your charger shuts off, the battery bank begins discharging mid day.

The saving grace in solar off grid, is slow charge rates and slow discharge rates, much less than an EV, but the thermal issues can still bite you.  You can't skimp on the sensors, integration and protection.

LFP cells are the lest dangerous to use, have the lowest power/weight ratio.   But laptops, EV's and cell phones use the high power Li cells and you read about them burning fairly often.  The thermal / fire hazard is bad enough, but the hydrogen fluoride gas released by BBQ'd Li cells is toxic in a time delayed and insidious way. ( a couple days later, you get sick and start throwing up, then bones start dissolving.....  fun stuff)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5577247/

But hey, it's a cool, sexy 12 year, no maintenance battery.

Lead acid batteries are dangerous, but their failure mechanisms are well known, and if you don't splash acid in your face, or chew the lead plates, you are pretty much OK

mcgivor

@mike95490 said
 And the 2nd most important thing, how does the BMS communicate to the charger, that the battery is full and to shut off ?  Many solar chargers have no provision for such a signal. Many integrated inverters have no provision for such a signal.

The most important thing is when you are charging at 30A, and a cell approaches full, how much of that 30A, does the BMS bypass around the full cell ?  Most will bypass 1 amp. leaving 29 amps still going into a full cell.   In an EV charger, there will be a control signal, and the charger throttles back to 1A till all the cells fill up.   But off grid, the washing machine is still running and pulling 9 amps from the 48V DC bus, and if your charger shuts off, the battery bank begins discharging mid day.

With the correct BMS, one with dual ports, one for charging, the other for dischargeing there is no need to communicate with the controller, when the batteries are fully charged it simply stops charging, but allows current to pass to the loads uninterrupted, if applicable,  I ordered one designed specifically for my application and it dose just that, no different to leat acid. The typical EV charger presents challenges as well as potential dangers as described, thankfully it's constructive comments such as these which got me thinking about how to solve them.

mcgivor

tr0y said:

@mike95490

Housing, current code does require quite a bit of that, sprinklers are county dependent depending upon what version of the codes they are using. As someone that has done a ton of remodel work ( I have a CA and NV unlimited GC licenses and a NV electrical contractor license) while some brand new construction may be safer, most places people live are far from it. 

I know that you know a ton about solar and I assume some sort of EE or other type of engineer, I am an software engineer as well and reasonably well educated. 

Why is a BMS so hard ? There are quite a few out there that look as if they will handle this and if you search GItHub there are some you can run on any number of machines or appliances. 

Thoughts ? http://evcomponents.com/lifepo4-bms/72v-24s-lifepo4-150a-300a-evc-bms.html

I am not asking to get shot down but for hard factual reasons why this would not work ? It appears that thermal runaway is the biggest issue, followed by over voltage / charging leading back to the same thing. 

While I ask quite a few dumb questions here, I am not quite a dumb as I look ...

. 

There are other factors to consider, Tesla batteries are made up of  nickel, cobalt, aluminum NCA cells, there are, in the case of the Model S, 18650, in 24V modules each consisting of 444, 2170 cells  in a 74P 8S arrangement. Being an EV application they would most likely be bottom ballanced, in off-grid top ballanced is preferred, so to do it properly the modules would need to be disassembled into individual cell blocks then charged in parallel with a single cell charger designed for the specific battery type.

 Using the above numbers thar would be 705 cell block's to be charged in parallel to top ballance, obviously not the whole battery needs to be used a single module or two may suffice depending on loads. The reason bottom ballancing is used for EV is because most of the required energy is not at the top end of the discharge curve, all cells need to reach discharge termination voltage equally at the bottom of the curve, exactly the opposite to what's needed in solar applications. Being bottom ballanced would mean charging would terminate when the cell with the highest voltage, reaches the target value, this could be significantly different to the lowest voltage cell, not desirable for offgrid.

 Special care must be taken not to overcharge as the cells are very sensitive to this, even a few hundred milivolts could cause serious problems including fire, under discharge can also result in cell failure, the reason a BMS specifically designed for cell type and application is imperative. Can it be done? I believe so, but I wouldn't have them in a dwelling space or a combustible structure, special care needs to be taken, having a backup in case of BMS' failure would be a good idea, as well as having a sound understanding of of what you're dealing with, not a beginner niche by any stretch.

Dave Angelini

The biggest issue besides all of the good points here is in my opinion as Ivor wrote is a BMS failure. A well designed BMS should indicate it is not happy with an issue and be able to indicate that to the user.

 This was the best part of the Schneider Bridge controller for LI BMS applications. It allowed one to look into the BMS and see what it was doing. It alarmed the house audibly and visually. It also went out to the web and could find you if you wanted. It was brilliant in my opinion!

These days the battery manufacturer is taking on this issue for my clients who want Li. If the battery system does not do this they are not an option for me to use.

Moving past the Bridge, a controller should indicate that the system is full and that the system is being "floated" at the correct voltage/temperature that the BMS wants. Short of that a human is going to have to be aware that you can't just forget about the system and think it is maintenance free. You have to keep and eye on it and know that it will give early warning signs just like any other system that uses electronics.

 A Labor Day that goes all year long   The OP never did come back Bill, hope he is OK

softdown

I know a guy who did a lot of work converting a shipping container into a home. People seem to love the idea for reasons that I have yet to decipher. However, his experience is that the shipping container is a less than ideal structure to create a home from. The "corrugations" are at least 2" in depth and make doors and windows quite difficult. Plus substantial steel is not nearly as malleable as wood for plumbing, wiring or pretty well anything else. 

My 40' HiBoy costs $4500 as I recall. I could make a larger wood structure for less money. To be fair, the price of shipping containers do fluctuate and I suspect they would be cheaper in Florida than Colorado. 

They are supremely strong of course. But a properly constructed 2" x 6" will also stand up to anything normally expected - I would think 120mph winds would be sustainable in a well built 2 x 6 home. 

A shipping container might resist pistol and small arms fire. Attractive for those who like to fantasize about Road Warrior end times. The owner of the aforementioned shipping container used to be in the race horse business and apparently wound up well below living large. He did say that the best way to make a million in the racing business is to start with tens of millions. 

If you line both sides of a shipping container with shelves, one has an ideal place to locate part of their tool collection. The geometry is ideal for that. One really good lock and the container becomes safer than most structures from opportunists with a crowbar.