He supplies his house with electricity for 8 years with 1,000 laptop batteries

In Europe, electronic waste is increasing every year, yet only less than 40% of it is recycled, according to the European Parliament. To overcome this problem, an action plan in favor of the circular economy was put in place in 2020, to encourage recycling of electronic devices scrapped. Reusing them can provide many benefits and a user known as Glubux has proven this. The latter managed to power his house with more than 1,000 recycled laptop batteries and around 7,000 Wp of solar panels. According to him, it has been eight years since he used this ingenious homemade system and it still works properly. A feat that he did not fail to share on the online forums Second Life Storage and France PowerWall DIY.

An ingenious energy self-consumption system

To create an off-grid power supply, Glubux made a homemade system that combines used PC batteries and solar panels. He indicated that the origins of this project date back to November 2016. When he came across the videos of an Internet user who, using recycled PC batteries, drove his electric bike for around a hundred kilometers. He then had the idea ofalso use old laptop batteriesspecifically battery cells that he assembled into custom racks. At the time, he had already started generating part of his electricity needs with an old 24 V 460 Ah battery from a forklift. A system powered by a set of 1.4 kW solar panels, a 3 kVA inverter and charge controllers.

Over a thousand laptop batteries used

Glubux says that in the beginning, he sourced about 650 laptop batteries, busbars, battery holders and pods. He assembled the cells into packs, which he then connected in place of his forklift battery. According to him, there were some problems at the very beginningincluding unequal discharge rates between packs with different cell numbers. However, he quickly found a solution by rebalancing the packs and adding cells where necessary. Eventually, he ended up using over a thousand laptop batteries. For the solar panels, he recently indicated that he replaced them with more powerful models (440 Wp), in order to spend the winter more comfortably.

A system that has worked without a hitch for eight years

In a recent publication on France PowerWall DIY, Glubux specifies that his system has been working without a hitch for eight years and that he did not change any battery cells. He says he can power his entire house with this system, including the washing machine, but also charge his two electric cars. He also installed a Venus GX to connect all his Victron hardware together and access all the data live in his home and online.

For information, in total, the energy production capacity of his system increased from 7 kWh to 56 kWh and to get there, he had to spend around €10,000 (the entire installation). A cost which will, of course, be amortized over time. The installation is housed in a small hangar located 50 meters from his residence. And you, would you be ready to build such a system like Glubux did? I invite you to give us your opinion, your comments or point out an error in the text, click here to post a comment.