What to do with spare ER batteries - Buy the matching truck?

[tearitupsports]

It will work with any charger, but for the OEM BMS to balance the cells it has to be periodically charged with the OEM on board AC charger exclusively.

That would be easy to do. The Sigenergy is just a CCS1 or NACS connection. It can be removed and you could use the mobile charger or a wall charger every once and a while for AC. It would be a much more elegant solution than the pro power inverter (which can only be used as an off-grid generator input on these types of systems).

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[milleniumfalcon]

Well this is very interesting.

@ZSC100, I originally started with the goal of upgrading my truck from SR to ER battery. I hoped it might be as simple as swapping one for the other, but when I looked at it more it seemed there were greater differences than just the battery capacity - inverter/charger, maybe wiring, maybe cooling capacity. I hadn't seen anything encouraging about upgrading from SR to ER until your post. Is this something you've done? I don't think I'll be the only one looking to do this over time.

I'd be thrilled to swap the SR for ER battery if it could be done safely even if it didn't charge faster.

 

[astrand1]

Thanks for the advice.

I'll look at the home battery options, though I'm worried it will be more of a project than I want to take on right now.

@tearitupsports No, I don't have the charging port. It's just the batteries and some loose connections.

Re: Battery origin, I think we can say they fell off the back of a truck. What I was told is that the police broke up a chop shop, found some batteries, and the batteries went to auction. Someone bought them at auction, tried to figure out how to use them, couldn't find an easy use, tried to sell them on FB Marketplace, then gave them away on FB Marketplace when they wanted the shop space back and thought it was time to move the batteries on. The story seems plausible to me, because I can't see someone with stolen batteries giving them away rather than destroying the evidence. It's a risky move for little personal benefit.

Nice! Wonder how hard programming wise it would be to drop the SR pack out of your truck and put in the ER pack. of course the issue is you have no history on those packs. How many miles etc.

 

[roddiaz1]

Don't the battery packs have to be de-charged/uncharged (whatever the correct term is) before they are handled and worked on? I doubt the chop shop had the time or patience to do so. Be careful.

 

[ZSC100]

Don't the battery packs have to be de-charged/uncharged (whatever the correct term is) before they are handled and worked on? I doubt the chop shop had the time or patience to do so. Be careful.

Absolutely not. Have you ever had to discharge batteries to use/handle/touch? Batteries series'd together to a high enough voltage to shock you have dangerous potential no matter what the State of Charge. And none of that is exposed in any dangerous way if the battery is not opened up.

 

[NW Ontario Ford Lightning]

If you put the battery "on a shelf for five years" it will be scrap by then - batteries slowly discharge over time, and if the voltage drops too low, there is no recovery.
Batteries degrade with AGE as well as charge cycles - even if you 'exercise' the pack on a shelf, it will still degrade with time.
Agree with others - the battery you have in your lightning will outlast the truck; ie you will never need a back up. By the time the truck might need a repalcement battery, the tech will have changed and far superior chemistry will be available.

Swapping out the SR to use the ER - I don't know, would be 'nice' if possible. I would like to know more about that. The difference is additional 31kWh of storage - at today's prices (in my experience) that is worth $200 CAN x 31 = $6200 for the extra capacity. However, I looked at a salvaged Lightning ER battery in the aftermarket in Edmonton, it was selling for $6500 CAN plus shipping and tax. I didn't buy it.

The better use in my mind is to add energy storage to a Solar-battery system. These systems are generally 48-56 volt Lithium-Iron-Phosphate based, so the "easy" way to add a 380v DC pack as a back up is to use an inverter's DC PV input that is 500v DC rated. The battery doesn't "push' current, the inverter "pulls" just what it needs. So a typical inverter would pull 6-8kW per hour from the re-used lightning pack. To recharge it back up again (as others have pointed out) is best done with the truck's original charging system, and you need to monitor voltage to ensure you don't over (or under) charge that pack {very bad things happen to any battery that is overcharged above the cut-off voltage, or drained down below the minimum voltage}. Not really the average DIY's stuff.

The reason these packs sell for 'cheap' on the salvage market is due to the complexity of re-using them. That and as was said earlier - you don't really know the history and SOH of a pack sitting on a pallet. So people don't want to sink too much money into the unknowns, too much risk.

If I had a scrap battery pack that was "free" - I would play around with setting it between the rails of a trailer and see if I could power a low Hp motor on a trailer axel... for the summer months, then move it into my whole-home solar system for the winter months,..but that is me.

 

[Scorpio3d]

I believe the Power wall 3 uses LFP and is air cooled. I would assume you would need to install/hook up a cooling system for the Ford battery which is liquid cooled in the vehicle.
Certainly doable just saying…

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

If I had a scrap battery pack that was "free" - I would play around with setting it between the rails of a trailer and see if I could power a low Hp motor on a trailer axel... for the summer months, then move it into my whole-home solar system for the winter months,..but that is me.

One of my after-retirement projects will be to build a ~100 kWh camping trailer. It won’t have a motor on the trailer since I don’t trust my programming skills enough to make that safe no matter what goes wrong. But it will have a DCFC on it so I can dump that charge into the truck when I need it. And It’ll have the ability to charge at either DCFC or L2.

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