Industrial golf cart turned into solar generator.

chuckklr98

1 mW
Joined
Aug 26, 2017
Messages
16
Location
Pearl river
As a science project, and a way for my 16yo son to practice his welding skills learned at his high school we built this.

An 1080 watt solar solar cart with 3000 watt inverters. Only standard lead acid t 105's at 36v I'm afraid.
Other options include 6 point misting system supplied by back pack garden sprayer (we are deep south), and a hammock with mosquito netting.

Would love to put in Lithium type batteries, but we are poor folk. Any Ideas on how to do it cheap?
 
Well, no real way go get cheap lithium batteries. Even salvaging them from old power tool batteries cost money. As a quick calculation, you would need about 100ah at 36v to get what you get from your 105's. For 18650 cells that would be something like 10s 50p depending on the quality of the cells. That is in the 500 cell or more category. You will learn all about battery tab welding if you go that route.

You might try to get pouch cells from a retired Nissan Leaf battery or something equivalent. They have more capacity then small 18650's.

Another option is RC Lipo, which is the most cost effective of all new lipo. However, mishandled it can burn your house down. So learn all about RC lipo before you go thought route.

:D
 
I've been slowly accumulating power tool cells by collecting them from the battery recycling bins at hardware stores. Every one I've been to is happy to let me take as many as I want. Most of the time, the cells are useless, but often there is a broken bms or only a couple bad cells or sometimes even a perfectly fine battery! I've managed to add 3 Ryobi batteries to my tool rotation that work as good as new.

Many manufacturers use the same cells too. So, if you can hit a lot of Home Depots and have the time, it might be worth it for you.
 
This just came up if you are in Australia, dirt cheap, and would have jumped on it myself when I was building mine had I known...

https://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/alfredton/miscellaneous-goods/lithium-batteries-and-charger/1212695536?utm_source=com.samsung.android.messaging&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialbuttons&utm_content=app_android
 
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