This is most likely a stupid question but how possible would it be to make a huge lead-acid battery to store electricity for home usage?
Commerical batteries are obviously compact, portable, and have a sensible capacity to size ratio, but if space wasn't an issue, would it make sense to get an acid-proof tank and turn it into a shed-sized lead acid battery? Storing power for half a day would be enough to charge it when electricity is cheap, and then using it when it's at it's most expensive.
>possible would it be to make a huge lead-acid battery
yes, its possible, but that doesn't mean that its sensible. They used to make lead acid batteries in a wooden casing with an asphalt lining. You could probably use a large plastic tote.
You'll probably spend more on electrolyte and lead then you would have to just buy lifepo4 cells though
Thanks. I didn't know asphalt was waterproof enough for this, but stainless steel oil containers are practically free as people are getting rid of oil heaters. Also, I just noticed that if you buy 1000 liters of sulfuric acid, it already comes in a plastic container as pictured here.
I thought lifepo4 batteries were as expensive as lithium batteries in general, which is the whole point why I started thinking about the price and practicality of a lead acid battery. I haven't found any info whatsoever on how much electricity something like this could actually hold.
Lifepo4 batteries have been cheaper than lead acid Wh for Wh for a couple years now. Why dont you look a basic thing up like that first before trying to design a car sized lead acid battery thats completely obsolete.
I DID search for four or so hours before posting, but I am incredibly bad at finding stuff both online and in real life. In that time I only managed to find simple diagrams of how batteries work, and one pajeet's video of how to strip cells from old batteries to make new ones. I still have no idea how the size of a battery correlates to it's capacity.
Look at electric forklift batteries to get an approximation for volume and weight for best case scenario. Lead acid batteries are used in forklifts because they need the mass of the battery for a counterweight anyway. Electric forklift lead acid battery sizes are standardized, they are available in the refurbished market too.
I'll second the LiFePO4 as being more practical; except lead acid batteries are almost totally recyclable, and it should be easy to find somebody to buy the battery from you when it is worn out.
Is doable but expensive and even dangerous if you are new in this stuff. Making big clusters of Lifepo4 or even car batteries seems like the better idea Imo
lead acid is outdated and obsolete consider iron phosphate or polymer
I got to thinking that the specs on a WWII submarine battery might get you in the ballpark and yep, StackExchange to the rescue:) https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/25659/what-is-the-capacity-of-a-wwii-submarine-battery-in-kwh
Check out this guy's youtube channel. He is always building batteries. https://youtube.com/@ThinkingandTinkering
A Plante style battery. Pure lead with 2% by weight tin for rigidity. Antimony may slow the forming process or stop it altogether but would greatly extend the cycle life if it did. You pretty much cast the grids and firm them in acid. Ridges and scoring it with a stainless steel pad add more capacity but it will slowly gain capacity its entire life, they never lose capacity until it’s final cycle aka a plate drops off. You can rebuild them over and over. A good test cell is 1/2 gallon mason jars with plastic lids.
>would it be to make a huge lead-acid battery to store electricity for home usage
yes
>would it make sense to get an acid-proof tank and turn it into a shed-sized lead acid battery
no
probably just buy lithium cells and make a whole battery
or play around with more experimental things and read papers on stuff like flow batteries, sodium ion, zinc ion, aluminum ion, etc. but you'll have to put a fair bit into figuring out a cheap way to build them if you don't want to spend similar or more than building from lithium cells
Lithium iron cells are so cheap, you can now buy them brand new for the same price/Wh as generic dogshit lead acid, around 7 cents per Wh. It's insane to use anything other than LFP for home energy storage in the current market. Sodium ion will probably beat the price once production ramps up.
I think what you would want instead is to have banks of commercial batteries. You could fit many hundreds into a shipping container, for instance. You'd do inspections and tests, and replace them one at a time as they eventually failed.
This is fairly safe, electrical fires are the only real risk. Gigantic vats of acid sound like a recipe for your death ending up on an unsolved mysteries show.
But even this wouldn't be great except in a scenario where you generated your own power. The difference between the high price and low price of retail electric is going to be such a slim number, that the cost of your battery bank would never be paid off even in a thousand years. You'd be better off spending your cash on PV panels.
>lead-acid battery
Don't bother.
The nickel–iron battery (NiFe battery) is a rechargeable battery having nickel(III) oxide-hydroxide positive plates and iron negative plates, with an electrolyte of potassium hydroxide. The active materials are held in nickel-plated steel tubes or perforated pockets. It is a very robust battery that is tolerant of abuse, (overcharge, over-discharge, and short-circuiting) and can have a very long life even if so treated. It is often used in backup situations where it can be continuously charged and can last for more than 20 years. Due to its low specific energy, poor charge retention, and high cost of manufacture, other types of rechargeable batteries have displaced the nickel–iron battery in most applications.
if you want fool proof battery storage get nickel iron batteries. can last 100 years, cannot be over discharged or over charged. very expensive though.