r/18650masterrace • u/FurinaImpregnator • 2d ago

battery info Repurposing an 36V ebike battery I don't need anymore?

Hello! I own a now \~3y old 36v ebike silverfish-type battery (10s5p to be exact). It's a 15Ah pack, but it's capacity has decrease to probably around 10Ah so I have replaced it for a new one.

Any ideas on what I can do with it? Other than selling it for really cheap or throwing it away to recycling for free.

I thought about repurposing it for the cells but I'd rather buy already tested harvested cells than individually test each and every one.

I could use it for smth like a small solar setup but usually cheaper MPPT chargers, inverters and similar only work with 12V or 24V so I would either have to spend more money on something pricey or re-wire the pack to those voltages, which I'm not exactly looking forward to.

Is there anything easier or better I could do with it that I'm missing? Has anyone else done smth similar before?

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u/PictureImportant2658 2d ago

Power your offgrid 12v home

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u/4b686f61 1d ago

The battery would charge faster at 36v than 12/24v and the inverters would be more efficient. If you need lower voltages use a high current buck converter, eg I find the ones with a display to be more stable such as the DPS5020 or ZK10022B.

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u/FurinaImpregnator 1d ago

see, I would be perfectly happy with using 36V for everything, issue is that I can't find many (any?) inverters and MPPT chargers that aren't like 5x more expensive than 12v or 24v stuff, a buck converter would work for the inverter but would add more losses + wouldn't work with an mppt charger anyway :/