A little bit of a strange one buy am looking into getting some cells from Alibaba, will be 16x 3.2v 280A from a well known supplier. Plus Daly bms.

The price is significantly lower than the standard Hubble Svolt Dyness etc.

I've built my own 12v system 5 years back and its still goigg strong despite a couple sparks. In saying that this feels a little out of my depth and don't want to mess things up.

Would someone with diy knowledge be interested in building it of course for a fee?

Shipping, sundries etc would be on me of course. Whatever is needed to build it correctly and is safe.

Edited July 5Jul 5 by sunset1
Dyslexia

What area of SA are you located?

Maybe rather get jk bms, much more suited for these types of DIY builds :)
Just my opinion as I have had major success with my Narada upgrades :)

Edited July 5Jul 5 by WannabeSolarSparky

1 hour ago, sunset1 said:

Would someone with diy knowledge be interested in building it of course for a fee?

Why not just add a diy case to your order, they are super easy even for a novice diy'er :)
And they come with everything needed to build a quality DIY battery

@WannabeSolarSparky

I'm in Knysna near George in Western Cape and down in CPT every few weeks for work.

Ive seen the DIY boxes. I think if i had a bit more free time I would attempt it. And my wife would probably want me doing something else 😝

Just thought perhaps there might be some eager DIY who would enjoy building this and get some money for it.

I'm not too much in rush, as we are currently ok on our small system, but do want to expand. Eventually, on our budget, we will get a luxpower SNA 6kw, 10 panels or so, and the battery backup.

The large battery backup (15kw- 280 cells seems standard now) is perhaps overkill since we have gas geyser etx, but gather it will put us in good stead. In winter we use 250kw a month.

Any reason you chose Alibaba and not the local Lithium Cells website or Cellsupply? Is Alibaba that much cheaper? Ive never ordered anything from alibaba. I want to build for my 24V system. You definitely get more kwh per rand than buying the prebuilt ones.

13 minutes ago, Denns said:

Any reason you chose Alibaba and not the local Lithium Cells website or Cellsupply? Is Alibaba that much cheaper? Ive never ordered anything from alibaba. I want to build for my 24V system. You definitely get more kwh per rand than buying the prebuilt ones.

Does it really come out cheaper? After doing tax and shipping?

The box+cells + bms

Edited July 11Jul 11 by Stefan Cornelissen

3 hours ago, Stefan Cornelissen said:

Does it really come out cheaper? After doing tax and shipping?

The box+cells + bms

Shipping has become the expensive bit compared to years ago. Depending on the price per cell you could get away cheaper but if you buy a smart battery box then it turns out more expensive I would say. Recently I got used cell dirt cheap and they were still at over 75% capacity so I am very happy with my DIY battery.

You can also save a lot on a demo battery from some suppliers.

On 2025/07/11 at 7:25 PM, Scorp007 said:

Shipping has become the expensive bit compared to years ago. Depending on the price per cell you could get away cheaper but if you buy a smart battery box then it turns out more expensive I would say. Recently I got used cell dirt cheap and they were still at over 75% capacity so I am very happy with my DIY battery.

You can also save a lot on a demo battery from some suppliers.

Recently a member here bought a 345Ah=16.5 kWh demo with about 33 cycles on for R20 000 - what a bargain. It was for Sun battery=Svolt. Full warranty is in place.

Edited Monday at 11:305 days by Scorp007

Hi Sunset, I would be quite keen to take this on. I am also in Knysna, so maybe we could meet and discuss options. I have been looking into building one for myself too, just not quite yet. Call or WhatsApp me 0827788003