A Shocking Way to Power Your Home

It has been estimated that around half a million disposable vapes are thrown away each day in the US alone. But while these vapes are marketed as disposable, they are actually filled with useful electronic components that are anything but trash. They often have powerful microcontrollers, sometimes displays, and high-capacity rechargeable batteries. It is these batteries, in particular, that lead many hobbyists to pick them up when they find them tossed in parking lots or along the side of the street.

Chris Doel has taken vape collecting to an extreme. Some people may have several of them, but Doel has several hundred of them. When you have that many, you can do more than just power your Arduino and Raspberry Pi projects — a lot more. How much more, you ask? Well, according to Doel, you can power an entire home. And he has the receipts to prove it.

Doel’s goal was to build a 2,500Wh battery cell, which he calculated to be sufficient to fully power his home for about eight hours. Vape battery capacity varies, but he found that the larger ones commonly had 1,500mAh, 5.55Wh units. Using these, the goal could be achieved with about 500 batteries. That’s a tall order for someone collecting them from the streets, so Doel also picked up a large batch from a shop that accepts used vapes for recycling.

The batteries that have been sitting around for a long time and have been drained too far are of little use, so a simple test rig was built to check them. Doel found that by puffing a vape, you can determine if enough voltage remains to salvage the battery. Using a CPAP air pump, each was tested to see if it either worked normally or blinked a light. If not, it was back in the recycling pile.

The good batteries were then all charged up to the same level and given another test with a modified 18650 cell tester that could do the job in parallel. The 500 remaining batteries were connected in groups of nine via 3D-printed holders. Each battery was connected to a bus bar via a fuse to prevent problems from short circuits. These bundles were connected in parallel to form rows, then stacks of these rows were built up in series until 50 volts of output was achieved.

Finally, Doel installed a battery management system to monitor each row and prevent minor issues like a catastrophic explosion. The battery cell was then hooked up to an inverter to convert the 50 volt output to the 240VAC that was needed locally. The inverter’s output was then fed into his workshop and home, and it somewhat surprisingly worked. Everything from lights to the microwave, coffee machine, computers, and electronics instruments all fired up perfectly normally. Not bad for a pile of junk!