Looking to hire someone capable to build a power cable for my project.

Hi Matt,

Where are you located?

John

Alabama gulf coast. Near the Florida border.

Hi Matt,

I will ask a couple more questions, not that I will be able to build the cable for you, but if we can clarify a few things we may catch the interest of someone who can. Have you engineered this idea so that you know how the various components will work together? Why does the cable have to be flexible as opposed to a fixed installation? Do you have a scheme for balancing the charge of the batteries. 50 batteries can deliver a substantial amount of current. This current will increase in your cable as more of the batteries are upstream from the load. For example the cable between battery # 49 and # 50 may be carrying 10 Amps while the cable between # 1 and the termination Anderson connector may have 500 Amps. If you are dealing with higher currents you might want to consider a different configuration, like the spokes of a wheel as opposed to a string. Since we don't have a full concept of what you are trying to do it is difficult to speculate further. If you can give us some more details  perhaps you will trigger more pertinent feedback from some of the guys with more experience than me.

John

Hi Matt,

I agree with John, while it is possible to parallel batteries there are many practical difficulties and usage limitations/difficulties to keep them operating in a safe or reliable state. If you're confident on this area (i.e. you have engineered this as John says and know what you're doing) then there are companies that offer custom cable assembly (even for 1-off cables). They will be really expensive, but this is to be expected because it is a labour-intensive task, it could take several days to do it properly, and they will need to design a jig for consistency, and use additional materials for attaching the tails. Any engineer will charge quite a lot for this task. Another thing that could be a concern is the type of connector. Is this a hobby RC connector? This is maybe fine for hobby RC use with a single battery, but I'm guessing your project isn't for such use. That connector doesn't seem to have any strain relief, and the battery and heavy cable are supported just by the strength of the solder it seems, whereas most other connectors at least crimp around the insulation too. Again if you've already engineered for this then that's fine, it is just a thing to be aware of if you've not already considered it.

I appreciate the reply.

The reason the power cable needs to be flexible is so that it can be routed in an "S" manner between the battery packs. This will provide the shortest single run. Although I don't see any reason why there couldn't be a fixed length of solid copper down "the middle" flexible branches coming off. That may be overall a better idea for current handling, just seems overly complicated for my needs.

I've had a friend w/ experience in the area go over all of the calculations with me as far current, efficiency loss, etc goes. We came to the agreement that a simple 8awg wire should be plenty thick enough to handle the power levels I'm wanting to push with additional head room for safety.

The battery packs will be secured in a fireproof case and will not be moved at any point. The power cable I'm requesting will simply plug into the connectors and lay on top. There will be no strain of any kind on the cable.

I have reached out to numerous cable manufacturers who claim to offer one-off, custom builds, and no body seems interested in either responding to me or this is not something they do regularly. One shop told me they would pitch it around to a few shops in china to see if any were interested. That, to me, seems like way more hassle. I'd rather just give my money to someone here local and have a personal relationship with someone rather then throw caution to the wind with random chinese manufacturing.

I'm not wealthy, by any means, but right now I can't even get a rough estimate for what someone would charge for this. Being a one-off item is not interesting  to most of these manufacturers. I was hoping there would be a few folks here who might be excited in my project and offer their services.

p.s. To John's question above. Each battery pack in parallel has its own BMS attached. Rather than balancing 50 different packs, each pack will balance itself.

This is the battery pack in question:

Could you just run 2 copper pipes as bus bars separated periodically with insulating spacers. The battery connectors could be Anderson connectors with wire leads to ring terminals. The ring terminals could attach to the pipes using copper cable clamps.

While that may be easy it wouldn't provide the flexibility I need to tightly package the cells.