There was a point in my life where I was going to make my own solar batteries and I purchased around 300 21700 lithium sales to get started... Thankfully I got them from a bulk auctioner for almost nothing because I never ended up putting in the time to make more than one of the batteries as life just kept putting more important things in the way. At this point I have already said fuck it and simply purchased a large supply of premade solar batteries I did still get them from a bulk discount supplier to save some money.
The problem is that now I have a large supply of cells that I don't know what to do with them they aren't the standard 18650s so it's not quite as easy to find things that will accept them. I have found a couple decent usb-c portable power bank cases that will accept these cells and I now have like five of those and it's enough to charge pretty much any phone a good four times over which is nice but I need more uses I would like to put some flashlights in each of my vehicles to always have on hand and it would be neat if I could use these cells I've done a little bit of Googling but it seems like the options to accept this particular size is limited and I'm worried that they might be of poor quality.
Anyone got any recommendations on ones from a reputable supplier?
For unprotected batteries, I like this site: https://18650-21700.com/
It’s been a while but I think it’s a two-person business. Unfortunately, my one experience buying from them was quite poor and I bought elsewhere. But the site has excellent info and seems to stay up to date on the best and latest batteries for high performance use cases.
One thing to note is that the site admin (Austin) focuses on rcs racing or something. It’s a different use case than flashlights and so I found that the judgements mixed into the information aren’t quite right. Still, the information is excellent and well presented. And it’s a simple place to find “the best” batteries currently available.
I have the molicel p50b’s. They’re excellent. Just be sure that you have a charger and flashlights that handle unprotected cells!