I’m only half kidding. I’m a bit of a prepper and I have lots of powerbanks and devices that charge from USB but besides idling my truck I really had no other way to charge any of them in case of a long-term power outage which seemed a bit of an oversight on my part.
Not like this solves the issue. 30 watts (under ideal conditions) isn’t much but it’s a start.
Be careful. Those things are addicting.
That’s how I started: a little 5v, 6 watt panel I stuck in the window to charge my phone while I worked. Then I wanted to charge some other stuff, so I got a 15W panel. 15w panel was nice, but 100 watts was much better, so I bought two 100W fold-up panels like you’ve got.
Then I bought a big 1 KWh power station that could supply up to 2000 watts. I take it camping and charge it from the two 100W fold up panels.
But, sadly, the demon had its claws in me and refused to let go. “Why should I only use that solar power two or three times a year?” the voice said. So I bought 4x 200 watt panels so I could use the power station to power my homelab and refrigerator during the day.
Still, that wasn’t enough to satiate my addition. Now I’ve got 4 KW on the roof, 32 KWh of house battery, and a 10 KW inverter that is currently powering our house.
Am I satiated now? Only time will tell.
Have you calculated how long it takes/took to pay for itself?
All of the labor has been DIY, and I’ve got about $9,000 invested in the system components.
Back of the napkin math, at current electric rates, puts my ROI at just under 9 years. If electric rates keep going up, it’ll pay back even faster.
Edit: Depending on how you look at it, ROI could be in as few as 1.5 to 2 years. This system is in lieu of a whole house generator that would have cost us about $7,000. Had we gone with that instead, it would never have paid for itself (other than peace of mind) and we would have been perfectly content. So if I’m only considering the price difference between this and the generator, it’d only have to pay back $2,000.
Yeah, buying peace of mind when it comes to self sufficient power generation has no price tag. Decentralization of the grid is a good thing regardless of if you “pay it off” or not.
I’ve been looking to get a so-called “Chinese diesel heater” to my shed to keep it warm over the coldest days in winter when electricity is very expensive and the two small radiators designed to only keep it above freezing can no longer keep up. However, those run off 12V DC and power supplies seem to be surprisingly hard to come by. Easiest solution would be a car battery and a trickle charger but I’ve thought about just setting up a tiny solar system instead because then I would have a kind of off-grid location to fall back to. My house doesn’t have a fireplace either but the shed does (sauna). This would also allow me to charge all my tool batteries that require a standard outlet.
For heating, I’ve been wanting to try a solar collector. Not sure if you’ve come across Greenhill Forge on YouTube or anywhere that covers his projects, but he does all sorts of off-grid stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cPuVZjnbi4
That’s where he builds and tests several different styles of solar collectors for solar heating. The collectors are pretty inexpensive to build so that may be an option if you just want to (help) keep a shed warm.
Am I satiated now? Only time will tell.
I haven’t heard you say a word about your solar powered electric car…
Check back in 2-3 years when I (hope to) get an EV. I’m sure I’ll be crowing about it then 😆
In the mean time, would you like to hear about my solar powered lawn mower?
I got the power station first out of necessity, but am now at the point of desperately trying to justify adding solar panels even though I don’t camp or anything. I fear it could become obsessive though.
Maybe I keep can limit myself to only as many panels as I own violins? That would be a fair number… Or at least cap it off at the number of musical instruments in the house? That would leave some room to grow, if I can count my wife’s ukulele collection!
Instead of looking at number of panels, look at the total wattage. How many watts does it take to charge your power station? 30W-100W portable solar panels like these should work well for that. You could even go a little higher than what you need because of things like inline charging and dual charging, so you can charge multiple devices at once and still keep the power station topped off. That’s a good starting point.
Next, ask yourself how much wattage you could regularly use it for on a normal day. Ignore high-wattage appliances at first, like refrigerators, a/c, heater, stove, coffee pot, hairdryer, etc. Basically anything that produces high temperatures or has a motor a motor. But what else could you power on it? Chargers, homelab, router, etc.? There’s your second expansion. Probably some larger one-off panels and a couple power stations
Lastly, ask yourself what wattage you would need to run all your necessities in the case of an emergency with a long-term power outage. That’s when you calculate the high-wattage appliances. This will probably require a full rooftop solar installation.
So no need to dive all the way in at first if you can’t afford to yet, but don’t let that discourage you from getting some smaller panels to start.
Glorious advice, thanks !
It is a nice set of things to ask oneself. Motivating a question is way better for learning.
What are inline and dual charging ? My internet query wasnt fruitful.
Also, by “power station” do you mean batteries? Because I’m curious what specs to consider, say, for a camping day vs home setup
When I said inline I meant like charging a powerbank while another device is charging from it. And by dual charging I mean if it has two or more outputs it can charge multiple devices at once. In either case, each device you add to the load is going to require more wattage (or it’ll just charge slower)
And yeah, a power station is like a powerbank but larger. A powerbank might have 10,000mAh and fits in your pocket, can probably charge a phone 3 or 4 times on one charge. A power station is like the size of a lunchbox or a small cooler, might have 30,000mAh or more, and could probably charge a phone a dozen times on one charge. They usually have more output options too, instead of just USB. Some even have an A/C adapter.
Still not enough to run a whole house on, but great for camping and power outages. If you wanted to run appliances on it you’d be looking at larger home batteries designed for rooftop solar, or even upcycled EV batteries.
The main specs you want to look at are input wattage (will tell you what size solar panels are required to charge it), output wattage (will tell you what’s safe to plug in where), and milliamp-hours (mAh, basically how much juice it can hold at full charge)
What about a neighborhood scale micro utility company/collective?
ew socialism
Idk you could charge people predatory rates I guess, especially during main grid outages. If you wanted to go that route.
All i need is a gun to kill the local prepper and I’m set.
A looter - finally!
- That local prepper, probably
The prepper will likely be camped and there will be signs someone’s been in the area recently, the looter or looters would have a pretty big advantage.
Doesn’t the defending side in a war usually suffer fewer casualties?
If you’re talking about an entrenched battle. A looter would have the element of surprise, which in a 1v1 is basically an instant win.
See preppers camp, setup in some shrubs, wait, pew pew, now you have the preppers stuff.
Be sure to check your local raid boss’s tier now before the content releases. A lot of them you’ll be able to solo with the right load out, but if you’re unlucky you’ll need to start putting together your party roster now because they aren’t all made to be soloed.
Also be careful storing powerbanks at full charge, charge them at 80% or ideally around half for maximum longevity
Also don’t charge devices directly from solar power because voltage changes drastically due to sun movement and clouds. Better load a power bank and use that to charge the other devices as power banks are much more resilient to changing voltages.
It also saves a lot of money to do this. I’ve found it takes almost as much power to go from 80 to 100 as it does to go from 0 to 80.
Jokes on you when they nuke the sky
That’s why I skipped solar panels and went straight to human bioenergy pods
Nuclear war is followed by nuclear winter, which, among other things is caused by thick clouds, sorry!
I’ve got one of these for camping. It’s great for keeping my phone charged when there is no power available.
This can power a Steam Deck. Good choice.
Judging by the comment section, this is also the secret solarpunk forum.
I have stockpiled an absolutely MASSIVE amounts of manure. That shit is going to be worth a fortune in the future. Every paycheck, I dump at least 10% of it into buying the freshest cow pie I can find. The neighbors hate me, but we’ll see who gets the last laugh when they sell their in-laws into indentured servitude to afford a bag of my brown gold!
I didnt know the meaning of “manure” but it became clear by the end of the paragraph
Doesn’t it have a limited shelf life? Do you need to maintain it?
In the event of an apocalypse basically nothing that you can charge is going to be of any use other than flashlights.
Ehh, disagree. We have a battery backup system (they charge from the electric lines) for our house because we have a well instead of sewer lines, so when the power goes out we don’t have water. Our next big purchase will be panels to charge the batteries as further backup.
Yeah, light in the dark is totally useless.
I feel like you must have stopped reading my comment half way through to say that……
It wasn’t worth finishing.
It was, because I specifically said flashlights you peanut.
A 30W panel isn’t charging much else’s.
Idk I use mine to charge tool batteries as well. Thanks for calling me a delicious and useful nut, accurate.
Laughing with mp3-player.
And meshtastic or meshcore to communicate
Depends on tge apocolypse, but Refrigeration… HVAC… Power tools… Could go on.
Maybe even your phone if you’ve downloaded books/manuals/maps needed to rebuild before hand
What is 30 watts going to do for any of those? I don’t think people here know how weak a 30 W panel is.
Person I was responding to said nothing that can be charged, not specifically charged by 30 W. People live comfortably off grid these days with panels and batteries to store. Nothing perfect, but the right setup could matter if things went bad
We’re not talking about a whole off grid home here lol. We’re talking about a guy with a 30W solar panel.
You’re moving the goalposts. You said nothing rechargeable besides flashlights isn’t going to be of any use in the apocalypse which is an obviously false statement as demonstrated by the pushback you’re getting. The size of the solar system wasn’t part of the argument you made.
Interesting, because I said this
nothing that you can charge
“you” is you, the OP, the one showcasing his 30W solar panel.
You’d still be falsely assuming that I’m limited by the output wattage of the panel itself despite it enabling me to charge a powerbank that can output 150 watts.
I don’t really understand exactly what you’re doing here anyway. Like, do you just find people who get excited about things and then go piss all over it because that’s fun or something?
My strimmer battery charger takes 65w. So 8 hours of 30w to charge a battery is almost 4 hours charging the strimmer battery which would probably fill it’s small battery a few times over. If you are not depleting the strimmer battery multiple times a day, that is more than enough power.
You of course do need a battery to store it so many hours of solar are used in several minute short time loads.
A 30W solar panel is likely going to charge at about 5W, given the inefficiency.
There is some inefficiency in charging a battery but not that much. Main losses would be that the solar panel isn’t actually outputting 30w as you won’t be getting ideal conditions all day.
But it doesn’t necessarily matter either. 65w to charge a battery but you only need it once a week for an hour can easily be managed by 5w all day for a week.
Though planning for an apocalypse is kinda pointless anyway. Preparing for a disaster is more reasonable, such as a storm knocking out power for a while.
The inefficiency isn’t the battery, it’s the panel. They run at about 20-25% efficiency at best.
The rated wattage should take that into consideration.
I was getting around 12 watts during the sunset when I was testing it. It can probably reach around 20 watts under ideal conditions.
Highly doubtful. ~30% efficiency is already pushing the limit of solar panels. No way you’d get over 65%.
Efficiency means how much of the sunlight hitting the panels gets converted into electricity. How accurately manufacturers report the true output of the panel is a completely different thing. Plenty of reputable brands reach the advertised output.
You underestimate the amount of digital hoarders out there.
Or maybe hoarders overestimate how much and how long they can rely on their digital stuff.
Once you let go of heating and cooling, larger temperature variations are going to do a number on you consumer grade electrical devices. Your solar panels are one heavy hails storm away from destruction, and if we assume climate change is the cause of the apocalypse, you can count on those.
The best way to survive an apocalypse is to rebuild communities with a wide set of skills, and still dramatically lower our quality-of-life AND HEALTH expectations.
You know, you can charge your house? With a large enough battery and enoug PV power you can operate a heat pump off the grid to control the climate of your home.
The feasibility varies a bit, depending on where exactly you live, but there are definitely useful things you can do with solar power and batteries.
Nothing that a 30W panel can manage though. And I definitely agree to your point about rebuilding communities.
Yeah whole home battery systems and a portable 30W panel are a bit different haha.
I’ve got solar with a 42kWh home battery system, with a petrol generator backup that can power the whole house via a change-over switch, but even that in an apocalypse isn’t gonna do much - especially when, like in a blackout now, I’m the only house on the street with lights on.
Ofc, that’s on a whole different level.
Your 42 kWh is huge. Pair that with an approriately sized roof solar panel, and you won’t need a grid much. Seriously, look into that. Not even for living off the grid, but for financial reasons.
Though yeah, having the lights on and appliances running, might paint a target on your house in an apocalyptic scenario. But nobody’s forcing you to use the lights, and a heat pump with ground water or earth collector as a source is pretty stealthy. So you can sit in a dark, but warm, house.
Electric fire starter. Mesh nodes. Walkie talkies. Small computer with offline Wikipedia and Google maps. GPS may still be working for a while, so that would be useful to charge and use. Portable fans. MP3 player or other entertainment device. Camera. Small power tool batteries…
Yeah, in an apocalypse, a small about of electricity would be a luxury.
30W panel ain’t gonna do that.
Wrong!
https://meshtastic.org/docs/hardware/devices/seeed-studio/sensecap/solar-node/
Runs on a 5W panel… So yes, a 30W panel can certainly do that.
That’s one of the half a dozen things you listed lol. You gonna power a computer off a 30W solar panel that realistically will give you about 6W? Power tool batteries?
Sure, a very small one, with a battery. My smartphone will charge off 5W.
I’ve got a mini Dremel that will charge off 5W USB. It ain’t gonna be fast, but it will definitely work.
You’re batting 0/3, still want to keep trying?
Strange how you ignored the example of yours that I specifically pointed out in the comment on just replied to - a pc.
Strange that you think “computer” must only mean “PC”.
Still 0/3 btw. Why don’t you quit while you are only this far behind?
Look: I plan solar panels, batteries, and a small TV set, so during the apocalypse, I will have my Netflix shows! And with the right EV, I will be one of the few who can still go to Costco!
You see: I’m ready!!
Why wouldn’t you just get Amazon delivery? Come on now!
In the event of an apocalypse basically nothing that you can charge is going to be of any use other than flashlights.
My house is quite rural and I have a water well with a battery backup for the pump and UV filter. The battery lasts for about 5-6 days depending on use. I can charge the battery from the grid or with solar.
If the cities get nuked, my well system will still function.
Can you repair it if it breaks?
Can you repair it if it breaks?
Most of it. I rebuilt the well system when I bought the house. I installed the backup system from various components. It wasn’t a pre-built system. I COULD conserve power by shutting off the UV filter. I could probably run the pump for over a month on a single charge.
If something blows in the charge unit in the battery pack, and I can’t find a replacement part, then no. If the batteries fail, I can hack together a replacement if I can get batteries. I have various solar panels and charge controllers around and a 12k panel system on the roof I could tap into and convert if the grid stops. The well system can also run on a propane generator, but as we learned in Fiona, when the entire island (PEI) was dark for 11 days, propane supplies go quick. I had 8 full tanks so I was fine.
But that’s the same for anything in a house. If the world goes to shit, something happens and I break my toilet, and can’t find a replacement, then I’m shitting in the woods.
I bought the Jackery Explorer 100 and am coupling it with a 45W panel. I figured the Jackery would be better for solar than an average power bank, because they already package it in a bundle with their own panel. BUT since both USB C ports on the Jackery can do both power in/out, I think the Jackery can actually get confused about whether it’s supposed to be charging or discharging, when the panel is running at very low output… … at least, that’s how I interpret having returned to it and seeing it discharged when connected to the panel.
Out of curiosity, I’ve been wanting to get a jackery for camp trips an such, how is the 100w model? I keep eyeing the 2000w version but the price of it is absurd.
Honestly, I have a Jackery Home power 3600. The electronics have been buggy and unreliable. The battery can discharge itself through connected solar panels. It’s a known issue. The inverter overheats due to its discharging. The panels desynch from the battery while charging regularly. The USB C output is entirely inconsistent. Sometimes delivering minimal charge and other times rapid charging. My little brother has an Eco Flow. He hasn’t had issues with that system the same way that I have with the Junkery. Beware.
I think if it gets down to it, you’re not going to worry too much about your shiny toys when you haven’t eaten in three days.
Why wouldn’t I have eaten in three days?
How do you define apocalypse? You’re just larping, friend.
You’re just larping, friend.
Please elaborate. I have nothing against larping but that doesn’t seem to carry utility beyond the enjoyment gained from the act itself. A small solar panel, however, seems useful for any scenario ranging from a few day power outage to full societal collapse and zombies. It’s a genuine functional panel - not a prop.
How will a solar panel help against full societal collapse? I am on tenterhooks.
I can charge my flashlights/lanterns, powerbanks, tool batteries, a phone with offline maps and offline wikipedia …
OK buddy, good luck.
