Has anyone brought a power station?

[allgoneaway]

After long power cuts from the storms the other week (and, of course, the threat of cyber attacks) we are looking at buying a good solar power station. Something like a Bluetti maybe. Has anyone brought one for prepping? Any recommendations or thoughts?

Oh lovely preppers, this thread has brought me a few smiles.

I want to put solar panels on my garage, would a system like this be a good solution?

I have new found respect for the preppers.

My cousin got stuck in Ukraine and was nearly out of food and the electric went due to bombing.

Never thought I'd say that. Why would that happen to an English guy living in Europe?

Still feeling comfortable in the Uk but it's really shown me how fast everything can unravel. And how much it unravels when it does.

You can build yourself a solar system capable of powering a coffee machine for less than the price of the cheapest Bluetti “power station” with the rather important added benefit that it can actually charge itself back up again.

You will still need to drink a lot of cups of coffee before it makes more sense financially than buying a camping stove and a box of gas cylinders/gallon of petrol though.

I agree that building your own is a cheaper option. We’ve powered garden lights and pump and a shed through a self built solar PV system for the last 6 years. You need a decent sized leisure battery, solar panel and charge regulator and an inverter. We replaced our panel last year with a 100w flexible panel for less than £20.

@Jins did you use any particular instructions for that? I'd be very interested in doing something similar(complete novice)

@FoolShapeHeart. I had no instructions but I had a good idea what to do as we have a caravan that I adapted to use off grid almost indefinitely.

If you get something like this www.ebay.co.uk/itm/80W-Solar-Panel-Kit-Battery-Charger-For-Car-Van-Camping-Caravan-Boat-Portable-UK-/363511218185?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286&mkrid=710-127635-2958-0 and connect it to a leisure battery you can power 12v lights etc with no problem and it’ll charge via usb directly from the controller. I usually charge power banks rather than plugging my phone in directly but they are regulated so should be fine.

If you want to power household appliances you’d need an inverter of a suitable size. Inverters aren’t all equal and sensitive electronics need a pure sine wave inverter. These are more expensive. We have a low powered inverter (150w) which we rarely use as you go through an awful lot of battery power using it. 12v lighting uses very little.

I’d try a small set up first. If it works for you it’s expandable with more panels and more batteries to form a battery bank. We find that 100w panel and an old car battery is more than enough for our needs

Thank you @Jins
Is this eBay seller one you recommend, or is it this type of set up?
And for the leisure battery, would you suggest just getting the biggest capacity within budget?
(And bonus question! Do you know if a fridge freezer would run off a fairly basic inverter, or is that completely unrealistic in the sunny North?)

@FoolShapeHeart there’s a guide here
greencitizen.com/diy-solar-generator/

Lithium batteries are light if you need it to be portable. Lead acid are heavy but cheaper and do the trick.

Actually I’d forgotten that I have built a small solar generator (with built in Bluetooth speakers) using a wheelchair battery and a vintage vanity case. That charges with a 30w panel and a full charge lasts weeks.

@Jins thank you! Off to investigate the career I probably should have followed as an engineer of some sort 😁

That’s just a typical set up. I can’t find the one I bought but they are all Chinese imports. Flexible panels are much cheaper than solid.

As a rule of thumb anything that heats up or cools down uses a fair chunk of power. Fridge freezers are around 200w per hour. Say 240w to make the maths easy. So on a normal power supply you’d use 1 amp per hour or 24 amps per day. If you run that through an inverter you use more power in conversion so you’d be looking at 30+ amps. That’s your average car battery. Replenishing that amount of power would need a lot of panels.

Finding a suitable 12v cool box would be my choice.

We’ve got a camping battery and solar panel to charge it, but I’m guessing if there was nuclear winter/post nuclear attack there wouldn’t be enough light to charge it?
(I know there wouldn’t be any food either growing at that point!)