Power Station or Solar Generator

[@Diebulfrog79]

Power pack, Cory. Remember it's 15 % to 45 % with solar panel. What term you use ,works.

[@baneverything5580]

When connected to enough solar during the day you can do a lot with these. I have 11 of them for hurricanes and severe thunderstorms in Louisiana and a homemade system made with a big 300ah LiFeP04 battery, Victron Smartsolar charger and 2000w ac inverter for larger loads like a small window ac, heating water with bucket heaters, running tiny 200 to 400 watt heaters, InstantPot cooking/microwave etc. My two 700w Bluetti power stations are for my freezer, two 500w ones run my dorm fridge and the others are used for WIFI, lights, electric blankets, fans & small rice cookers. For instance, the little Aroma 4 Cup rice cooker (actually holds a little over ONE real dry cup & two cups water to cook) uses only about 200 watts on high and 50 watts on low.

[@newageselfreliance]

A few years ago, my power went out for two days, and I thought my 500-watt power station would run my fridge. The problem is that when I tested it, my fridge was still cold. When things are normal they alternate between kicking on the fridge and freezer. Once the power was off for a few hours, when I went to plug the fridge in, both the freezer and refrigerator were trying to kick on at the same time, overloading my Jackery. It wouldn't start at all. So lesson learned once the power goes out, I have to plug it into the Jackery immediately so only the freezer or fridge kicks on at one time. You might want to test your system once things are off for a while to make sure everything still works as it should.

[@junkerzn7312]

@@newageselfreliance You'll need a power station with a stronger AC output to be able to start the compressor of a fridge. Usually something with a 1000W+ inverter, but it will depend on various factors. Also a good idea to know how much energy you can actually generate from the solar (in watt-hours per day) and how much energy various appliances use. For example, a regular refrigerator typically averages around 60W (inclusive of the cycling), so 60W x 24h = 1400 watt-hours of energy per day. Include inefficiencies and such and you'd want around 2000 watt-hours of battery storage to cover overnight and give you decent margins so you aren't running around in a panick rounding up more power. That implies having a bigger power station with more storage. A solar panel outside with decent sun usually produces its nameplate wattage x 4 watt-hours per day. So e.g. one 100W panel would produce 400 Wh/day. In cloudy weather that might drop to 200 Wh/day. In a storm, nearly zero. Your solar panel through the window... maybe 100 Wh/day. One can also go whole-hog with discrete components... discrete LiFePO4 batteries, charge controllers, permanently-mounted solar panels, etc. You can even run the output of a 12V battery into the "solar" input of a power station to keep it charged up (until the battery runs out anyway). The fun thing with solar, batteries, and power stations is that one can scale them up. The critical resource, though, almost always winds up being how much solar you actually have to recharge stuff with in a prolonged outage. So having a little gas generator to top-off the power station / batteries is also an important tool to have. -Matt

[@feendog2711]

Power station that can be charged with solar