Reply To: frugal portable solar power kits inventory thought process for community

  • Hippocrates_Garden

    Member
    February 2, 2023 at 9:32 pm

    Curious, how many such systems have you actually built, commissioned and had used for “unspecified lengths of time”? It sounds good and easy, but practical experience may prove it’s much more complicated. I wa building a system just to power a Starlink system, off grid. This thing pulls about 100W or so when starting up and then may range from 20-50watts thereafter. Thus far, I’ve got four Lithium Ion batteries, 12V/100ah in a 24volt configuration (which essentially equals 8 similarly rated lead acid deep cycle batteries) and anywhere from 400-800W of panels spit between two charge controllers. In my location, with our weather, I’m lucky to keep it going 24/7 for maybe 3-4 days depending on the sunshine. In summer this would be way over sized, but one has to design for the worst conditions, not the best. And that’s just for a single Starlink, which is not as important than medical devices.

    With all the bits and bobs, dropped off at someone who is relying on a medical device, can they support and troubleshoot it? or would they require you or someone to do that? How many can you support if several had problems essentially at one time. Having worked in I.T. support, one of the big keys to being able to support larger numbers is: standardization and rock solid dependable components. Trying to get inexpensive components to build more systems would end up being a nightmare to support.

    It’s a worthy goal for sure, however even with my limited experience.. from a fire safety standpoint (medical devices, especially oxygen generators) inside with batteries that off-gas flammable gases, a system which (to many) would be a complicated combination of mismatched components, trying to charge from solar panels that are likely in far from optimal siteing (it’s not unusual for my peak production from 400W of panels to be 50W and total generation over the day maybe 1/10kw, though again in summer with longer days, less clouds and optimal angles it’s massively more than that). there are just a whole lot of “it depends”. This is my opinion, having at least played with solar for some years, building one small operative system and have about $22K of equipment for a full offgrid system sitting in a trailer waiting for the building to be moved to start the install. Others will have other opinions and much more experience.