Experiences With "Portable" Solar Power?

[Imogene]

This all seems extremely and unnecessarily complex.

Since you are more than willing to delve into the complexities, why not consider a solar fence charger set up.

I have never had the need but I am forum acquainted with several who do use them on decent size acreage with great success at keeping horses where they belong.

One user has a .5 joule charger that is supposed to be good for 20 miles of fencing in minimal sunlight. Surely you could figure a way to convert this to your own use. It would cost less, take up less space, and bring your math requirements down a few nothces.

Get started with the essentials | Stafix

 

[dilettante]

A typical fence charger puts out less than 1 watt. That's maybe what an LED night light uses and less than a car battery trickle charger.

You're not going to run a small camping fridge on that, much less an RV. Forget about emergency use and peak load shifting at home. Even the lighting in my shed uses 30 watts. Running tools or charging tool batteries needs quite a bit more.

Fence charging is a real application, but a very specialized tiny one.

 

[dilettante]

Something to think about whether you buy a small cheapie or an expensive large unit (even name brands). Be sure the AC outlets can accommodate "wall warts" which are all too common today.



These both support a 3-prong plug, and one has a second AC outlet without a jack for the prong (I think of it as "1 1/2" AC outlets, not 2).

Note how clumsy the first device will be for plugging in something like:



Since it has 3 prongs you can't just turn it upside down.

You'd need to perch the power station on a table edge or something.

 

[dilettante]

So what can you power with these things?

Well most are probably more useful for camping or power outages than routine indoor use. As I mentioned, I have a shed where there isn't any power and a lot of things can use it there.

Lighting and fans come to mind first. But also tools, tool batteries, a radio, etc. Larger battery stations can even power a small space heater for a time (500 watts or so). Or even a small car battery trickle-charger as in the previous post's image. Phone charging, laptop charging, the list goes on and on.

Here is a lamp example:



Just skip the adapter and plug into a 2 amp USB-A jack and you're set. Removable rod sections allow uses from desk lamp to floor lamp. There are also more "decorative" versions for a little more money. Using DC power tends to be a bit more efficient than AC because you bypass most of the inverter inefficiency and maybe more so the cheap AC-to-USB adapter power supply.

The topmost rod of the lamp is a flexible gooseneck, so as a floor lamp one can bend this into a "shepherd's hook" or "question mark" shape to center the lamp weight over the baseplate. This can make it a little more stable and resistant to knocking over.

Many of these have a selectable lamp color, i.e. cool white (daylight), warm white (tungsten), or both for a fuller spectrum. Some of them offer things like a "night light" mode and auto-off timers (1 hour, 3 hours, 12 hours, etc.).

10 watts at full brightness, this lamp can be powered nearly 15 hours from a smaller 150 watt-hour power station (there are losses, so say 14 hours). Dimmed halfway in emergencies could nearly double that. The more battery, the longer total run time.

 

[dilettante]

Interesting small item you might not know you need:



Flat flex cable with MC4 connectors. Use for temporary solar setups, car setups, apartment-dweller patio setups even in winter if yours gets enough daylight. Thin enough to "mash" in a patio door or window sill with a minimum of indoor heat/cold leakage outside and bugs getting in!

Example above is about 11 1/5 inches in total length. You can also find some double that length.

Maybe you live in an apartment and want to experiment. Maybe you have portable solar panels and a power station for camping, but now you have a blackout at home. This might be the ticket.

 

[dilettante]

Something became apparent to me quickly once I went beyond "camping" uses. When you get above 100 watts or so of solar panels your available battery storage need starts escalating quickly in order to get the most from the system. This becomes more and more true as the days get longer and your sun angles higher once you start moving into Summer.

There are "two ends" of this: (a.) having enough "buckets" to catch what you convert to electricity, and (b.) having enough buckets of stored power to get you through several says of gloomy rainy days. The latter gets important as you start shifting electricity use to your stored solar power. The gloomy days are when you want lighting most, and they're often when a storm might cause a grid power outage. As you get into hot weather things like fans are nice to power as well.