My Plan B inverter, which I have nurtured and kept safe and dry for years, overheated and failed within two hours. 🙁
Welcome to the scrap heap of failed technology, Plan B.
My yard is starting to look like Cape Kennedy.
Fortunately there’s Plan C, which is more of a principle:
Whenever possible, befriend somebody knowledgeable who likes to squirrel up hardware he doesn’t plan to use.
And while you’re munching on that, say hello to Plans Bb and C!
These are two high-quality inverters, one brand-new, which were complete market failures. It seems the world did not beat a path to the door of Magnum Energy for expensive inverters that can only flow 600 watts. So my Neighbor S rescued these from a Dumpster, then found he had no use for them.
The original plan was to slave them together and come up with 1200 watts, but a) it didn’t work, and b) it wouldn’t help anyway. That arrangement would still have been in the twilight zone between enough to run the cabin and enough to run a power saw. So at some point I’d still like a big inverter, but neither of these is the sorry kludge that the Cobra inverter was. Either would probably outlive me, and I have two because 2=1 and 1=0.
Anyway, I’m back on the air. Again.
Honestly Joel, you have some really good friends!
The cost of inverters, the current draw even when they are not loaded and their life expectancy have convinced me that with a 12V or 24V battery system you are better off with the DC appliances and lights. I just traded in my motorhome for a new trailer which has a 180W PV panel and all DC appliances including the TV and LED lighting. It does have a air conditioner but I never use them and I would have preferred to not even have on installed.
Just curious how close you were to using all of that 4KW, and how much you’ve saved with the addition of LED lighting. Yeah, I know, replacing a few bulbs doesn’t make a lot of difference.
Or, is the 4KW really not something you use in the normal course of things, just when you need to run tools? I’m figuring a good circular saw is no more than 1.5KW. Your well pump is on its own solar panel, IIRC.
Oh, nowhere near. In fact I can turn on every electrical appliance in the cabin and not stress the 600W inverter – I know because I did that to see what would happen. The bigger numbers are strictly for getting past the starting surge on power equipment, which is substantial.
In money? Of course there’s no way they’ll ever pay for themselves in any tangible way because my costs don’t break down that way. I don’t have monthly bills I can compare and experiment with. Since I generate all the electricity, my guiding light is how low is the voltage at the very beginning of the day – which I actually record in a journal, because being off grid makes you a lightswitch nazi – and how soon the batteries hit Float charge, which is of course variable and dependent on a lot of factors.
I can tell you this, though. Night before last absolutely the only electricity I used was in 12V LEDs, lacking even the parasitic draw of the inverter, battery chargers and teensy indicator LEDs. My charge controller started indicating “Float,” which basically means the batteries are fully charged, at 7:30 yesterday morning. Which as far as the solar panels are concerned is practically the moment the sun comes up. Granted I used the bulbs one-at-a-time and only for a few hours, but still there was effectively no drain on the batteries at all.
In my little camper, powered by a group 24 deep cycle (75 amp hour 12v) the 4 led lights (2×110 lumen 2x 150lumen) I can run all four lights (the 2 x110 lumen actually light the entire place well enough to read anywhere, and in some places its too bright) continuously on that little battery for about 72 hours without draining below 80% discharge.
LEDs are awesome
IIRC, you decided against using a portable generator for the infrequent(?) use of high-starting-current tools. Be thankful for advances in solid-state power management. I have a pre-production integrated motor/generator/inverter gizmo in the shed somewhere which draws lotsa idle current and sounds like an F14 on afterburners. New stuff is an improvement sometimes.
Well, I was thinking more of watt-hours than money. But from your description of your usage, I’d guess that lighting, even pre-LED, was a small fraction of your drain.
I periodically return to pondering an emergency solar setup. Have yet to come up with a load estimate that’s anything other than rectally derived. So it helps to have a data point. I had already figured that a 600W inverter was overkill for “emergency” purposes, but something resembling confirmation helps.
Not necessarily. In dealing with preppers over the decades I’m always amazed by how many people put away huge amounts of frozen food, then need elaborate emergency measures to keep it frozen if grid power fails. Maybe a 600W inverter is enough to run a freezer, because my neighbor J ran one on a 1000W inverter and new box freezers are quite efficient. But it wouldn’t be overkill. I chose an opposite path and do without refrigeration entirely, so haven’t done the math.
At the moment, “emergency” doesn’t include running refrigeration. I don’t have enough stuff in there that it’d be a big loss, and I do have lots of canned goods and camp stoves. Mostly, it’s lighting, intermittent radio use, charging the phone and e-cig batteries, and possibly keeping tropical fish alive, though I ought to just sell the aquarium. And some overhead, just because I might want to plug something in for a bit, but it isn’t something I’ve thought of. But, by definition, “emergency” means, to me, keeping usage as low as possible. And yes, I’d connect the inverter only when I need it.