I’ve seen lots of videos of people making power packs but have been particularly disappointed with the ones you can buy. £500 seems to be the starting price for anything half decent and that still won’t ultimately last as long as we want.
So here is mk1
It has 4 x 12v 7ah sealed lead acid batteries. So in truth a genuine 15ah of power. This will be connected to solar during the day (I have a 100w panel which will keep this topped up on even the cloudiest of days. Through an MPPT solar controller so it doesn’t discharge the batteries to a damaging level.
It will only power the fridge and charge up anything by USB with a continuous 2amp charge. It’s not got enough to power an inverter of any power.
If this is fine on some camping trips we have lined up I’ll build one with Lithium Ion Phosphate batteries. For the same battery size I could have 50ah of useable power but does mean a more expensive solar controller. This would have more than enough power to run a full sized electric fan and anything we would possibly need when camping.
If that goes well I’ll then build a 100ah useable unit which won’t even need to be plugged in over a week, maybe top it up with solar as it’s free but it shouldn’t need it.
I’ve a small 125 watt inverter which will be wired into the shed when I get home to run the pool pump for free as I want to learn more about inverters as they are not an efficient way to use 12v really.
Electric cars bore the shit out of me but a shed powered for free gets me quite excited, so may even make a decent battery set up for the garage too to run my dehumidifier for free.
Dave!
When I say for free, I mean no running costs, these little set-ups will never re-coup what they cost to install. I’d love to build a proper sized workshop with no mains connection though, it’s definitely possible with modern batteries.
in a nerdy way.
