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Project Idea i'm kicking around

Former Member

Hea Ben, i'm new to your show, i've watched a few episodes, awesome stuff man, loved the old school look of the radio casemod when you went toe to toe with darren from Hak5, nice work my friend, a truely inspired piece of work, anyways i'll get to the point, i work Security, and last year in may i got deploied to Joplin Missouri after the tornado tore the town to pieces, the location i was sent to had no power, no running water, and the only remains of a building that were left was a shell of what once was a building, heres the idea, since i had only minimal lighting (hand held flashlights, and the headlights on my 4 wheel drive) and the only power sorce i had available to me was the inverter i had installed in my rig, i thought it would be a good idea to build a portable power source using a pair or a trio of Marine type deep cycle AGM (Absorbed Glass Mat) batteries, such as the Optima Blue top or yellow top batteries to power one or two inverters, my idea came when i had to recharge my laptop and various other electronics, i realised that i needed a more portable system that i could deploy, and recharge my equipment as needed, i also thought i could use a solar panel or two, and a charge controler to keep the batteries charged durring the day, as well as provide a way of charging the system off of AC power when i was back at the hotel room, i'd like to power my laptop, maybe some lighting, so i calculated out the absolute maximum i would need for lighting, a pair of 800 watt inverters, or a single 2 Kilowat inverter would be sufficiant to power some halogen lights (or a coupple strings of CFLs on droplights) as well as charge my gear (Radio, Laptop, Flashlight, Cell phone etc), any ideas? i was thinking about mounting it in a "Kodiak" SUV Toolbox which is basicly a big flat version of a pickup tool box that is designed to fit in the cargo area of a jeep, its about 36 inches by 36 inches square and about 24 inches deep with handles molded into the side and a spot for a padlock on the front, when i get home i'll take some measurements and get exact numbers for y'all

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  • I think the solar panels you would need for this would be large and expensive.  Here is how you should start speccing out the system to see if it is feasible.

     

    Choose your inverters, then based on their efficiency figure out the size batteries you need for a reasonable amount of running time.  If you have an inverter, 800W, lets say 90% efficient, then it will use about 890W on the battery side, that on a 12V system would be about 75A, x2 for your two systems, so 150A.  Lets say you want to run 3 hours, that would be 450AH, you have about 10 hours of daylight to charge, so you need a solar panel capable of giving 45A at about 13-14V (needs to be higher than batteries full voltage), meaning you need about a 650W solar panel.  A 650W solar panel is very large and very expensive.

     

     

     

    Someone correct me if I'm doing the equations wrong, I'm not the king of power engineering.

  • in reply to colecago

    i looked at what i had, i have a Motor Triend 800 watt inverter that i have bolted in my jeep, and i'm about to get a Cobra 880, 800 Watt Continuous inverter, i was kicking some ideas around, and i noticed that a Caterpillar 8D battery has over 1000 AH, but i was looking at the price tag, and decided it'd be cheeper to use a pair or a trio of Marine Deep Cycle batteries to feed the inverters, the panels i have  equal about 40 watts, so that might just end up being a maintenance charger during the day, i'll probibly throw a good sized marine charger in so i can plug the bank in to charge it initially, i have a pair of old chargers that are the industrial "roll around" type, i can scrap one of those, or just put a set of lugs on the side of the box to attach jumper cables to and charge it from my vehicle, so solar looks like its out of the equasion for now, i'm going to do two inverters, but one is going to be the 800, and the other will be a 200 for small things such as charging laptop batteries, pencil soldering iron, and light duty tools, i doubt the 800 will see much use asside from lighting or bigger (1/2 inch drive hammer drill) tools, thanks for the input, i hadnt thought about that

     

     

    {Correction}

    8-D225-255 Amp hours12 volts

    i found this chart online while doing more research on battery types, i think i can feed this inverter at an 8 amp load (800 watts) for about 8 hours on 2 marine deep cycle batteries @_@ i hate math at times.... and sometimes electrical math gives me a headache >.<

  • in reply to Former Member

    Is that 225-255AH each?  If so, that time makes sense for a single 800W inverter.  And at a 10A solar charge cycle, you could get away with a panel half the size of before.

  • in reply to colecago

    i was rethinking the design, i think what i'll do is have a single 800 watt inverter for heavy use equipment, then i'll have a 200 watt for smaller items, that way i can better manage charge, i found a few Marine deep-cycle batteries at the local auto parts store that are 115 amp hours each, i think three of them (giving me 325ish amp hours) should be enough to run the inverter for as long as i need in an emergency, or for light work, and the panels would give me enough to keep the batteries topped off durring the day, i'm still going to retain the marine battery charger idea so i can plug the box into the wall to charge it up when needed, and i'll have an identical 800 watt inverter in my four wheel drive to suppliment the box if need be, i have a 4 KW gasoline powered genny for the real heavy stuff, so i guess i kinda got carried away with designing the portable power grid (so to speak), and yes the Caterpillar D8 type batteries are 225 to 255 AH each, they are also about 200 lbs of lead O_O which rules out using them for my portable idea, they could be transported, but the'd be a bit on the difficult side to deploy on site it would seem