Portable Solar Energy

[katilea]

I live in rented so can't just have solar panels put on my house and probably couldn't afford to do it anyway if I had to pay to have it done (even if I could get permission) so what portable options (if any) would I have for charging up small appliances such as laptops, mobile, maybe small kettle.

Also as someone who uses a mobility scooter to be able to get out to walk my dog daily if electricity supplies were constantly interrupted my main worries would be finding a way I could still get my dog out. My scooter needs a 12 hr charge as it has big batteries but I am looking into one of those hybrid trike attachments for a manual wheelchair. This would allow me to use it to pedal freewheel (without power) on the downhills and level roads (reducing how much of the battery I'd need to use on a walk, needing it only to get up hill) and also they are lithium batteries which only take 4-6hrs to charge instead of 12.

I'm still looking at whether in the event of frequent cuts to my household electricity supply I could find some kind of solar panel to use to keep the trike battery topped up? ..or would I need to invest in a generator? I'm assuming I'd need at least one anyway to keep at least one of my freezer's running. ..but I'm just wondering if there was a more eco friendly way like solar panels the chest freezer could be connected to, to at least be able to keep some food frozen/plug in a small 2 ring stove, charge batteries?

[Jamesey1981]

Forget solar, portable panels will be a very expensive and unreliable way of doing it, a quick scout around on the web gives me a figure of 2 85ah batteries for a scooter (don't know what batteries yours has, but that seems like a sensible figure) so to charge them in 6 hours you'd need around 400 watts of panels once you've accounted for losses, 100w panels sell for around £250 on the website I looked at, and you'd need four of them, and you would need six hours of direct, strong sunlight with the panels turned at exactly 90% to the sunlight, so they'll either need to track, (more money) or you'll need to keep turning them.

You could use solar to keep your battery topped up to reduce your reliance on mains power, but for the price of a generator you wouldn't get much out of it, and it'll only make a dent when it's blazing sunshine. The portable panels are marketed for caravanners and motorhomes, and for that it makes sense, but they can charge their batteries from their car or motorhome engine, the solar panels are just to reduce the number of times that they need to start the engine up.

As for plugging in an electric ring cooker, I haven't worked out the figures for that, but I have an electric cooker on my boat and I can't run that unless I'm on a shore power hookup, it can run on alcohol as well, and it was as designed to never have to draw power from the battery banks, there will be a good reason for that, same reason that caravans have a locker for gas bottles.
I can run my low wattage microwave off the batteries with a huge inverter, but if I do that with the engine off my batteries don't last long, and these are huge deep cycle marine batteries (I'm a big guy and I can't lift them on my own!)

Freezer, maybe, I have a feeling someone on here has at least tried to set up a battery system for those so I'm not going to work that out, but at the end of the day, you're almost always going to be better off with a decent generator.

Solar would work fine for charging up your phone, when it's sunny, but if you need a generator for everything else then you may as well use it for your phone as well.

[katilea]

ok thanks.

my family used to go camping when I was a child, we didn't have a caravan but my dad had a VW camper van in the later years. As a child I just remember a big tent and a 2 stove camping gas cooker with a wind shield thing round it. When they later had the camper I remember the stove being behind the front seat and us having a little fridge/freezer in the awning which I think also ran off camping gas.

I'm not that keen on having loads of gas cylinders around in storage until I actually needed to use them. I have 2 camping gas stoves and had got the cylinders it used but cos they had been in storage the whole time I found they suddenly felt empty and like just a little liquid was swishing about inside them. I wasn't sure if they had a leak or the fuel had just kind of evaporated from not being used?

I have the middle sized kelly kettle and was thinking of getting another as small twigs etc are very easy for me to find and collect on walks but then also spotted a small eco stove that can also use twigs etc same as the kelly kettle (I forget what it was called now) that can act as a USB charger which maybe more handy for topping up smaller batteries and battery banks for laptops/phone's etc. It never occurred to me at the time that I could just maybe light a load of twigs/branches in a BBQ and have a larger surface area (across the grill part) to put more pans on to cook with.
What model generator would be a quiet one? (say no more noisy than a washing machine or fridge freezer coming on) ... that wouldn't sound like I had a motorbike in my house or something! Do they come with 3 point plug holes to just plug things in (how many per generator if so? ) or do you have to have the technical know how to rewire stuff? If there was one with 2 plug points it would be enough to keep chest freezer on and batteries charging for hybrid trike in the event of powercuts. What do they run off? oil or camping gaz type canisters?

[shocker]

Without going into too much tech detail, most four stroke petrol gennies can be adapted to run off calor-typr propane bottles. Have you seen forklifts with propane bottles on the back ? Thats how they work. Hydrogen cells may be an alternative but I do not have personal experience of them.

A good website/forum for this kind of thing is a camping and caravanning one :

http://www.ukcampsite.co.uk/chatter/

Bear in mind the advertised figures for generation devices and invertors is most often the peak power, not the sustainable power. Then theres the duty cycle, how long they can run in an hour or day.

If you want a quiet genny then the invertor type are quieter, the regular alternator type can be soundproofed but it requires a bit of work. Or you can pay more for a "hushgen". Have a look at machine mart for some dB (decibel) comparisons. Not necessarily the place to buy but a decent source of comparative info.

https://www.machinemart.co.uk/c/generators/

You could always find someone local to build you a generator from a lawnmower engine and an alternator from a car, a high power one from a big car with air con etc. Then use a decent sized invertor to run freezers....maybe. Soundproof it in a plywood box lined with ethafoam or rockwool. You would probably want to keep a spare battery on it all the time as a ballast/capacitor. Pretty loose speculation, but the seed of an idea, maybe.

[Jamesey1981]

No generator is all that quiet, but some are better than others, steer clear of cheap Chinese ones and go for one made by a reputable company, they'll have a decibel level for comparison, they also come with various different outputs, someone that knows more than me will comment with more info, I've used generators but I'm not an expert, the only generator I use regularly these days is the five litre V8 on my boat!

They run on either petrol or diesel, diesel ones are generally more expensive but diesel will last longer in storage, there's also a limit on how much petrol you can store legally, diesel is a lot safer and you can store as much as you like, BUT, you want to store it outside, or in an outbuilding, its safer than petrol but it's still flammable.
As shocker mentioned, you can convert a petrol one to run on gas, gas bottles are heavy though.

The ones I've used had a 16 amp plug like you'd get on a caravan hookup, you can get adaptors in any camping shop for people in posh tents, but some have a weird plug that I don't know much about. 3 pin 13 amp plugs like you have in your house aren't all that safe outside, they're not protected against water ingress.

Don't ever run a generator inside your house, you'll die.

[shocker]

Jamesey, are you talking about the euro "shuko" plug or the 3 pin C Form (often called a "commando" plug, for some reason) 16 amp industrial plug, blue casing for single phase (red is for three phase and usually only seen on 32a and 63a) ?

Sorry, read the rest of the post, you are talking about the "shuko" as the unknown.

[shocker]

Breakout boards, from 16a C form, caravan hookup, to a row of domestic 13a plugs are widely available...have a look at Towsure website. Also adaptors from shuko to C form can be had as they are needed for euro caravanning.

you will want to work out your loading pretty carefully though, I have seen plenty of gennies killed by electric kettles and the like. Again, duty cycle and constant power are the important bits.

myself, I have a huge gennie alternator that will run 3 phases of 63a...but only when hooked up to a six cylinder lorry engine. Its about 6ft long and even with straw bales all round you would not be able to run it in a built up area. Or move it without a forklift.

[Jamesey1981]

Jamesey, are you talking about the euro "shuko" plug or the 3 pin C Form (often called a "commando" plug, for some reason) 16 amp industrial plug, blue casing for single phase (red is for three phase and usually only seen on 32a and 63a) ?

Sorry, read the rest of the post, you are talking about the "shuko" as the unknown.

Yeah, it looks similar to the one I have for shore power on my boat, locks with a twist and a locking ring, my boat is American made though and the temperature gauge is in Fahrenheit so I don't know if it is exactly the same, could be a Euro spec plug on it as it was obviously wired for the uk market since I have uk sockets on there, I've never had a close look at one of the plugs I'm talking about as the gennie I used just had a normal 16 amp.

[shocker]

I would have to see it to ID it mate, I am familiar with the US and euro types, as well as the UK pre C form ones that had a lock ring. C forms also come with a lock ring if needed.

[Jamesey1981]

I would have to see it to ID it mate, I am familiar with the US and euro types, as well as the UK pre C form ones that had a lock ring. C forms also come with a lock ring if needed.

No need on my account mate, I have cables for it and if they break I'll take them into the chandler's and say I need one of these, they'll either sell me one or tell me what to buy!