Thursday, April 23, 2015

Tentative plans for expansion of power system

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This one goes into the Power Subseries of the off-the-grid main series of posts.

I want to post something here before I forget about it.  Now that things are organized, I feel confident that I can find anything I think up on this here blog.

Anyway, it occurred to me that I have more power available to me than I thought.  I realize that the car battery isn't really made for deep discharging, but it can be useful at times in order to run a few things.  Not only that, but you can also dedicate a solar panel to keep it charged up while it isn't running so as to conserve gas.

So, that's the idea.  To use the van's battery to run a few things off of it so as to make full use of all resources.

Not only that, my little electric scooter also has 12 volt batteries.  I think 12 Amp hour batteries, if I am not mistaken.  That's two of those little rascals and that almost doubles my power reserve.

I haven't even used my little 800 watt two cycle generator either.  I figured I'd put it on the tongue of the trailer, which is already purchased.  You can run it five hours on one gallon of gas, it is claimed.  That's 4 kwh of electricity for a couple bucks.  Not exactly cheap, but much welcomed, and that is something that also saves on gas, because it is cheaper than using the van's motor.

The trailer will have everything running off of it.  It will have some solar panels on top, and it will also have a breaker box.  I want to be able to isolate each battery and charge it separately with the little charger just mentioned.  The instructions say not to use a big battery with that little charger.  That's why I have only small batts so far.

That's all I remember for now.


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