Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire off grid cabin power

You have me confused asking all of these questions. Too many paint fumes? :P

You figured out the Ah thing but simply change watts to 12V amps then multiply by hours. Easy peasy.

The good and bad. Lithium sucks in the cold but amorphous panels get more efficient in the cold. We have a different situation up here with our extreme cold temps so extra research is definitely needed. I've never ran more than a fish house off solar buy it worked good.

In your situation I'd probably leave all of the 120V stuff to the Japanese. You can buy an awful lot of gas for the price of a large solar system.

Good year for chicks, lots of babies chasing around. Adult bird sightings i feel are inline with last year. Decent population it would seem.

I see a lot of the more serious battery banks are 24 volt. Do you feel there is a point at which parallel banks could just as well be 24 or 48 volt rather than a huge 12v bank?

There are all sorts of trade offs in electrical systems. Basically power to do a given task is the same in watts. In electricity, Power is volts x amps (at least when you are talking DC) so if you are running a 9 watt LED it is going to draw about 3/4 amp. Any time you have to run a converter/inverter to change voltage or change from DC to AC or vice versa, you are going to lose energy. There should be an efficiency rating for a converter if you can find it. 80 - 85% is pretty good. In other words, you lose 15 - 20% in the conversion.

There are also losses in the distribution. A wire has resistance and conducting electricity causes it to heat up. The heating is proportional to the current so less current at higher voltage will deliver the same amount of power with less loss. That is why a 24 or 48 volt system might be a little more efficient but everything has to be capable of running at the same voltage.

Most of this stuff has been used in RVs for years so you can get some ideas there. Incidentally, there are RV televisions if you want to save a little more energy.

https://www.amazon.com/Free-Signal-TV-Transit-Powered/dp/B07CBSGR5F/ref=sr_1_4

Claims 49W so about 4 amps at 12VDC.

Modern TVs run on low voltage DC internally so they have power supplies that convert 120VAC to low voltage DC.

The idea about putting the batteries in a root cellar is valid. If you can put them deep enough in the ground, they won't freeze even if they get run down. Running them too low is hard on a lead acid battery, but freezing is usually a killer.

Some things make sense in different seasons. For example gas lights. Horrible in the summer when the solar cells and LEDs work well, but provide some needed heat in the winter when the solar cells are weak.

It will take some time and experimentation to come up with the best solutions for your needs.


Jerry

dave you need one of those fancy electric generators and maybe a windmill to cover your camp! ask Red Green to come out and fix it all up! he cant be far away. you should just run outlets and lights like we did at our deer camp and plug in the Honda 3000 to the outside. we have the shed for it so it just purrs basically. it never shuts off for 3 weeks at a time, and we have a lot running in our camp during the season. and they way we did it, we can back feed a plug in for a couple 12v lights as well with a deep cycle if we need. we just did a simple water tank upstairs and pipe to the sink for water, lasts all season now. you got a great place out there, Build on!