Portable Solar Generator

[chrisski]

Built this with the intent of emergency back up power.  1200 wh @ 24 volts and 50 ah.  Uses a 300 watt inverter with a 15 amp SCC and 600 watts of panels.  Provides enough power with panels to the lithium batteries to keep the inverter running, with a little left over to charge the batteries at the same time.  I've used this with a 4 quart crockpot and several USB charging ports.



Please note, the battey in the pic is 600 wh, but has been upgraded to 1200 wh.

Can cook 4 quarts of food in four to eight hours on high depending on what is cooked.

[MagnetJuice]

Nice setup Chris, welcome to Fieldlines.

I love it when people build things from scratch.

Thanks for sharing.

Ed

[Simen]

Really nice Chris!

I made a similar setup some years back, but with a 12V, 55Ah LiFePO battery, 300W inverter, and a 10A solar regulator.


Added some usb ports after the pic was taken. I use it around where ever i need some power, and it still works flawless.

[chrisski]

Thanks guys.  I joined hoping to learn more about wind, hopefully how to build a small wind turbine capable of 150 wh - 250 wh that would be portable and make this power over the course of two hours.  The sunset and sunrise winds of a coupe of the places I stay at.

[MagnetJuice]

I think that a portable 200-watt turbine is possible.

The simplest and lightest would be a Savonius.

If you have strong winds, it doesn’t have to be very big.

What are the wind speeds at those times?

Ed

[chrisski]

I think I’ll get a wind meter this year.  The weather channel says 15 knots, but I suspect even higher at my location.  It’s the type of winds that come down the valley at the edge of a mountain.  One place is next to a lake.  Portable solar panels will blow away nearly every night and the RV can shake.  These winds will come out of nowhere, wnd last for two hours.  One place this happens at sunset, the other just before sunrise.  he weather stations I mentioned are removed by several miles.

What I’d been thinking is a small turbine, mounted on a 10’ pole, and that pole would be mounted inside a truck hitch and secured with a baseplate.  Securing guy wires at both these places would be very difficult with the hard , rocky gravel.

[SparWeb]

Great minds think alike.  I made one using an insulated cooler many years ago. The batteries stayed in the cooler.  Screwed to the lid was a box for the inverter. 

I'm planning to refurbish it soon, in fact, because I'd like to start using it again as the power source to drive my tower winch - then stow indoors when not in use.  To keep the batteries topped up it can tether to my main bank.

[bigrockcandymountain]

Nice work on the generator.  That's an extremely useful build.

I like your ideas so far on the turbine.  Maybe a pole that sticks in the hitch and a couple braces that brace in the stake pockets of the truck.  That would be good for 3' diameter i would think, maybe more.

[chrisski]

With the generator, I've gotten 25 kwh with 6 weeks of use.  My charger had not yet arrived for my bigger lithium battery, so I used the SCC from this to charge that battery up, about 9 kwh.  The rest is from a few crockpot meals.
=======
For the windmill, This is what I want to use for the truck hitch:

Only thing I'd like to add is something like a flag pole base for the bottom of the pole:

[MagnetJuice]

When you said that you wanted to build your own turbine, I don’t know if you meant that you wanted to build everything from scratch or to buy one already built and mount it on a pole.

It would be cheaper and faster to buy one already made. However, when the turbine fails, and it will fail, you would have to fix it yourself or buy another one.

If you build it yourself, you will learn a lot and have fun doing it too. And if something goes wrong, you will know how to fix it yourself.

Ed

[chrisski]

I’ve got the “Wind Turbine Recipe Book,” but had not considered building a small one.  I had planned on purchasing a small turbine to see how it worked out.  This may be next year’s project after I finish off the solar build for my RV.

[Mary B]

I have a steel drive on mount for the top 3 sections of a BX64 Rohn tower. Tilt up for the tower(locks in place with a bolt or hitch pin)Lay mount on ground, park on it, attach tower sections and antenna, walk it up and pin it in place. We used it to activate rare grid squares in MN/ND/SD on ham radio VHF.

A similar design for a mast would work well for a smaller wind turbine. Keep in mind whatever you walk up gets heavier and heavier as you get to 45 degrees...