Power to the People!

[grubworm]

12v power, that is!

anyone reading my posts has probably heard me bitch about living in the swamps of south louisiana and constantly having power outages due to this geographic location being a hurricane magnet. well, i recently built a portable power station using a wheeled tool tote and a 280ah lifepo4 battery. i spent a week cutting out holes for different charging ports and wiring everything together and all that. turned out to be a nice build and works extremely well.

we just went thru a Cat 2 hurricane, francine, and lost power (again). step-daughter was staying with us out in the detached apartment and needed to run a fan. i already had my resources committed to me and i knew it was just of matter of time before her mother heard of her daughter's plight and would reallocate my resources...i had to act fast. all i had left out in the shop was a 100ah lifepo4 battery, a 300w inverter and a 110v box fan that was useless without grid power...or was it???

the battery was a LiTime mini. a 100ah battery weighing 19 pounds with a footprint of 10"x8". very light and easy to move around. i hooked the inverter to the battery and in seconds, had plenty of 110vac to run the fan and the inverter even has usb ports for millennials to charge their phones even when there isnt any service!

so just a thought, but instead of building any more power boxes...i'm just buying the lightweight batteries and mounting an inverter on top with velcro and calling it good! quick and easy and something i can use boondocking and easily move around where needed. if friends join us and they need a fan out in their tent, i can easily hand this to them and theyre good to go. even found an inverter that is 110vac with usb ports AND cigarette lighter port for running a 12v fan or 12v cooler. wish i caught on to this earlier and i would not have even bothered building that rolling battery box. the inverters are very compact and even have circuit protection that i dont have in my homemade setup. the inverter in the pic is $60 on amazon. $60 and DONE! way too easy.
its been a while since i bought an inverter and back then, they didnt have the usb ports and i had never seen one that had the cigarette lighter port built in. i usually had to wire that in separately

 

[Autism Family Travels]

How much run time do you get out of the 100aH battery? Is it just the fan running? I am trying to get 3 days powering our fridge, lights and charging phones, laptop and an ipad.

 

[grubworm]

How much run time do you get out of the 100aH battery? Is it just the fan running? I am trying to get 3 days powering our fridge, lights and charging phones, laptop and an ipad.

i got right around 30 hours of running a 12v fan on the 100ah battery. i ended up hooking the inverter to a 280ah battery and it lasted the whole time we were out of power.
for context, i have an ecoflow delta 2 which is 1200wh with a 1800w inverter built in. the delta 2 ran the 12v fan for 12 hours and took 30% of the charge. i used a 300w solar panel and had the delta 2 charged back up to 100% in under an hour. so thats roughly the same results i got off the 100ah lipo battery with a cheap inverter. i also used the delta 2 with an induction burner and it worked just fine. the delta 2 is basically a 100ah battery with charge ports and an inverter. im getting the same abilities and capacities by just hooking an inverter directly to the battery and getting the 110vac as well as my usb for charging phones. run times seem to be about the same. the delta 2 is a pure sine wave inverter and does deliver more usable power to the load than the modified sine wave inverter, so by being pure sine wave, that type inverter will probably give 15-20% longer run time off of the same battery.

as far as cost, the delta 2 is around $900 and i can get a good lipo 100ah battery and a decent 1000w inverter for under $400...or for $900, buy a 280ah battery and a 2000w inverter and have nearly triple the capacity. either velcro or strap the inverter to the battery and youre good to go...

 

[Autism Family Travels]

awesome. I think I will be fine with the 400 ah battery and a couple of solar panels putting some charge back in. Every few days it will charge from the jeep when we are towing to our next destination.

 

[grubworm]

awesome. I think I will be fine with the 400 ah battery and a couple of solar panels putting some charge back in. Every few days it will charge from the jeep when we are towing to our next destination.

400ah is pretty substantial...weights a lot, too. if youre lithium, youre probably around 90 pounds and if you are lead/acid, then probably double the weight. you wont be moving that around much.
back when i first got into solar, 100w panels were the biggest i could get, but now i have a 300w panel that is just a little bigger than my 100w/200w panels. two of the 300w panels with that 400ah battery and you can operate some stuff!
sounds like you have a good set up