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grubworm

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12v power, that is! :grinning:

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

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grubworm

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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...

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grubworm

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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.
not to get all up in your business...but here are a couple things that might be of interest to you

400ah is a big battery. depending on the type, you might be able to use a fast charger like what i bought for my 280ah batteries. 14.6v @ 20 amps. it will really pack those electrons in there in a hurry!

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also, not sure what kind of inverter you have...since i got the 280ah batteries, i went with a 3kw pure sine wave inverter. its a tank...i ran my induction burner off of it and i got 3 cups of cold water to boil in 3 minutes. its an 1800w induction burner and according to the inverter screen, i was pulling around 1500w at the setting i had. a 400ah battery with this inverter and you could operate anything from an induction burner to a small window ac unit

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Enthusiast III

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Grand Falls-Windsor, NL, Canada
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not to get all up in your business...but here are a couple things that might be of interest to you

400ah is a big battery. depending on the type, you might be able to use a fast charger like what i bought for my 280ah batteries. 14.6v @ 20 amps. it will really pack those electrons in there in a hurry!

View attachment 284720

also, not sure what kind of inverter you have...since i got the 280ah batteries, i went with a 3kw pure sine wave inverter. its a tank...i ran my induction burner off of it and i got 3 cups of cold water to boil in 3 minutes. its an 1800w induction burner and according to the inverter screen, i was pulling around 1500w at the setting i had. a 400ah battery with this inverter and you could operate anything from an induction burner to a small window ac unit

View attachment 284721
I don't have an inverter purchased yet. I am hard mounting the battery in the "frunk" of the sylvansport Go camper. I will add the inverter and the solar charge controller in there as well. I am going to lose some space but if I can provide enough power for boondocking for 3-4 days without worry I will be extremely happy. The biggest thing I need to continuously run is our 12v chest fridge. I need that to run 24/7 for 3-4 days as I have various food allergies so food independence is huge for us. I am also looking at running the wife's hair dryer and straightner for those 3 - 4 days as well. Am I in the ball park with that? BTW, you are not "all up in my business" ha ha. I am learing everything I can with Lipo4 battery systems.

I figure with 2 foldable panels I could push some charge back into the system as well.
 
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grubworm

Rank V
Launch Member

Member III

2,358
louisiana
First Name
grub
Last Name
worm
Member #

17464

Service Branch
USN-Submarines
I don't have an inverter purchased yet. I am hard mounting the battery in the "frunk" of the sylvansport Go camper. I will add the inverter and the solar charge controller in there as well. I am going to lose some space but if I can provide enough power for boondocking for 3-4 days without worry I will be extremely happy. The biggest thing I need to continuously run is our 12v chest fridge. I need that to run 24/7 for 3-4 days as I have various food allergies so food independence is huge for us. I am also looking at running the wife's hair dryer and straightner for those 3 - 4 days as well. Am I in the ball park with that? BTW, you are not "all up in my business" ha ha. I am learing everything I can with Lipo4 battery systems.

I figure with 2 foldable panels I could push some charge back into the system as well.
i have a 65qt dometic that i used to run in our teardrop off of a 100ah agm battery that was hooked up to 200w of solar and it worked fine. even used that battery to run lights and a water pump. i find that the 12v coolers do quite well on not using a crazy amount of power...the hair dryer and hot iron will take the battery down fairly quick. heating elements like that and coffee makers, etc really suck the power, so having the 400ah is really going to help as well as charging with solar and/or vehicle altenator when traveling. if you move around a lot and dont have a lot of time to deploy the folding panels, you might also look at going with a dc-dc charger to charge from the altenator when driving. it would be nice if you could mount a flexible panel on your rig that is semi-permanent and would charge through out the day, i have permanent panels on both our campers and i even have a 50w panel mounted on top of the camper shell on my tundra. even a 50w panel charging all day helps a good bit. just have to go and see how it works and make changes as needed.
sounds like you pretty much have the power you need with the large capacity battery and any charging you can along the way should keep you in good shape