I’m only half kidding. I’m a bit of a prepper and I have lots of powerbanks and devices that charge from USB but besides idling my truck I really had no other way to charge any of them in case of a long-term power outage which seemed a bit of an oversight on my part.
Not like this solves the issue. 30 watts (under ideal conditions) isn’t much but it’s a start.
I got one of those Anker Solix boxes, and a couple hundred watts worth of solar panels. I kinda want it rather than a generator for power outages. I’ve tested it, on battery alone it’ll power my fridge for about ten hours, with the panels I have the practical limit is about 24. And I’m not at the limit of number of panels I can install.
But, it has an interesting thing about it: It has a Time of Use feature. So if you’ve got peak power billing, you can set it to run whatever’s attached to it on battery during peak time and recharge during off-peak or discount hours. So it may get attached to my fridge for that purpose, with or without solar.
See that is where I find they ca get more useful. When you have a non emergency use for them as well.
I haven’t had a powercut for more than 5 minutes in my entire life. Have wondered if power at my allotment shed is worth setting up but not super keen on spending many hundreds/thousands it would take for any garden power tools and a generator would probably be a better option.
Lower power things might not be so bad. Though I really hate how modern powertools use proprietary batteries and each brand uses a different one. A powertool battery charger could be a modest size solar/battery setup.
I have a backyard shed that serves as a small but competent woodworking shop. It is connected to the house via a single 20A circuit. Running table saws, routers, planers, jointers plus lighting and dust collection can get to be a lot on one circuit, so I can haul the battery bank out there for more.
Just recharging power tool batteries and things like that, you could get away with a smaller unit. 1kWh or lower, with one, maybe 2 100W panels?
Depends on tool usage. My thinking was my strimmer at my allotment. Its used for an hour a month at most.
I would kinda like a battery that could provide mains so I don’t need to worry about different proprietary batteries for all sorts of garden tools tbh. But those kinds of battery can cost a lot if you want a jackery battery with 2kW output.
Maybe DIY is something to look at. But generally seems like pretty expensive stuff. Or just reject technology and use a grass hook instead. If I can find where I left it.
I assume you’re in the UK (who else has “allotments”) and I assume I’m from the US (planers and jointers?). That’ll matter when talking about the power grid; The US and UK grids, and appliances that plug into them, are engineered differently.
So to keep confusion down, I’m going to call Jackery-type devices “power stations” and the lithium power packs you plug into power tools “drill batteries.”
The power station I have is an Anker-Solix C2000 Gen 2, it has a 2048 watt-hour battery and an inverter that will sustain 2400 watts and peak to 4800. It’ll not only run, but START, my 13 inch DeWalt thickness planer, and it’ll take 800 watts of solar DC in. It cost $900 plus a few hundred in solar power and I’m not even maxxed out on it.
If you want a little unit you can install on your shed with a solar panel on the roof to just recharge the occasional drill battery, that’s WAY overkill. You probably don’t even need one that can deliver full standard wall socket power. A typical American wall outlet puts out 1800 watts, my drill battery charger uses a small fraction of that. I bet you could get away with a power station in the 300-500 watt range with a 50-100 watt solar panel. I would double check by putting a meter on your tool battery charger to see how much power they take. Do they make Kill-A-Watts in fish-and-chips flavor or only cheeseburger flavor?
Maybe I wasn’t clear, the idea was to use it to power plug in garden tools instead of ones that have their own battery. To use that as an alternative to each power tool using a different proprietary battery that sometimes can’t even be bought separately.
240vAC is standardised in a way that power tool batteries are not and probably never will be. I suppose 2-3kW output may be excessive but I don’t want to get one that may need to be replaced if I was to get a new tool that uses more.
Capacity could be far lower than the jackery style power stations come with, its output wattage that is needed with a comparably low capacity.
Oh you want to go with CORDED tools. There I couldn’t give you direct guidance because the difference in voltage/current standards, I don’t know what kind of amperage or wattage your collection of tools would require, especially since you haven’t bought them yet.
I don’t have the problem you’re facing though with non-standard batteries; I have a pretty large collection of cordless tools that all take the same batteries. From a chainsaw and lawnmower to a miter saw and palm router. I’ve got like 10 of the batteries in various sizes and about 20 tools. The weirdest one in my collection is a drill battery powered soldering iron.
Each power tool manufacturer uses their own proprietary battery and I don’t want to be locked into a single brand of tool or have to buy a shitload of adaptors or batteries.
Tbh its tempting to go with manual tools instead. Return to tradition and use a scythe instead of a strimmer.