Sounds like a them problem

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.

Mine is invested in the UK with a focus towards sustainability and green energy, so I am safe. Plus I don’t really care much if it doesn’t go negative. Just want to pay off my mortgage and then stop working much.

Why would it go up? In the next few years they will be even more years behind on the Mars mission they were going to be launching almost a decade ago at this point.

Seem a fair few ebikes that look incredibly proprietary and I wouldn’t want to touch it because of that. Much prefer a standardised battery I can plug into a hub motor if I was to get an ebike. Currently just using a regular bike.

There is some inefficiency in charging a battery but not that much. Main losses would be that the solar panel isn’t actually outputting 30w as you won’t be getting ideal conditions all day.

But it doesn’t necessarily matter either. 65w to charge a battery but you only need it once a week for an hour can easily be managed by 5w all day for a week.

Though planning for an apocalypse is kinda pointless anyway. Preparing for a disaster is more reasonable, such as a storm knocking out power for a while.

30w is plenty to run a few small lights and phone chargers. You can cook over a wood fire if necessary, or store food that doesn’t need cooking.

Kinda curious now what the back to reasonable normality for essential needs time is for most disasters. Don’t need to stockpile enough to last until completely rebuilt, if food supplies are going to be restored fairly quickly but housing takes a year you don’t need the full years food supply.

My strimmer battery charger takes 65w. So 8 hours of 30w to charge a battery is almost 4 hours charging the strimmer battery which would probably fill it’s small battery a few times over. If you are not depleting the strimmer battery multiple times a day, that is more than enough power.

You of course do need a battery to store it so many hours of solar are used in several minute short time loads.

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.

Factorio GPU demands are fairly low, CPU will be maxed out by late game though…

I did think of stuff like a few days away, but solar takes much more time than that to make sense over more battery.

IIRC it was about a week or so before solar starts to make sense. 2 batteries or 1 battery 1 panel. After a month the panel option gives far more energy, but 3 days the 2 batteries is going to be more.

just over an acre of highly productive riverfront land

Nice, but that is truly vast compared to most of us. I have about 40m² of usable growing space in the back garden and maybe 5m² in the front.

Also don’t have a river. Everything that isn’t drought resistant is already dead.

As for foraging, sure its fun to do. But if it became required there are now almost 100k people to compete with such a small amount of foragable land. Not going to work.

Just light a small fire and keep it pretty small and it can burn out once you are done.

I use a Kelly kettle stove a lot, tiny fire but still a few thousand watts of thermal energy. A few sticks at a time as fuel.

Its just so hard to know what something will be like and I dont want to spend a lot of money for minimal improvement. While display specs are far easier to read.

I have wondered if a good cost effective setup would be one of those solar power stations, get the smallest battery unit that can take the solar input you plan for. Then use the battery to charge USB power banks for your extra power capacity as they cost less per Wh. But the more expensive battery contains all your inverters that you need. Then just an extension lead and as many USB plugs as you like.

Natural disaster, or even just illness and you can’t go to the shops for a few days.

I have heard of people that routinely don’t have even enough food for a weekend in their house.

Vast majority of people do not own enough land to grow even close to all their own food.

I focus on the higher valued things instead. Mostly anyway. Along with experimenting with what I can get to thrive in my area.

Full apocalypse is silly to prepare for.

But interruptions are totally a valid thing. Power outage for a week following a storm for example.

In that case I would probably end up cooking over a wood fire if I am still hungry after devouring the entire content of my freezer. Not letting the ice cream go to waste!

I kinda want to get some solar for USB power, largely phones/tablets. But it doesn’t really make much sense to for me currently. Just getting another battery is a better choice and something I actually use. Solar would only make sense if I planned to need to keep recharging for an extended duration.

But at the same time solar is pretty cool… What else can I power to make use of it. Of course full home solar makes sense. But small portable stuff seems cool and affordable. Just don’t really seem like it makes sense.

Could setup a solar powered desalination plant to water your garden too