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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 the power station first out of necessity, but am now at the point of desperately trying to justify adding solar panels even though I don't camp or anything. I fear it could become obsessive though.
Maybe I keep can limit myself to only as many panels as I own violins? That would be a fair number… Or at least cap it off at the number of musical instruments in the house? That would leave some room to grow, if I can count my wife's ukulele collection!
Instead of looking at number of panels, look at the total wattage. How many watts does it take to charge your power station? 30W-100W portable solar panels like these should work well for that. You could even go a little higher than what you need because of things like inline charging and dual charging, so you can charge multiple devices at once and still keep the power station topped off. That's a good starting point.
Next, ask yourself how much wattage you could regularly use it for on a normal day. Ignore high-wattage appliances at first, like refrigerators, a/c, heater, stove, coffee pot, hairdryer, etc. Basically anything that produces high temperatures or has a motor a motor. But what else could you power on it? Chargers, homelab, router, etc.? There's your second expansion. Probably some larger one-off panels and a couple power stations
Lastly, ask yourself what wattage you would need to run all your necessities in the case of an emergency with a long-term power outage. That's when you calculate the high-wattage appliances. This will probably require a full rooftop solar installation.
So no need to dive all the way in at first if you can't afford to yet, but don't let that discourage you from getting some smaller panels to start.
Glorious advice, thanks !
It is a nice set of things to ask oneself. Motivating a question is way better for learning.
What are inline and dual charging ? My internet query wasnt fruitful.
Also, by "power station" do you mean batteries? Because I'm curious what specs to consider, say, for a camping day vs home setup
Lol, def can become an obsession. First hand experience there.
I've wanted a whole house PV system for a long time, and this is just me finally getting around to making it happen. SO and I were talking about getting a backup generator installed, but that would have been about $7,000 for something that would only get used two or three times a year since our power doesn't go out often (we have no heat or ability to cook when the power goes out, and it's always in the dead of winter when we lose power). The PV system I sketched out was about $9.000, but in addition to covering us during outages, we could use it daily to reduce electric bill so, unlike the generator, this would pay for itself over time.
SO finally came around to my way of thinking, so here we are lol. My limiting factor is usable roof area. Of the roof that's south facing, only about 14x20 feet of it is suitable for mounting panels. There's a west-facing gable, but it's blocked most of the time by a tree. The east-facing side of the gable is available, but it's pretty much always foggy in the mornings here, so it wouldn't add much to the system.
Unless I build a ground mount setup in the back yard, we're pretty much at the limit of how many panels I can buy. I'm kind of glad for that because otherwise I'd just keep buying them.
I keep thinking about this. I can't justify solar when I live in a northern country and pay about $0.06 USD/kWh, but the value of resilience also counts.
😭 The per-kilowatt hour rider fees on top of my base rate per kWh are way more than that lol.
Im "lucky" enough to live in a region with abundant hydroelectric power. It's still cheaper to heat your home with natural gas here...air source heat pumps might get close when they work.