Small-scale solar panels about the size of a door are poised to be plugged into more U.S. homes and apartments as homeowners and renters who want to harness the sun’s energy look for cheaper alternatives to rooftop installations.
A project I keep putting off is a solar power cart. Something that is the form factor of a hand truck, that I can wheel around my property, lift up into my pickup truck, etc. A solar panel on the “front” (that may unfold into a wider area but should fold up to approximately hand truck size), enough battery, charger, inverter etc. to:
run a typical household refrigerator more or less indefinitely, maybe with enough power to spare to run an LED lamp for a couple hours a night.
Do ANYTHING a standard wall socket can do for at least a few minutes. If I plug in something that draws 15 amps, it should deliver 15 amps, at least briefly. No instant brown-outs or popped breakers or magic smoke because ‘This outlet can only supply 5 amps and you just have to know that.’
Hurricanes, snow storms, tornadoes, dead trees, vehicle accidents and at least one Republican campaign rally down at the substation have taken my power down, and I’d like to just have the solution to that without dealing with gasoline in jerry cans. And most of the year I’d like to run power tools off-grid.
A project I keep putting off is a solar power cart. Something that is the form factor of a hand truck, that I can wheel around my property, lift up into my pickup truck, etc. A solar panel on the “front” (that may unfold into a wider area but should fold up to approximately hand truck size), enough battery, charger, inverter etc. to:
Hurricanes, snow storms, tornadoes, dead trees, vehicle accidents and at least one Republican campaign rally down at the substation have taken my power down, and I’d like to just have the solution to that without dealing with gasoline in jerry cans. And most of the year I’d like to run power tools off-grid.