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 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.
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.
Yeah, I think it’s pretty situational. I go to a lot of festivals and travel somewhat often, so it’d be useful for me. I also don’t have a permanent home (some day… <Sigh>)
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.