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.
Judging by the comment section, this is also the secret solarpunk forum.
All i need is a gun to kill the local prepper and I’m set.
A looter - finally!
- That local prepper, probably
The prepper will likely be camped and there will be signs someone’s been in the area recently, the looter or looters would have a pretty big advantage.
Doesn’t the defending side in a war usually suffer fewer casualties?
If you’re talking about an entrenched battle. A looter would have the element of surprise, which in a 1v1 is basically an instant win.
See preppers camp, setup in some shrubs, wait, pew pew, now you have the preppers stuff.
Good point, if you observe from a safe distance and setup an ambush.
Be sure to check your local raid boss’s tier now before the content releases. A lot of them you’ll be able to solo with the right load out, but if you’re unlucky you’ll need to start putting together your party roster now because they aren’t all made to be soloed.
I’m gonna give this warning: I have a panel of that type but much larger. It’s rated at ~200 watts. I’ve never seen it make more than 80. I don’t think it’s a great idea to make large, flexible solar panels, I bet something internal is cracked in it. It’s…virtually impossible to handle gently. It has kick stands on 3 of its 4 panels and you CANNOT stop that one inner panel from twisting. So…I am going to avoid that style of panel if it’s larger than, say, a book. OP’s 30 watt panel is probably fine but if you’re dealing in the hundreds of watts honestly my glass panels are easier to deal with.
I don’t think this is able to reach the full 30 watts either. Probably closer to 20 under ideal conditions.
The panels themselves aren’t flexible - just the “hinges” between them. I don’t think the portability makes much sense with larger panels than this. Better just go with a proper setup at that point.
Yeah I have 100 watt panels that make 70 or 80 most of the time; those ratings are for “ideal conditions” which I take to mean “perfectly aligned, in space.”
As to the rigidity: It is a little flexible, compared to glass and aluminum. I bet it’s perfectly serviceable at smaller sizes, but when it’s 7 feet (2.13 Celsius) long:
the damn thing sags under its own weight. They shouldn’t be made this big. Those glass panels together have the same rating and they actually work worth a damn.
Nuclear war is followed by nuclear winter, which, among other things is caused by thick clouds, sorry!
Is OP prepping for nuclear war though?
Well for the apocalypse. Nuke war is the more probable cause i would say. Asteroid hitting could be too and that also means clouds
We’re not going to nuke each other. Everyone is gonna die of dysentery from Texas’ lettuce-borne ass plague.
I’d rather take the nuke to the face, personally
Be careful. Those things are addicting.
That’s how I started: a little 5v, 6 watt panel I stuck in the window to charge my phone while I worked. Then I wanted to charge some other stuff, so I got a 15W panel. 15w panel was nice, but 100 watts was much better, so I bought two 100W fold-up panels like you’ve got.
Then I bought a big 1 KWh power station that could supply up to 2000 watts. I take it camping and charge it from the two 100W fold up panels.
But, sadly, the demon had its claws in me and refused to let go. “Why should I only use that solar power two or three times a year?” the voice said. So I bought 4x 200 watt panels so I could use the power station to power my homelab and refrigerator during the day.
Still, that wasn’t enough to satiate my addition. Now I’ve got 4 KW on the roof, 32 KWh of house battery, and a 10 KW inverter that is currently powering our house.
Am I satiated now? Only time will tell.
Have you calculated how long it takes/took to pay for itself?
All of the labor has been DIY, and I’ve got about $9,000 invested in the system components.
Back of the napkin math, at current electric rates, puts my ROI at just under 9 years. If electric rates keep going up, it’ll pay back even faster.
Edit: Depending on how you look at it, ROI could be in as few as 1.5 to 2 years. This system is in lieu of a whole house generator that would have cost us about $7,000. Had we gone with that instead, it would never have paid for itself (other than peace of mind) and we would have been perfectly content. So if I’m only considering the price difference between this and the generator, it’d only have to pay back $2,000.
Yeah, buying peace of mind when it comes to self sufficient power generation has no price tag. Decentralization of the grid is a good thing regardless of if you “pay it off” or not.
buying peace of mind when it comes to self sufficient power generation has no price tag
$10,000? $100,000? 75% of your salary for the rest of your life?
It obviously does have a price tag at some point. If someone wanted true self-sufficiency they’d have to get a full solar setup plus a generator in case the grid went down at a time when solar power wasn’t covering the needs. (That’s likely if, for example, your power is knocked out due to wildfires, and the wildfire smoke is making the solar setup unable to produce power.)
And, you can’t really consider yourself fully self-sufficient when it comes to electrical power unless you have a n+1 setup, so you have a backup generator in case the primary one fails and needs to be repaired.
Sure if you want to be hyperbolic about it, but in my experience with people that argue like that, they will also say dumb things such as government owned entities such as schools, public transport, postal service or water access needing to make profit or its just all bad …
If you enjoy it, it already has.
I get you but it was worth the money you spent ≠ it earned back the money you spent.
Okay but for real how long
have battery system and solar since jan 2023, still love it
Time, in hours (H), equals average solar kilowatt hours per month (K), multiplied by the price of one kilowatt hour (P), divided by the total cost © of all the purchased components.
H = (K * P) / C
I’m sure if you were patient and dedicated enough, you could approximate each of those numbers using the info OP has already posted and get a general idea (weeks, months, or years).
Time, in hours (H), equals average solar kilowatt hours per month (K), multiplied by the price of one kilowatt hour (P), divided by the total cost © of all the purchased components.
H = (K * P) / C
So you’re dividing the average saving per month by the total cost and expecting to get hours?
If we generously estimate a very high 3000kWh/month generated and high $0.40/kWh price and it cost OP $9000, then you formula is (3000×0.40)/9000 = 0.133 hours.
Breaking even after less than 1 hour?!??! Extraordinary!
It’s pretty easy to cry about bad math, but it’s a lot harder to figure out the right math.
Don’t worry, I’ll try to do it for you again a second time.
Power consumption varies. Use the average monthly power draw from the solar array, let’s assume for demonstration purposes 1,000 kWh/month.
Multiply that by the cost of 1 kWh from the power company, let’s say 20 cents.
In one month, that means you saved $200.
Let’s assume the solar equipment costs $1,000.
The answer is 5 months, or 5,000 kWh.
Sorry, I’ll make sure the free work I do for you is better quality next time.
Bro. Don’t act like this basic arithmetic and unit cancelation is hard. Not my fault you were so confidently incorrect.
Or I could read the comment where he said
Then do that instead of asking random people who aren’t in any position to know.
It was more of a comment on your comment
A hobby pays itself just by enjoying it. I’ve never calculated how long it will take to pay off my gaming rig
I recently got a bluetti for off grid onsite work and it has awoken something in me. It’s like carrying a wall outlet around with you, absolutely incredible.
Needless to say I think I have caught the bug. Where would you point a feller who wanted to walk your path and learn more?
I’m more of a hands-on learner but that can get expensive depending on the hobby haha. For going solar, I’m still very much in progress but definitely on the path to where i want to be.
Basically the first step is to decide what your goal is. Do you want to go totally off grid? Just reduce your electric bill? Have backup power? All/some of the above?
If you only want to reduce your bill, check into what’s called grid-tied or “balcony solar”. That’s the easiest to get started with, but it requires cooperation from the electric company since you’re feeding back into the grid. I can’t do that here, so I went with a standalone/battery-based system.
Once you identify your goal(s), you’ll need to figure out what your “base” load is, and then how much your peak loads are so you know what size system to shoot for. Then you’ll need to choose an inverter that can meet those with some extra capacity for unforeseen spikes. I started with a 10KW system, but it’s also expandable up to 60 KW( 6 units in parallel). My house only has 100A service, so two inverters would actually give me more power than I can currently get from the power company lol.
For the panels, you can really only expect to get 60-80% of their rated output most of the time. The rated output is under perfect alignment with the sun, at the perfect angle, and with absolutely no obstructions. In practice, you’ll never see that. As an example, I usually only get between 3 and 3.4 KW out of my 4 KW system on the best of days. This is normal.
For batteries, they’re technically optional depending on your goals. If you just want to shave some money off your electric bill, you can forego the batteries and the inverters will happily mix PV and utility to power your loads during the day. e.g. If you’re drawing 1,000 watts and only getting 900 watts from PV, then it’ll make up the missing 100 watts from utility power.
I sized my batteries based on my average daily usage plus an extra 10 KWh. We use about 20 KWh per day, so I got two 16 KWh batteries for a total of 32 KWh. That means, if there’s no (usable) sunshine at all and we lose power, I can run the whole house for a little over a full day. Any sun hitting the panels will reduce the current draw from the batteries while also charging them if we use less than the PV is producing.
The longest power outage we had was about 29 hours, but if we typically experienced multi-day outages, I might have gone for a larger battery.
I had a much longer reply written up, but it barely scratched the surface. So hope this helps in a general sense but happy to answer any specific questions if I can.
Thank you for the primer! I find it very interesting and you’ve certainly given me plenty of things to research and learn more about.
I think my biggest goal is actually power stability but the cheaper power bill would be a welcome bonus. In my new shop the table saw seems to trip it’s little built in circuit breaker a lot more often when it is cutting thick hardwood than it did in my old shop. Unless the blade is sharp as shit resawing on the table saw is a distant memory lol.
I think it’s because the run from the road to the house main is a long run and then from the house main 60 amps is routed out to the shop which is another long run out to the shops breaker box. Then from there I use a 25 ft 12 awg extension cord to power the saw and dust collector via an automatic vacuum switch. The saw very rarely tripped at the old house when the total run from the road to the saw was less than 50 feet and I never did it any favors. But now that it is hundreds of feet away from the source I think the voltage drops off and it over heats and trips the sawstops little breaker.
I hope that made sense, I’m a carpenter not an electrician lol. What I think I need is a battery set up for the shop that acts like a giant Uninterruptible Power Supply to combat the “dirty” power and put the saw closer to the source. The ability to power a hybrid solar/dehumidifier kiln in the future from the shop without sacrificing power reliability would also be something I would want to consider.
Thank you again for the write up on your setup!
What about a neighborhood scale micro utility company/collective?
ew socialism
That’s the dream though
Am I satiated now? Only time will tell.
I haven’t heard you say a word about your solar powered electric car…
Check back in 2-3 years when I (hope to) get an EV. I’m sure I’ll be crowing about it then 😆
In the mean time, would you like to hear about my solar powered lawn mower?
Unironically yes haha. I hope it’s just a manual lawn mower that you have your son push around.
Lol, no. And if you were expecting something clever like a goat, sorry to disappoint lol. Just a basic battery-electric push mower that I’ve charged from solar panels all season.
Could setup a solar powered desalination plant to water your garden too
I’ve been looking to get a so-called “Chinese diesel heater” to my shed to keep it warm over the coldest days in winter when electricity is very expensive and the two small radiators designed to only keep it above freezing can no longer keep up. However, those run off 12V DC and power supplies seem to be surprisingly hard to come by. Easiest solution would be a car battery and a trickle charger but I’ve thought about just setting up a tiny solar system instead because then I would have a kind of off-grid location to fall back to. My house doesn’t have a fireplace either but the shed does (sauna). This would also allow me to charge all my tool batteries that require a standard outlet.
For heating, I’ve been wanting to try a solar collector. Not sure if you’ve come across Greenhill Forge on YouTube or anywhere that covers his projects, but he does all sorts of off-grid stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cPuVZjnbi4
That’s where he builds and tests several different styles of solar collectors for solar heating. The collectors are pretty inexpensive to build so that may be an option if you just want to (help) keep a shed warm.
That’s a weird panel to battery ratio. Guess you’ve gotta work on that now. Got more room on your roof, preferably south-facing?
Though if there are ground systems that can aim the panels and you have room there, that could be really cool.
The usable south-facing roof area is full, unfortunately. I’ll have to do ground mount in the back yard and run a bunch of conduit if I want to add any more PV.
The 32 kWh of batteries are made of two 16 kWh batteries in parallel. Since this system is in lieu of a backup generator, I have it configured to only draw the batteries down to 50%. That leaves the bottom 16 kWH available for emergency use. Basically, for day to day usage, I treat the battery as being half the capacity it really is.
I’ve only been running this system for about 3 weeks now, but the batteries have been operating between 65% and 90% pretty consistently even running the A/C pretty heavily. They’ve been closer to low 60s this past week, but the wildfire smoke was choking out the sunlight Thursday and Friday.
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.
about $0.06 USD/kWh
😭 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.
UNLIMITED POWER!
Am I satiated now? Only time will tell.
🤣
This can power a Steam Deck. Good choice.
Can it charge up enough batteries to run a typical Factorio session? So until sunrise where you can start charging the accumulators again.
If you weren’t using your Steam Deck all-out during the day then probably. Steam Decks draw about 29W max (the LCD models I have at least).
Factorio GPU demands are fairly low, CPU will be maxed out by late game though…
You can buy a 100ah battery and 200w solar blanket for fairly cheap. its not a terrible idea to be a little bit prepped. Saw a car on youtube the other day that was 8k, had 10kwh battery, range of 150k and had a retractable roof solar panel that gives the car 55km a day of solar generation. perfect for the apocalype. cruise around the wastelands in style.
Lol just watched a video on it yesterday.
had 10kwh battery, range of 150k
That doesn’t really math out, its like 3 times the efficiency that car manufacturers normally give, and they already assume optimal conditions.
That sounds more like a beach buggy with a battery bolted to the back and a top speed of 40 on an even road.
It is the Solarky SunV, it has an aluminum frame and plastic panels. It probably wouldn’t pass safety inspections in EU/US and is really designed as a step up from motor bikes in places like Thailand and where I live in Mexico. I think the safety regulations and requirements for people in sprawl cities like the US are overkill for most of the rest of the world. I’ve had people on lemmy tell me that 200 km range isn’t enough but that is around how much I drive in a week lol. I never need it to go highway speeds, there are no highways thru my city only connecting to the next and for that I’d prefer the bus. For puttering around to my friends house or to grab something from the store I can’t walk to it would be perfect. I have a BYD Dolphin now.
It can pass EU safety if apply for a L6/L7 vehicle category
But from the website it looks like vaporware…
I don’t really know anything about the EU other than they have a lot of regulations. I’ll probably never go there.
These cars exist and have been sold in Thailand and Indonesia for the past few months, there are tons of videos about them on Youtube. Most people on Lemmy live in places where Chinese EVs are illegal and have no idea what we have available now. These are just typical cheap EVs with a retractable panel on top.
Interesting, it’s not vaporware, Google already tracked my Lemmy posts and showed me this in the YT algorithm
This is enough for my commute, I would never need to pay for energy again. Problem is that European resellers are going to sell that for at least 25k
Wow, got a link?
car
perfect for the apocalype
battery
Yeah. Right.
With a carousel of 3 poorly AI-generated images.
Jokes on you when they nuke the sky
That’s why I skipped solar panels and went straight to human bioenergy pods
LOL “…but we know it was us who blacked the sky.”
—Morpheus (And not the Timothée Chalamet version)
also not the Highlander 2: The Quickening version where they blacked out the sky to stop global warming
At least that was just a shield you could disable by throwing an immortal alien through.
Nice! I’m gonna have to go back and watch that… either I’ve never seen that version or I’d completely forgotten about that detail.
And I even watched the TV show ;-)
It’s probably the worst of the Highlanders. There was an updated version called The Renegade Cut that might be better.
I had no clue they had made so many. Thanks for the bonus tip… was it just bad-bad or cheesy bad? Because I feel like a large part of the appeal for me is the vague cheesiness of the whole series.
Edit: Got a Standard directors cut, and the renegade version… But in the process, I rediscovered that I recently downloaded Hot to Trot because it was on somebody’s list of worst movies ever. So I’m gonna have to watch that first 😝
Highlander 2 just makes no sense in general. They bring in some crazy shit about the immortals being aliens from the planet “Zeist” and ridiculous stuff like MacCloud riding a flying hoverboard happens.
It’s still worth watching at least once though
Oh man… it’s coming back to me now. Was there some kind of weird council of space-elders or something like that? I kinda vaguely remember a scene where MacCloud testifying and lights going on like campfire ghost stories when each person talks?
IDK, I might be mixing in some Dr. Who 🤓
I think if it gets down to it, you’re not going to worry too much about your shiny toys when you haven’t eaten in three days.
Why wouldn’t I have eaten in three days?
Taco truck dude got eaten by clowns
How do you define apocalypse? You’re just larping, friend.
You’re just larping, friend.
Please elaborate. I have nothing against larping but that doesn’t seem to carry utility beyond the enjoyment gained from the act itself. A small solar panel, however, seems useful for any scenario ranging from a few day power outage to full societal collapse and zombies. It’s a genuine functional panel - not a prop.
How will a solar panel help against full societal collapse? I am on tenterhooks.
I can charge my flashlights/lanterns, powerbanks, tool batteries, a phone with offline maps and offline wikipedia …
OK buddy, good luck.
What’s with that passive-aggressive smugness? If you’ve got something to say then say it.
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.
I’ve got one of these for camping. It’s great for keeping my phone charged when there is no power available.
I have stockpiled an absolutely MASSIVE amounts of manure. That shit is going to be worth a fortune in the future. Every paycheck, I dump at least 10% of it into buying the freshest cow pie I can find. The neighbors hate me, but we’ll see who gets the last laugh when they sell their in-laws into indentured servitude to afford a bag of my brown gold!
Doesn’t it have a limited shelf life? Do you need to maintain it?
Well, I keep it fresh by urinating on it. I collect all my family’s urine in a bathtub so we can have an extra sanitary bath once a week, together, and then I dump the leftover on the pile with this big crane I rigged up outta grocery carts.
I didnt know the meaning of “manure” but it became clear by the end of the paragraph
The more solar the better. As much as is safe, reasonable, and affordable. A lot of little things add up. Great work dude!
The material and electronics are not neutral though. Usually it’s more efficient to have a big shared solar plant than having everyone build their own systems. It’s not just about the source being renewable.
There is value in decentralization and redundancy though.
im always wanted to setup solar panel in mountain to reduce hiker gone missing type stuff
You thinking about setting up a public charging spot in the wilderness? I like that.
Also be careful storing powerbanks at full charge, charge them at 80% or ideally around half for maximum longevity
Also don’t charge devices directly from solar power because voltage changes drastically due to sun movement and clouds. Better load a power bank and use that to charge the other devices as power banks are much more resilient to changing voltages.
don’t charge devices directly from solar power
Unless your power bank has a built in charge controller, this should also include your power bank. At its core, a power bank is nothing more than a big ass lithium ion (or maybe potassium ion, if it’s newer) battery, just like the one in any other device.
potassium ion, if it’s newer
i think you mean sodium ion?
Potassium ion?
You’re saying I can ditch the lemons and power my potato with bananas?
You’re better off using the bananas as nuclear fuel. I hear they’re radioactive
Indeed. They’re all the rage in China right now (I AM NOT A TANKIE). Some are predicting they’re the “next generation” of battery technology.
Errr I am pretty sure those are currently only in use in prototyping and research, did you mean a different battery technology?
Yeah, I think I meant Sodium-ion
That makes more sense. I’m still skeptical. Sodium ion is being sold as safer than lithium ion, but I just read a paper that shows its still worse than LFP. time will tell
It also saves a lot of money to do this. I’ve found it takes almost as much power to go from 80 to 100 as it does to go from 0 to 80.
It doesn’t. It takes longer to charge to 100, but the efficiency is basically the same. The amp draw drops after 80%. If you are using a engine to charge, you would lose efficiency because of the extra time, but using solar wouldn’t have this issue.
Yeah 30 watts isn’t enough. The rule of thumb for off grid is it needs to be able to boil water (12A power station)
It seems they just wanted something to help power their devices during an outage. You can use fire (like your stove) to boil water during a power outage.
30 watts into a power bank that can output more watts on demand should keep your phone and one laptop usable indefinitely unless you use them 24/7.
Obviously a proper setup in the range of at least a few kilowatts would be more useful, but that’s expensive, may require permitting (changes appearance of the house), etc.
Do you really need electricity to light a fire? 🤔
You need a safe place to burn. It’s illegal where I live.
Who’s arresting me during the apocalypse?
If you are preparing for an emergency situation, laws like that probably don’t apply anymore.
Don’t you have a fireplace, or can’t you get/build one? Even if it is a temporary stove.
You have multiple options. The most popular one is probably a hobostow. :)
With 30watts, you can power the electrical lighter to light a fire. Or something like that.
Or just use some matches or a lighter…
If we’re boiling water why not skip the middle man and get a solar kettle?
Why not wood stove?
I live in Sonora Mexico, sun is abundant, wood isn’t
OP probably doesn’t. This is something I find odd about replies to stuff like this.
Hey guys, got 30w! Should be plenty.
Omg no you need 50kW to run a desalination plant.
But I have a fresh water spring next to me?
Yeah but I live next to the dead sea.
Obviously discussing different use cases and needs is cool, but some seem to try and apply requirements to others when it doesn’t really apply to them.
If you actually read this thread it would make more sense right? Are you able to read? Do you know how conversations in a thread work?
OP says they got 30w, they don’t actually say it “should be plenty” and you just made that up and in fact plainly says “it isn’t much but it is a start”
The person who replied to them says “Yeah 30 watts isn’t enough. The rule of thumb for off grid is it needs to be able to boil water (12A power station)”
to which the next person says “If we’re boiling water why not skip the middle man and get a solar kettle?” please note this one because this is where the context for my comment comes from
then the next person says “Why not wood stove?”
If you were able to understand how threaded conversations work you’d understand I was agreeing with 9point6@lemmy.world who said why don’t you skip the middle man and get a solar kettle and giving a reason to thatGuyWithGlasses who said why not a wood stove. In some places, like in my specific use case, a solar kettle makes more sense than a wood stove.
Then you wrote to me your non sequitur post about whatever it is you wrote that doesn’t accurately reflect OP and doesn’t accurately reflect the thread.
I’ve kept the old wood stoves in my house just in case I ever need them. I used them all last winter cause they were all I had at the time. Learned how to chop wood and start a fire and everything. It was kinda fun, but hard work. Defo not something anyone should have to do their whole life, but perhaps something everyone should try once. Quite humbling
EDIT: I used them for heating. Had to keep a fire going about 3 hours a day in each
Love my Kelly kettles - yes I have multiple, different sizes. Gathering wood to boil enough hot water to make tea for 6 people? About 30 seconds of work. Once you have filled 1 hand with sticks and twigs that is about enough firewood.
My primary heat source is the wood stove. I have my heat pump as back up.
I have a 400 yo oak tree shading by home and a metal roof so I only need to turn on the ac from 5-8pm in the hottest days of summer.
Wood is a potentially scarce resource, access to it is situational, it requires significant storage space, wood smoke is bad for you, fire is dangerous and requires skill to manage that can take a long time to learn, same goes for the process of preparing the wood.
Depends a lot on what you are making and how. Haybox cookers require very little fuel. Just get the food up to almost boiling point and that is all the fuel you need.
I looked up haybox cookers, seems like a neat idea to insulate already boiling water, but a wood fire doesn’t seem like the most convenient or efficient choice if what you want is to efficiently heat something up a specific amount but no more.
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.
Depends what you actually need power for. If you just want to power some basic communication devices and batteries for them, 30w may well be overkill.
I have multiple ways to boil water that take no electricity at all.
