Video: Solar Power
Added 2022-10-20 16:35:28 +0000 UTCFor those who haven't seen it, this is my summary of my beginner experience with solar power stuff.
Been talking further about this with my more skilled (and heavily invested) friend. He's saying that with the bigger capacity systems, such as an all-in-one Bluetti box that outputs up to 5 KW, there are serious efficiency problems running the inverter. That is, you lose stored energy by running the DC->AC converter all the time, so for someone like me just running a laptop off the inverter, having a higher-output box would be a waste. It could be better to have a low-output box for small loads like that, and have a high-output inverter only for heavy loads like a small oven or a power tool. In North America no device supposedly uses more than 1500W regularly or a surge above 1850W, so a 2000W box should be able to handle a high-load device, a 3000W box probably two of them. He proposed a kind of ghetto method of raising battery capacity: using a car/boat battery as an input for the small inverter box, and recharging that from the panels. I'm a bit leery.
