<intro/housekeeping 0:00 –5:22>
Jack Spirko: So that's all wrapped up. Lets go ahead and to get into the main topic of today's show. Yesterday we had Steve on and Steve talk to us about everything batteries. Probably more some of you wanted to know but hopefully you went through that and found out the part you needed to know for your applications, for your safety concern, for your power concerns, how to put batteries up, that type of thing. Today we are going to say now we got the battery. That is one component. Let's hook it all together. Let's go with inverters. Let's look at what does and doesn't work. Lets start out with a very simple DC power system. Let's move onto AC/DC power system. Let's move one to a full battery back system and then lets move on to a mobile power station in the back of a pickup truck. Then let's find out how to put solar in touch with all of those things, specifically the mobile system because that is what I asked for. Once you can do that you could do it anywhere. That's what he is here to talk to you about today. Before I bring them on, he has got the video product. It is like $24.95 for over five hours of HD video. I told you guys yesterday, I think it would be a good idea to support the work he did and the investment he made in this, by purchasing that if you have any intention of building a backup power system ever because he has given a cheaper this month, then it will be next month, which is steal by the way. The guy has done a lot for the show and he has done a lot to teach us and that type of thing. Then finally yesterday, after I recorded that, I got to actually watch the videos. Not all of them because I didn't five hours of to dedicate to it. The production quality will blow you away. I am absolutely blown away by the production quality of the videos. I did not expect that level of a production quality. It's amazing. He did a great job. The first thing I asked what you produce this with, so I can use it myself in the future. That's how good it is. I just wanted you know, it's not just the information, it's the quality of the production that goes along with information. Which lets face it, that helps you better absorbed the information. I just wanted to put that out there for him because he deserves kudos for it because this was done in five weeks. We tried to do it in a month, but it took him one extra week. That is why we had to delayed broadcast of this show. Anyway with that, hey Steven. Man, welcome back to The Survival Podcast.
<7:27>
Steven Harris: This is going to be a heck of a show. It is really hands-on, really DIY. Now that you know what battery you want, we are going to tell you exactly what to do with it. For those of you at home, you can follow along with us with some of the stuff we're talking about, right here on the website
www.Battery1234.com.
<7:48>
Jack Spirko: Let's get straight into today because we got another show. Probably going to go 90 minutes. How can people start. What is the simplest way people can have a home battery bank right at home and have some backup power that way.
<8:02>
Steven Harris: This is a simple as it gets. We are going to start with the DC only battery pack. No inverter. You go to Walmart, you get a group 29 deep cycle marine battery. you go down the aisle a little further and you get a 6 amp or 10 amp Schumacher battery charger. It is a smart computer-controlled three stage battery charger. The 6 amp one is only $29.95. The 10 amp one is only $39.95. The marine battery will run you $95. If you're going to listen to this in the future what you're looking for, if those brands aren't there, is a computer control three stage battery charger. Not a dumb charger. Someone could be listening to this in 2015 and saying "They don't have Schumaker Walmart anymore." You put the battery in the closet or the cupboard or in the basement on a low shelf and you clamp on the battery charger. Red to positive, black to negative. You plug in the battery charger. Turn it on and move it up to its highest charging ability. In this case it would be a little red light that looks like a rabbit. There is a turtle and a rabbit, for slow and for fast. Why they don't put words there? I don't know. That will put 6 A or 10 A into the battery, and the charger will maintain the battery in 100% all the time after it's fully charged. You leave the charger on the battery all the time. When the power fails, you pick up your battery and you put it down on the kitchen or dining room table. Just set it down. It won't harm anything. Just make sure it does not fall off. 50 pounds of battery falling 3 feet will do a lot of damage to the floor and to your toes. You clamp onto the battery posts with a pair of clamps that go to a single female cigarette lighter socket. This is a 12 V power socket. Now you have 12 V coming off the battery. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can find a photograph of all the stuff in a link to these clips on Battery1234.com. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you might find on one of the shelf Walmart. Harbor Freight will have one. RadioShack definitely has a nice one, that will cost more money there. After you got the 12 V socket, now you want a 12 V splitter. This is one cigarette lighter male plug on it with 2 to 4 female sockets on it. you want to use the battery for more than one thing, otherwise you would do just one thing, charge your phone and that is it. This is also on the website. You can also find these at Walmart, Harbor Freight, and Radio Shack. I'm assuming you are going to be doing this by candlelight or it is day time but go and get your car charger for your cell phone and plug them into one of the 12 V sockets. You are now charging your cell phone from your big battery. A typical marine battery will fully charge an iPhone over 200 times. You have plenty of energy. FYI, you should all at least two car chargers for your cell phone. What you really want to own are 12 V USB chargers. These plug into the cigarette lighter socket and give you usually 2 USB ports to charge your phone, iPad, or whatever you have off of it. Most everything today charges off of a USB socket. Watch out there are lots of cheap USB car charger that only output 500 mA. You want one that does at least 1000 mA and it is better off if it does 2000 mA or 2 A. Most iPhones will take a very long time to charge on only 500 mA. You want at least 1000 milliamps to do the job quickly. All iPads and other large tablets will want to be charged at 2000 mA to charge them quickly. There are DC car chargers out not in December 2012 that are 3000 mA. One 1000 mA USB plug and one 2000 mA USB plug. I have one on the website I keep mentioning. If you want some light, in the automobile section of Walmart or in the auto store, you will usually find some type of 12 V led or 12 V compact fluorescent light with a cigarette lighter plug on it that you can plug into your battery. Some nice ones are made by company called they Bayco. As of December 2012 Walmart is carrying a nice one for about $15 or less. It has a real long cord on it and it is a compact fluorescent. It only draws 13 W. One type of these or another should always be in a good car section of any good store no matter what year you are listening to this. Now you have communication and you have light. Depending on the time of year you might even find a small 12 V fan in the stores that will give you some air movements from the 12 battery. Again everything we just described: phone charging, light, and fan this is all straight 12 volts.
<13:11>
Jack Spirko: We get a lot more efficiency that way as well. There is nothing wrong with an inverter. We are going to get to them in just a bit but the most efficient use of power from 12 V battery is straight up 12 V.
<13:23>
Steven Harris: Yeah it is, until you want to try to move that any distance. Then you get into really thick cables when you are try to move it 12 V.
<13:31>
Jack Spirko: You are talking a short distance stuff here. Tabletop backup power.
<13:23>
Steven Harris: Yep exactly. You know this is less stuff there, is less stuff to go wrong. What do you really what in a blackout. It could be a short one. It could be a long one. You want to charge your phone and you want some illumination. Maybe one fan on you. You can move the battery to your bedroom at night. You can move it back to the kitchen. Going DC only is as simple as it gets. The few things to go wrong or break.
<13:59>
Jack Spirko: Then a person is going, "Well I want a multi battery back up with AC and everything going on with it. But I don't have anything right now." That can't afford to that system yet. Can do this system now, done and you've got it. You can always do more later in this gets your feet wet. That's awesome. Okay, so power goes out. I pull out my battery. I plug all my stuff into it. This turns in to be Sandy or Irene event. And we're not talking a day here, we are talking awhile. Pretty soon that battery starts to get low on charge. I need to recharge it. That is the best way to recharge that battery.
<13:23>
Steven Harris: This is where most people will want me to tell you about what type of solar panel to get out. But as you know Steve Harris does not suggest anyone get any type of any solar panel unless you have a month of food and water put away first. What use is it to charge your cell phone for six months but you got three days of food and water. The phone will outlive you. You don't want that. Plus before and after hurricane Sandy, here in Western PA, we had 9 solid day is a 100% cloud cover and solar does not work when it is cloudy. The really easiest way to put some energy back into the battery is to take it out your car and hook it up with jumper cables from your deep cycle marine battery to battery in your car. Then immediately start the car so that car alternator is going to provide a charge for the marine battery. If you take a marine battery gets 50% discharge and hook it up to your car battery, that is 100% charged the car battery will immediately start dumping a lot of current into the battery. One battery can never fully charge another. This high current dump is kind of efficient. That is why you must start the car and let the higher voltage alternator provided a good charge for both the batteries. That way the car battery will be working and ready to go as well as the battery inside your house, your marine battery will be ready to go. If you're new to us here at TSP, one welcome and thank you for joining. Jack has an incredible show here. You're wondering why we are not hooking up to the car. The answer is we do hook the inverter up to the car. But I already have a very detailed show on how to power your house from your car, on TSP with Jack. It is at Solar1234.com for you to go and listen to.
<16:32>
Jack Spirko: You mentioned putting your batteries in a basement. When I was a mechanic by trade, whenever we had battery stored we always got them off the concrete on the woods. A lot of people think that is because it discharges. I have a different take on it then that. What say you?
<16:47>
Steven Harris: The idea that, if your battery is sitting on concrete it will go dead quicker is a myth. It's been 100% proven incorrect. However I will tell you why not set your battery on the concrete in your basement. The reason that the basement concrete is usually the temperature of the earth, the ground. At your latitude, the more north you go the colder it is. Up here my ground temperatures around 64°, of course that's all year round. Lead acid batteries perform worse at lower temperatures. As you might know on a cold day trying to start your car, it is harder. That's because it's colder. If your battery is sitting directly on cool concrete the battery is going to get cool down a little bit. Thus it will have a measurable amount of performance lost from being colder. Keep your batter's room temperature, keep them cool summer and warm in the winter.
<17:37>
Jack Spirko: That is my take too. We are in sync on that one. How do we go from the straight DC system one step further and add an inverter to it.
<17:47>
Steven Harris: That is easy, you go find yourself 100 W or 150 W inverter for about $20 at Walmart, Target, RadioShack, Kmart, Amazon, or wherever. You plug it directly into one of the open cigarette light sockets and now you have about 150 W of 120 V AC already for you. You'll want to plug in an outlet strip into this and have more 120 V sockets. Now you can plug in your AC phone charger, your wall charger for your phone's and charge it up. Plus you can charge up your Game Boy and other electronics that make the power outage a lot more fun. You can also run some small fans on this. Note, I suggest small fans. Something smaller the 12 inch that plows directly in your face and body rather than the big box fax that tries to move all of the air around the whole room. Again think small, think low power. Think "run silent, run deep." The best lights for you to use on a small inverter like this with your marine battery are going to be 2 W or 4 W 120 V regular LED lights. They are available at Walmart. You can see my four favorite ones I like. You can get them on Amazon or you get them at Walmart. They are on Battery1234.com. When you are drawing 2 W or 4 W per light, you can have one of these lights on, in every major room of your house. You can just leave them on because they draw so little power. A typical 88 ampere hour group 29 marine battery running a 2 W LED light for a small inverter, would run for about 500 hours. That's over 20 days of light, 24 hours a day. That would be about 60 days the light if you will only used one 2 W LED light bulb for eight hours a night. Get the idea? Low wattage lights. Brighter is not is not better. 2 W or 4 W LED bulbs are more than enough.
<19:52
Jack Spirko: I know a lot of people are sitting there going, "It is only a 150 W inverter." If we are talking about a single battery and we want to get the maximum life out of it. We can hook up a bigger inverter to the damn thing, but we are going to drain it a hell of a lot faster if we start using that power.
<20:06>
Steven Harris: A bigger inverter has less electronics in it so it will have a smaller drawl just sitting there on it's own. A bigger inverter will have a little bit bigger draw there on its own, but but today it's not much. It would be more than a couple watts.
<20:24>
Jack Spirko: I am going to throw in one more thing on the lights. I keep saying this, and I know you love them too, but the daggon LED Christmas lights. The ones I've got have 100 lights on them, are 3.5 W draw. Man, do they light up a room.
<20:39>
Steven Harris: <laughs> And they just make you so happy don't they.
<20:42>
Jack Spirko: They do make me happy because I can fit one in an ammo can and take it out and have power. It's a cool thing. You keep saying that they are cheap this time of year. I am going to tell you when they are going to be cheap, December 26th. You are going to be able to buy them for nothing.
<20:54>
Steven Harris: That's right. I are trying to buy my winter heaters in the spring time. I buy my summer air conditioners in the fall.
<21:06>
Jack Spirko: Yeah. You mentioned a small inverter. I agree, they're so cheap and are so many of them available that are half decent. That is probably one of the most useful things that you can have, even get a bigger inverter. "Two is one and one is none. Three is for me." Is what we came up with yesterday. It's a great place to start if you don't have much money. It is a great redundancy if you don't. Like you said, if am not really using it a lot then it's not sitting there drawing a lot to run a fan. Is there anything else you would say is really useful thing to add to this system that is affordable and just get ton of utility?
<21:43>
Steven Harris: The best answer to that question is a AA or AAA nickel metal hydride battery charger. You want one that will charge between four and eight batteries as fast as a one hour and a slow as in two hours. That is sweet spot. Make sure you don't get one that does it eight hours. They are cheaper and you won't like it. It just takes way too long. My favorite one is on the website Batter1234.com and Solar1234.com. It does eight batteries in two hours. There is one that does it in one hour but I think eight batteries in two hours or less is fast enough. Remember what I'm saying, "Think small. Think low wattage. Think simple." Now that you have a AA and AAA battery charger, you can use AA and AAA nickel metal hydride rechargeable batteries. You can use them in your LED flashlight. You can give them to kids and let them have a ball with them in the dark. LED headlamps or your kids toys. Using them to your hearts content. A big marine battery will recharge hundreds of AA batteries. In fact I did a quick back of the envelop calculation just for you. It tells me your average deep cycle marine battery can charge around 300 AA nickel metal hydride batteries. I covered recharging AA and AAA batteries in extreme detail in the TSP show, I did with Jack, on how to power your house from the car with an inverter. Again that's on Solar1234.com. Other things that you can now plug into the 120 V from the inverter would be a radio, a small TV and I mean a small one. Like a 7 inch LCD digital TV. I have one on the site. That one draws only 9 W of power and it comes a DC cord too so you can be DC only and you don't even need the inverter. Most small portable TV will want to run off of 120 V, now you got 120 V. TVs are important because her main source of information for us in a disaster. If you had to power a larger TV set because that's all you had. I have a 28 inch one that I use for a second computer monitor and it uses 55 W. If that's 55 W on your car at idle that's not very much power. If that is 55 W off your marine battery and you only have one marine battery. Then you want to turn on the TV, catch the news and then turn it off. A typical marine battery will run a 55 W TV for about 20 hours. That would be for an 88 ampere hour group 29 deep cycle marine battery. When you are running off a home battery bank it is going to mostly be about two things. Light and communication: your LED lights, your cell phone, your radio, your TV, or your police scanner.
<24:35>
Jack Spirko: I want to back up for just a second on the battery chargers, the AA and AAA battery charger. I think the Powerex MH is the one you talking about.
<24:43>
Steven Harris: Yeah.
<24:44>
Jack Spirko: I bought one of those right after the show we did where we talk a lot about them. It is the best damn battery charger I've ever owned in my life. I have gone all to the eneloop batteries. That has been one of the best decisions I have ever made.
<24:59>
Steven Harris: Don't you agree with me, that the two hour one is big enough? You don't need the one hour one, with the bigger power supply.
<25:06>
Jack Spirko: When you are charging 8 batteries at a time, How many battery are you going to use a time when you charging them? If you even wanted more batteries I say you're better off with two of these daggon things because then you got a redundancy. I would rather have two of those, then one that does the same amount battery twice as fast. In the end there is power in that battery. I only draw so much for so long before... it's a bucket full of water, when it is empty it is empty. I think I'd rather have two as a redundancies. I could have one sitting in my car, running directly of the car and one running off my back up system. I would be better off that way anyway.
<25:46>
Steven Harris: Yeah, you would. Anyone who wants know exactly what Jack and I are talking about, you can go see the picture of it and a link to it at Solar1234.com. I have the eneloop batteries up there. I have the Powerex charger up there. I have nice holders for the battery. If you want some step-by-step instructions on how to use it, go back to the TSP show on Solar1234.com that says how to power your house from your car with an inverter. I covered AA nickel metal hydride recharging in detail in there. Which batteries are the best. Why they are the best. Which ones you avoid. I think this is one of the most useful things you can have your house, and that AA or AAA battery charger. It makes all the little things simple.
<26:32>
Jack Spirko: The one you got does AA and AAA. You don't have to put them all in the same time. You can put them in and independently charges them. You know which ones are topped off. If you used 2 and yank them out and put new ones in and the other ones are still charging, it's got an indicator for all of them. I think it's the best charger I have ever seen.
<26:50>
Steven Harris: Yeah. Lots of other chargers make you charge them two at a time.
<26:54>
Jack Spirko: It doesn't do that. You can put one in. If you got one of those little LED keychain lights and you need to recharge one light for it. You can put one in at a time. That's awesome. Let's move on, with the recent storms we have seen this. One of the most important things in a basement is a sump pump. One of the worse things in the world is when your power goes out. Power tends to go out when we have these things called storms, which bring this stuff called rain. Which is when we most need the sump pump to run. What can we look at as far as how long we can run a sump pump with a backup system.
<27:32>
Steven Harris: How long it can run is a very broad question. First thing you're going to need is at least an 800 W inverter. I point you to some on the site that I gave for the show. The 800 Watt inverters are as cheapest $50. These don't plug into cigarette lighter socket. They have alligator clamps and they clamp onto the terminals of your battery. They have to handle the starting load of the pump. Plus they to handle the load needed to run the pump, to pump the water. If you can get the 1000 W or 1200 W or 1500 W inverter, then do it. If you can only get the 800 W inverter, it should work for you. I have lots of emails from people that powered their sump pump with an 800 W inverter on the car, during hurricane Sandy. I went and found really awesome little quarter horsepower sump pump. It draws only 460 W. How how long your battery will last depends on how fast the water is coming in. Usually sump pumps do their job pretty quickly. In less than minute normally. Yes I've lived in a house with sump pump and I know your concerns and fears. If the little quarter horsepower sump pump ran for 30 seconds every 15 minutes, then on a typical marine battery, it would last for 2.5 days with an 800 W inverter. That gives you an idea of how long it will run. You might have a half horsepower sump pump motor and yours. You might need to 1500 W inverter. That's twice as big of the quarter horsepower sump pump I just mentioned. Of course the half horsepower power motor might not run for 30 seconds. It might only run for 15 seconds because it pumps water out faster than the quarter horse does. But it needs a larger inverter to do this. Depending on how fast the water is coming in, you got from 1 to 3 days sump pump use on your single marine battery. If some pump backup is a big concern for you. You might want to have more than one marine battery at home. Just try putting a price on your flooded basement, then you'll think about how many marine batteries and $94 apiece you might want. Plus you want to be able to run your sump pump and recharge your marine battery off of your car. Then you'll have to have fuel storage stored. I have a whole TSP show again I did with Jack, on fuel and fuel storage. It's on the same Solar1234.com site. You can listen to anytime you desire.
<30:08>
Jack Spirko: If I start to have more than one marine battery, do that necessitate that I go out and get more than one charger? Or if I am going to charge them collectively, do I need a charger with many more horsepower, a bigger charger?
<30:22>
Steven Harris: Good question, Jack. The answer is may be. If you have two marine batteries and they are group 29 deep cycle batteries, about 88 ampere hours each. Then you have, with two batteries, about 180 ampere hours of total battery capacity. If you have that little 6 amp charger, that I mentioned for $29 from Walmart, it would take about 30 hours to charge the batteries to 80%. Again listen to show number one about battery charging, you will understand why it is just at 80%. The thing is that with these computer-controlled battery chargers, if they are charging for more than 24 hours and the battery is not changed yet, they think there might be something wrong with the battery. A bad cell in the battery would prevent it from getting a full charge. The charge will shut off and give you an error code after 24 hours. Of course your battery bank is taking more than 24 hours charge because you now have a lot more batteries to charge, do to no fault of the charger. Worse comes to worst, you'll have to reset your charger every 24 hours and tell it again to start charging. Just turn it on and off it will be happy to start charging. It is your little slave, it does nothing but charging for you. The really smart idea, is to get the Schumacher 30 amp battery charger. Especially if you have more than one marine battery. That way if you're also running a generator to power of her stuff in your house for a few hours, you can dump power as fast as you can into the batteries at the rate of 30 amps and then turn off the generator and run silent run deep on the battery bank. If you're not going to have a way to rechargeable your home battery bank for some source of 120 V, then the 6, 10, 12, or 15 amp battery charger will work for you. If you think you're going to get a chance to recharge your batteries from some 120 V source like a generator, then you want to go with the larger 30 amp Schumaker charger. That will be around $75 for the charger. You'll want to go with a larger charger even if you only have one battery because you're going to be dumping more energy there quicker off of the generator. What Jack said about having two chargers, for two is one and one is none, is not a bad idea. If you start off with the 10 amp charger then upgrade later to the 30 amp charger, then you have two is one and one is none. If you had two marine batteries and you could get two 10 amp chargers, you could charge each one separately up to 100%. That would also work and that will also give you two is one and one is none.
<33:02>
Jack Spirko: That would be more for person that was using them independently. For instance one down, to keep that some pump running and one up on the tabletop.
<33:11>
Steven Harris: Yes. True, but remember we're at 120 V so you can actually literally run an extension cord from the tabletop always down into the basement to the sump pump. You can do converse. You can have your battery bank and your inverter down in the basement, and you can run extension cord all the way upstairs because 120 V goes very far through extension cables with very little loss.
<33:36>
Jack Spirko: I guess my question then is; if we take two batteries and if are going to try them together to increase our overall amp hours and to make true bank out if it I really want to charge them that way, together at the same time if possible?
<33:49>
Steven Harris: Yes, you do.
<33:50>
Jack Spirko: Instead of breaking them apart using two 10 amp chargers and bring them back together?
<33:54>
Steven Harris: Right, but if you did split them apart and used two 10 amp chargers you would be effectively changing at 20 amps. You would be charging them twice as fast.
<34:01>
Jack Spirko: Okay, gotcha. If we want a bigger charger. If I want something more than 30 amps. I'm going to go in there and I going knock out a big old battery bank, man. I am going to have a lot of reserved capacity. You talk about run silent run deep. I am going to put a submarine backup system in. I want to be able to not take a day and a half to charge them. Is there a bigger charger?
<34:20>
Steven Harris: Yeah, there is one from Schumaker that does 55 amps and it's a lot bigger charger. You just don't pick it up with one hand, you pick it up with two hands. The 30 amp one, you can pick up with one hand. It's like the size the lunch box. It cost about $100 and considering the 30 amp is $75 bucks, going to 55 amps for a $100 is not bad. It is even on the shelf of Walmart, for now. That could change as they change inventory. It is on Amazon and I'm on my websites. I only suggest you get this one if you want to have, lets say four marine batteries or more. Or you're going to go with golf cart batteries. Then I might say, only if you have four golf cart batteries or more, then go with the 55 amp charger. If you're going to go for a really big battery bank, get the 55 amp charger. It's called the Schumacher SE 1555. If you want to go higher than 55 A, now you're starting to really get into the world of renewable energy with smart chargers and everything else. You are going to go from a $100 all the way up $300, $400, $500, or $600. That is why everything I try to teach you, especially as you are starting out, I don't use $400 renewable energy chargers because those are not affordable. If it's not affordable you can't buy it. If you don't but it, you don't you don't have it. If you don't have it, you can't use it when you need it. That's why am using all these consumer level things for you.
<35:53>
Jack Spirko: If you did have the money for it and you want the stuff to work and you had $400 for a charger. Verses $100 for the charger, you would be better off with three more batteries and $100 charger. That is another way look at it.
<36:04>
Steven Harris: Yeah, you would. You would be better off with two Schumacher's at consumer prices, than you would be with one fancy one at $400.
<36:12>
Jack Spirko: Absolutely. How about golf cart batteries versus marine batteries? Especially as we start to increased size of the system. What's your preference?
<36:04>
Steven Harris: Yeah. If you can't see what we are doing. We're starting the most basic simple and we are working our way up. A little more complicated every time for you. I talk a lot about the golf cart batteries in the battery bank show number one. If you not heard it yet, do go back and listen to it. Marine batteries, you can move around. They have a handle on them. Golf cart batteries are 6 V each, so you got to put two of them together to make 12 V. Then you string them together as if they were 12 V batteries. Which means you have one 12 V battery effectively by putting two of them together. You're connecting negative to negative and positive to positive, when you are doing 12 V. The golf cart batteries weight at least 64 pounds each for the GC2 golf cart batteries. That's most common size. That is what my UPS scale say they weigh, 64 pounds. Boy, they really are. My personal preference for home battery bank is to go with golf cart batteries. I'm probably go with at least 4 of them. That would be over be over 300 ampere hours of energy storage. Again I talk about what ampere hour is in show number one. If I did get two golf cart batteries, I would probably stick with the 30 amp charger we just mentioned. If I went 4, 6, 8, or more golf cart batteries I would go with the 55 amp charger.
<37:43>
Jack Spirko: What about an inverter? What size of an inverter are you going to put on these larger battery banks. Let's say 2 to 4 marine batteries, or 2 to 8 golf cart batteries?
<37:54>
Steven Harris: The answer to that, Jack, is several inverters. I am going to have more than on for two reason. One reason is "Two is one. One is none. Three is for me." The other is that if it's night time and I'm just running some LED lights, a small TV, and a fan or little things like that. It's more energy-efficient for me to these low-power device is off of the 200 W or 400 W inverter then it is off the 1500 W or 2500 W inverter. I might be running only 10 W of LED lights at night and charging up a few phones. Heck, I do that off of a 200 W inverter and I would just leave the 1600 W inverter off. Or I would leave the 1600 W dedicated just to the sump pump.
<38:42>
Jack Spirko: If you did have that 1600 W inverter setting there running and you are running 10 W of lights off it, you are probably running more than 10 W of power to keep the daggon thing cooled down.
<38:52>
Steven Harris: About that.
<38:53>
Jack Spirko: Ok
<38:54>
Steven Harris: It really is in that order of magnitude. The big 1600 W, 2000 W, or 2500 W inverter it literally does draw 5 or 10 W. It is not 200 W or anything like that. They are really pretty smart and they're pretty efficient. Your little 200 W inverter just sitting there on its own, it might only draw 1 W with everything going. That makes sense to power your bunch of 2 W LEDs off of a 200 W one. To answer you, Jack, I would have at least one 1500 W or larger inverter. Then I would have a 800 W inverter and then I would have a 200 W or 400 W smaller inverter. The reason I have a 1500 W inverter is not that I can pull that much power off all the time, off my battery bank. Remember this is a battery bank, it's not a light saber of infinite power. The reason I'm doing this, is for large loads running for a small time. My sump pump might be 1/2 horsepower and need a little more starting current for two or three seconds. Thus the bigger inverter does this easier. I might want to run the microwave for a few minutes to heat something up and that takes 1500 W. Heck, we might want to brew some peppermint tea in the microwave, Jack. Heck, you might want to get 2500 W inverter, it just handle surges even better than 1500 W. The 2500 W inverter is about $65 bucks more than the 1500 W inverter. If $65 is not much of a problem, get the larger inverter. Again I don't want you to think about running things for hours and hours at high current off your battery bank. Even a refrigerator would kill one marine battery pretty quickly. I know you're just saying to me, "Can I plug my refrigerator into it? Can I plug my refrigerator into it?" If you had one group 29, 88 amp hour, deep cycle battery and a refrigerator that drew only 200 W. Then that battery would power the refrigerator for a grand total of about five hours. One battery is not the light saber you thought it was Luke, did you? The four golf cart batteries at about 300 ampere hours would run the refrigerator constantly for 17 hours, but then again you might only be running it for an hour in the morning and an hour night. Plus, I have a whole TSP show with Jack, on how to keep your refrigerator and your freezer cold without power in a disaster. It is on Solar1234.com for you. It's funny the refrigerator has about two days worth of food in it and it'll stay cool for yourself for about two days. So why are people overly concerned with powering it? What is the bigger inverter good for? Boy, I had a lot of people email me about this. That bigger inverter is good for your coffee maker. Your coffee maker draws a lot of power. People don't think it draws a lot of power, it does. It draws up to 1100 W or more. Luckily it does this in about 10 minutes. That about right Jack? 10 minutes will make a pot of coffee?
<42:21>
Jack Spirko: Yeah, that is about right. I bought us a Coffee Mate Mr. Coffee with the carafe so that after it is done It doesn't any heat it is sealed up in there. Not just for backup power, just for energy usage. You get one with the carafe that is no heater underneath them. As soon as it is done making coffee you are not drawing any more power.
<42:43>
Steven Harris: Yeah. After the coffee is brewed, you want to unplug it from the inverter because it does have that feature to keep the pot warm. It will suck down the power and your battery faster when you're sucking down your morning cup of Joe.
<42:54>
Jack Spirko: And if you don't have the carafe like I'm talking about, get a thermos. It is not hard to keep coffee hot for a few hours.
<43:01>
Steven Harris: Brew your coffee and fill up the thermoses. You will make a lot of friends. Especially if it is cold outside and there is a blizzard. You see those lineman down the street, coming down to fix the power. You go out to those guys with coffee and donuts. You can pretty much bet your house to be back up in a couple hours.
<42:22>
Jack Spirko: Either that or hot chocolate.
<43:24>
Steven Harris: Hot chocolate and something. Those guys working 18 hour days. They would probably really appreciate it. Now, let me give really good example. Jack, you are just going to absolutely love this. I am going to give you guys some real energy numbers, so you really get an idea in your head about how much energy is in that battery bank. If you took the energy to run your 1100 W coffee maker for 10 minutes and you use that energy in a battery to run a single 2 W 120 V LED light from Walmart. That light bulb would run for over 100 hours. You can either have 10 minutes for your coffee or you can have 100 hours of light. Since you only run the LED light for 8 hours a day, that would mean you got 12 days of light or 10 minute pot of coffee. 10 minutes of coffee. 12 day of light. Your single marine battery will make about five pots of coffee.
<44:30>
Jack Spirko: I'll tell you what that is a good case for, it's called the percolator and gas stove. That is a good case for that.
<44:40>
Steven Harris: Shortly on Zello uses the French press. He loves using french press.
<44:47>
Jack Spirko: We used to sell those in the gear shop. With the old shop closing down and going into the new shop we don't have any in there right now. I don't think you ever saw these, Steve. We had these really awesome french presses. They are branded for TSP, but you can get them... I can't think of it. It's a big hiking outdoor store sells a unbranded version of them. They have even a little hidden compartment in the bottom. You keep enough coffee inside the mug to make about three cups. Each cup is like a big 16 ounce cup of coffee. We will have those back soon. The french presses are definitely the way to go. I use them in the office all the time. I have in my office one of those electric kettles to boil water here. I've never made a cup coffee in a coffee maker here once. That's another great idea. French press or a percolator.
<45:35>
Steven Harris: You see what I mean. I'm probably gotten 100 emails about coffee maker. You get people talking about coffee and they just go and go on it, because they love the coffee and they got to have it.
<45:46>
Jack Spirko: If you can make hot water and if you got a french press. Then you can make all the coffee want. You can make mom's coffee nice and weak, and dad's coffee nice and strong, and things like that. When we look at it being a single marine battery to make 5 pots of coffee. It puts things in perspective to us and we can laugh about a lot of things there.
<46:12>
Steven Harris: Yeah. I mean, 10 minutes for your coffee or 12 days worth of light. 5 times 12, that would be 60 days of light off one marine battery or 5 cups coffee. I had people write to me from Sandy and say one of the biggest hardships was they had stand in line at Starbucks for over an hour for a cup of coffee. Let's put the nail in the coffin and get everyone to understand how much energy is really in the battery. This is important for you to really understand. Jack, you consider one quart of the gasoline a lot of energy?
<46:48>
Jack Spirko: Yeah I do. I think it's a lot more energy than most people realize. If you want to see how much energy it is, don't do this for real, but imagine tossing it into a fire and watching what happens.
<47:00>
Steven Harris: Well, I am better example for you on how much energy is in one quart of gasoline. Your truck let's say weighs 6,000 pounds and it gets 20 miles to the gallon. A quart is a quarter of a gallon. Imagine hooking up a rope and pulling a 6,000 pound pick up truck down the road for 5 miles. Ask yourself if you wouldn't trade that one quarter gasoline. That is is how much energy there is in a quart of gasoline.
<47:32>
Jack Spirko: Yeah. Another way to look at, is it a run a generator for a fairly good period of time as well and put out a lot of power out of that generator.
<47:40>
