Be warned many (all?) chargers drain some small power from the cells while not powered, HJK tests used to sometimes measure these drains.
Massive drop in performance out of direct sunlight, behind glass also reduces output.
Fixed securely to a balcony, facing south, might work well in summer.
If you can charge at work and/or have some power at home, personally, I’d use the money to buy additional cells/powerbanks/chargers.
How are you charging your phone? Power bank?
The motion sensor PIR LED lamps are a good idea for spaces not always occupied (bathrooms, cupboards, etc). I’ve got a couple of AAA powered ones for cupboards.
I’ve not seen headlamps mentioned yet, these are my favourite for power outages/working in the dark as I’ll often need both hands free. More efficient to light up the area you’re looking at, than the whole room.
The other thing I’ve been impressed with are decorative fairy lights, the warm white ones give a nice ambient light for moral.
Fingers crossed your situation improves, my thoughts are with you and the people of Ukraine.
For now, my goal is to have light to move around, cook and read) I don’t need a power source for the whole house)
Basically portable power station can charge smartphones and similar things (or am I wrong?) and so can car battery system for a quarter of the price. But both must be recharged. In situation when we will have power for several hours both will perform similarly. As well as a bunch of powerbanks and batteries. And small solar panel will provide enough power for smartphones and power banks in the worst scenario.
But if my salary was higher maybe I would bought a power station just for their simplicity
Ordinary car batteries aren’t supposed to be used as let’s say power bank. If You discharge them to 10,5v for just a couple of times, they will get damaged and capacity will fall substantially. You need to use deep discharge / cycle 12v batteries. Don’t know how You call them in Ukraine, in US it’s called marine battery.
Yeah, we have three 10000 mAh power banks to charge phones and to carry in bag.
Actually I found awesome combination of these and these. Not sure if it has protection from overcharge/discharge (probably I’ll use proper charger for cells), but their combination is just 18 hours LED candle. And something more powerful also can be plugged in as @Kazik mentioned.
I did not own them yet but also thinking about buying one. Good solution when you need both hands
Yes, I had them in mind actually. My bad. In Ukraine they also called deep discharge batteries) Or batteries for UPS. And prices similar to typical car batteries.
If you have the sunlight then better cells will run all night, when I order the solar AA lights I replace the cells because they are not very good and they sometimes are already bad, and they are always weak.
The pond lights are actual lights, not tiny fairy lights.
You are very lucky that various technologies exist today that can address what you need to do. If it was 1970 we would be having a totally different conversation, probably leaning to candles being the best option.
Between lithium batteries and LED light sources the options are plentiful.
I only skimmed this thread, but I think lanterns are really useful for power outages.
Some of the best lanterns are the Sofirn LT1, LT1-Mini, LT1S, and LT1S Pro.
I like the LT1S, especially if you can get it on sale, but all of those lanterns are very nice.
Yeah, and they all have powerbank functionality. The LT1 might be a good option with its 4 18650 cells it has long runtime and some reserve for charging phones etc. But it may be too expensive for the OPs purposes.
Any of them would be OK. I have seen the LT1S (original version) as cheap as $25. But it is a single 21700.
Yes, you are right. I’m just overthinking a lil (as always). My main concern is that I just don’t know what exactly to expect from this winter. Our power generation and network were heavily damaged and can be finished in several bomb strikes. So in case we will have power - powerbanks and different cheap chinese led lights will do the trick. But if there will be no power at all… Ofc “power hubs” with generators will be available for citizens. But I just don`t want to visit them during favourite flu time. So solar power is a very good solution for such case.
Yeah, they look cool but just too expensive for my needs. However, maybe I will buy one of them just cuz they can be used for fishing and camping later on.
I’m curious about how you deal with winter heating under these conditions, and when a country is doing these scheduled electricity periods how does the system handle the surges, when a sector gets electricity and everyone has their electric heaters on for example?
In Ukraine the most widespread heating solution is centralized water heating which utilizes CHP plants. So fortunatelly heating is not the worst problem. But fuel for those plants was mostly from east territories of Ukraine (Donbass) and Russia, sooo… Last winter we had heating cuts as well) But winter were warm and soft and my house has some external insulation so it wasn’t problem.
With sparks and explosions)
Power delivering companies asked citizens not to turn on all things with hight power consumption exactly after getting elecricity and do it slowly, step by step. So, personally I just turning off fridge, boiler, power stabilizer to not fry power network in such situations.
Also I must to admit that the worst in our situation were lack of water. Because water pumps, surprisingly, powered by electricity)
So after first bomb strikes we have had no water for two weeks.
@p1nky.ua I have a pure sine inverter (not modified sine wave, but “true” one), so that You could have 230v power out of battery - to power the fridge. It’s a little bit DIY type - took a 780W computer UPS, took out internal batteries and added thick copper wires so that You can hook it up to external battery. But there is one problem - it’s a 24v system, won’t work with regular 12v car battery. Would work if there’s two 12v car batteries connected in series, but they have to be identical. Or just 24v battery. There seems to be a bus from my city to Dnipro, I can send it to You by that bus. PM me, if it would be useful to You.
Here’s a low budget lantern… https://budgetlightforum.com/t/review-pretty-good-low-budget-1x18650-lantern/69986
It’s not as good as the Sofirn lanterns, but they’re decent.
I don’t know if Sofirn ships to Ukraine, but at $10 a lantern, it could be worth figuring out.
The Sofirn LT1S lanterns that I got were about $20 a piece, but that was a “crazy sale” price.
20$ sounds awesome) Gratz)
Cheapest available to me sofirn LT1S costs 32,5$, his little step-brother mentioned by you - 19$ xD
I think I’ll stick to power banks and cheap wired USB 5w lightbulbs. Already ordered them. Actually, olx.ua is full of light sources and batteries of all kinds “on-sale”. Unfortunately, good things are usually overpriced here in Ukraine. Our prices can be on par only with stuff from AliExpress in the best case because of the lack of official retailers in Ukraine.
E.g. three years ago I ordered an external soundcard from Amazon because even with shipping it was twice as cheaper than to buy the same sound card in a local store.
Thank you for your proposition and your effort! I really appreciate it!
I’ll think about your proposition. But it’s unnecessary I think. I asked my family and they said that we will be fine) Our balcony was our fridge during winter)
I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of the ram pump, which doesn’t need electricity: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ram+pump
I’m pretty sure it would work by placing one at the bottom of a gutter downspout to slowly pump the water back up to fill an elevated water tank / cistern on top of the roof, which would then give decent gravity feed to the house depending on its elevation above the living area.
Don’t forget starting batteries are not made for deep cycling, in that scenario they are said to last only 50 to 100 cycles.
Starting batteries have thin plates, enabling high peak currents, which is a desirable trait for cranking an engine, especially cold starts in a challenging climate.
Heavy duty Lead Acid, OTOH, have thick plates that are responsible for increased resistance, and thus cannot discharge at a high current, but are capable to withstand more abuse and better resist the deterioration that inevitably comes with deep cycling.
AGM starting batteries are sometimes used e.g. for small-scale (solar) storage, exactly because that kind of construction is more abuse tolerant than your run-of-the-mill Lead Acid, while at the same time more considerate towards the wallet than LiIon, when relatively high capacities are needed.
With that said, AGM car batteries are still markedly more expensive than regular Lead Acid starters.
I have no first-hand experience with the 12V LED strips you mention, however powering those with LiIon batteries might be an idea worth considering, especially since you will be managing a flotilla of cells already.
Three fully-charged LiIon cells in series will provide 12.6V, which is close enough to the OCV of a fully-charged Lead Acid battery. Four LiIon cells in series can provide roughly the voltage range available on an ICE-powered car with its engine running.
