Solar Power

>>1008206
Gas powered, two stroke margarita blender for tailgating, you self-righteous fuck.

Now go turn up your AC.

>>1008247
I think you're missing the point...

I don't want to make a shit load of noise, or smell like a weed whacker.

Also, why would I have a blender when going /out/?
And how does solar make one self-righteous? I'm really not picking up what you're dropping man...

>>1008206
>>>/diy/ is really the correct board for this. After all, anything solar related will be outside so everyone using it will have that experience. But if you want to DIY a setup that is different and there's tons of people on /diy/ that do it.

I've been studying solar for so long I dream about it. If you really want to make a DIY system, I suggest doing it from scratch with second hand cells you can get on ebay for cheap. You'll need to solder them together and everything. There are lots of tutorials on youtube. As for a suitcase size 500watt system? You won't be able to hinge them together so they fit inside a suitcase. You can make each panel its own separate unit. Then merely plug them together. That way you can store them side-by-side in a suitcase and probably fit in 500watts worth of panels. It'll weigh a lot. Smaller wattage needs would fit into a suitcase size much easier and allow for hinges.

You will also need a battery array regardless. You need that buffer so that you don't kill the panels by trying to run high power items on them. Large motors like those in AC units have a massive inrush spike when they turn on which basically shorts out stuff like a solar panel and is extremely bad for the panels. Thus, you use a panel to solar charge controller to battery to inverter/converter to appliance.

>>1008247
gb2/b/, kid.

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>>1008312
Make me, asshole.

>>1008312
I should really post on /diy/ I suppose. I think I'll stroll on over there.

Wasn't saying I was gonna fit 500 watts in a suitcase, heh. That would be as you said, insane and very heavy. Re-reading my post, I realize I wasn't clear about that.
The suitcase was just for small things, radio, cellphone (sat phone hopefully too soon), and cameras and such.
Was going to try to do 50 or 100 watts in the 'suitcase' form, figure it'll be a big-ish case but I should be able to squeeze in 2 x 50 watt panels.
The rather wimpy systems they sell for 'suitcase' form are always like 20 watts, but I've looked at a number of them and they're literally just doing the 'but it's sooooo light and small!' thing that killed good laptops a few years back when ultrabooks became a thing.

My background is in computers / electronics so I'm pretty familiar with electrical loads and such. Solar is a bit more recent to me but I'm getting the hang of it.
Charge controllers were the first thing that I looked into since I started getting into this with computer equipment, I wanted to make sure that while a panel may supply more than the desired voltage at times, that my device only got what it needed. So charge controllers, protection circuits, etc.

>>1008313
These pre-built solar modules are usually laughable for the price... :/
Never enough watts/$.

Goalzero seems to have promising stuff but at this time it still doesn't seem cost effective. Wait a few more years.

>>1008826
I saw them when I was looking around... they have such trendy-looking designs, but the price per watt is insane, yea.

I do like that some companies are trying to make solar 'trendy' because that way normies buy it and the cost of materials comes down.

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>>1008814
>sat phone

For casual talking or emergency only? If it is for the latter you should look into Personal Locator Beacons (PLB) which have all manner of functionality from weather forecasting, to emergency alerts for the local area, to simple texting (even texting between two people with the same PLB which is really nice outside of cell reception when coordinating operations).

The system I use for my netbook is a beefy 12volt SLA battery with any charger (car charger, pedal power, solar, etc) and power adapter hookups for the netbook (12v battery to clamp on cigarette lighter power outlet to netbook car charger to netbook like in the reposted pic). For long camping trips, I use a 5Ah SLA battery which doesn't weigh a lot (UB1250) since I don't use my netbook all that much except to quickly dump my camera's memory to a USB (wouldn't it be nice to just plug a USB stick into the camera and dump stuff without a PC or a special device like the Digital Foci Photo Safe thing....)

I mentioned the Digital Foci Photo Safe, but google and firefox give their website lots of warnings about it redirecting to harmful sites, if anyone goes to it, use Sandboxie/VM and turn off java/javascript just in case. I don't seem to have problems with it.

>>1008832
God, I hate trendy. That's why I diy most of my stuff. I want functionality and don't give a god damn about looks.

prices really came down 100 watt panel for 109$. I think I will buy now.

>>1008826

>Wait a few more years

That's what they said 5 years ago and 10 years ago and 40 years ago.

>>1009039
Same with PC tech too. Never wait, just get it. There will always someone to say "you should have waited fool!!"

>>1008975
Sat phone is of course for emergencies and such, no real point in casual talking. (Also, it's pricey as fuck.) I'll have to look into the PLB stuff.


As far as the trendy looking stuff goes, I'm with you as far as not caring what it looks like.
I do realize though, normal people love trendy looking shit. So if a company is gonna sell to normies, they gotta have 'the look'. -_-

>>1008981
Woah nelly! 4 KWhrs! Ouch!
You'd need a lot of panels to charge that in a day, yea.

You'd also have to have a HUGE bank of batteries probably. This isn't something that you'd carry around on your back.

>>1009039
>>1009070

Yeah but shit HAS gotten signifitcantly better with time

>>1009136
i like to bring my washing machine out.

i want my shirts laundered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmrNxrY8WJI

>>1009321
That is always the case. Keep waiting.

>>1008206
>A/C
>Solar
lol no

Remember, the wattage of a panel is in full and direct sunlight, your best-case scenario. Any cloud cover or angle is going to reduce that output significantly.

You'd need a massive array of panels to make that even close to a possibility, nevermind the size of the battery bank to keep it running.

Even a single small RV A/C needs ~3kW gen to run. The 2kW suitcase ones won't cut it unless you run two in parallel.

Just buy a fucking generator and quit being a bitch.