homestead or collapse pv

HOMESTEAD OR COLLAPSE PV
Photovoltaic power. Electricity from the sun. Solar panels. Great for either powering the homestead or keeping the lights on after Chinese food riots caused the ultra left wing Communist leaders to take power back, shut down the worlds only underwear manufacturing factory district, nuke Tibet and sell off all US Treasury bonds. But there are differences between the two types of power. The costs are different, the energy needed is different as is how that energy is used. Homestead power is different than collapse power. And, like survival blogs that have differing methods, they don’t get along together. It would be hard to take the equipment from one method to another.
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Homestead power is expensive. At a bare minimum, the home owner has lights and electrical equipment. He is selling pickled rhubarb on E-Bay to pay the bills and needs a computer and a Internet satellite connection. Even in a small trailer with only one light fixture, and using a laptop computer, you need at least 130 watts of generating power. A rating on a panel is for maximum laboratory optimal output. Expect less. The sun is at its brightest for only about four hours a day. You will have cloudy days. You need, at a minimum, the rated power use of your appliances for several hours use. If the florescent lamp is using twin bulbs rated at thirty watts, expect to need that much generating capacity. You could use half that and expect eight hours of charge to equal two hours of power, but factoring in lower performance and no sun might deliver less than that. Plus, in time the solar panel delivers less power, so by skimping at first you will find later you don’t have enough power. So, assuming this sounds reasonable, you need a lot of solar panels. Bare minimum, Bison type living needs at least $650 worth of panels. Now figure you need batteries for all that power. You only need light at night, and I would use a battery bank and an inverter to power my computer, not direct juice ( you might fry your machine with the fluctuating power ).
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It’s silly to buy car batteries for $45 when you can get the RV types for half again as much. Car batteries will die much quicker from charging and deep discharge ( you will forget you are on the Internet for too long as you are surfing ColumbianMuleMolesters web page ). But even buying at Wal-Mart the batteries won’t be cheap. Let’s say you buy a 80 amp battery. 120 watts divided by 12 volts equal 10 amps, so your battery is good for four hours a day use- four hours of computer in the day and four hours of light at night. Not eight hours, as you should try not to drain the battery more than half way. You figure two is better, just in case. Then you add two more for cloudy days. Now you are at $900. And this is just for a bright light and a computer with Web access. Add in the fact that used laptops are three or four times the cost of desktops for that added cost. You need to invest $1100 just to be connected to your business at the homestead.
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Even if you decide to go with LED’s and only a computer without the satellite ( you connect in town ) you will still need half of the above set up. Now, if you were living in a trailer in a park and you decided to buy a piece of junk land, it would seem like a bargain to go from paying $300 rent to putting that towards PV panels. In a few months of no extra cash outlay you would be set up with electrical generation. And, yes, the same cost could be applied to a small diesel generator and battery bank ( well, a bit more but not by much ) and you could get a lot more power. Enough for a fridge ( if using the modified freezer with wine gauge ) and a lot more lights, etc. But I assume you wish to factor in fuel shortage possibilities even if you are only homesteading. Living rough to live free. But we are also assuming you were not prepared to move and not really financially able to get so many panels. Either the economy tanks, or you just decide to escape. You can always do the second battery in the car deal for “free” electricity. If you are commuting. Now your up front costs are a lot less. Just a few extra batteries.
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Collapse PV power is a whole lot simpler. You need rechargeable batteries ( AA, AAA, D ) and their charger. A solar charger is only $25. The AA’s can charge in as little as four hours. The D’s might take two days, but then a lantern using them is good for four hundred hours of use on low power. You can use a smaller light that night and go several months between charges ( even medium power gives you two hundred hours of light ). Two solar chargers ( get more than one-they are plastic and you need redundancy anyway ) and a passel of different size batteries will not cost you much more than one RV battery. And you will see fifteen or twenty years of light with them, whereas a 12 volt battery is good for just a few years. Remember, on the small batteries, they are charge memory resistant, not memory proof. Fully discharge every time to prolong their life.
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Homestead power relies on a lot of expensive panels and/or short life batteries. It will not see you too far into doomsday. The batteries are the weak point. The crap being junk-yard mined and traded after a collapse will not last long as they will already have been used, and most likely car rather than RV types. The expense might be low if you car charge the battery, but still it won’t last long after Pep Boys is a hollow ruin. With LED’s rated at a decent battery drain life ( thirty hour use lights are very bright, but try for the less intense 80-100 hour ones ) and a few sets of each battery size plus the two solar chargers you have around two decades of light, after the grid lights go dark. A unit getting eighty hours of light per battery set will last twenty days at four hours use a night. The factory says these batteries are good for one thousand recharges, but let’s be paranoid and call it only 500. Even at twenty charges a year the batteries will most likely outlast the solar charger ( regular panels can go twenty to thirty years for the old school heavy units, I’m not sure what the little solar chargers use or how long they last ). For not much more than $100, you will enjoy electric light for as long as your charger lasts.
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Get your collapse PV setup first. It is a much better bargain. Then you can add your luxury PV generator. If there is still time.
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www.bisonpress.com for solar or other gear. Also, a new Chicken Little Magazine is available ( and some are at a reduced price-just cause I love ya all ).