What about a Solar power charger to keep your 12 Volt battery going.

Dan22 · 10-06-2007, 10:11 PM

I saw some portable solar charging devices on Ebay that could keep a 12v car, tractor or motorcycle battery going for a long time.

Seems to me this would be a handy device to have in a survival situation as you could power anything that normally plugs into your car cigarette lighter.

Might be nice to have a radio or small CD player or even a portable DVD player if you have a permanent type shelter.

Check out these listings.
battery solar charger, Electrical Solar, Parts Accessories items on eBay.com

ezearln · 10-06-2007, 10:29 PM

It would be an excellent set up to have a couple of high quality deep cycle batteries in the 800-900Amp hour range and a solar panel or two to keep them charged and then tie them into an inverter to get 115VAC , another set up I have seen and considered building is these large "Ornamental" windmills adapted and geared to drive an automotive alternator performing the same function. While the reserve and output would not be great it could provide enough to operate a small fridge and a light or two or even a small water pump. nearly silent and readily concealable or camoflaged they could be the answer for interim power in a crisis.

ArkansasHunter · 10-06-2007, 10:47 PM

Why would you need solar power if you could run a generater off the drive axle
If the batteries are charged and the vehicle goes into motion and you have a Generator connected to the turning axle to cause the generater to generate to keep the batteries charged why wouldn't this work ?
I thought of this when I was around 14 years old, does anyone know if it would work.

ezearln · 10-06-2007, 10:51 PM

It will A.H. but consider fuel as an issue the two setups we are suggesting need none and provide you with a source of sustainable renewable energy to provide comfort and utility

tommy · 10-06-2007, 11:10 PM

this web site is pretty good they have alot of stuff . i have been looking into solar power fur a few years now . if you have aht eright pannels and batteries you don't need city power at all. you can be even smarter and go both ways and get the little wind mills and have the panels and wind turbines that way when the sun goes down if the wind is still up you can still be running off the inverters and the wind instead of just the batteries.

Remote Home: MrSolar.com, Online Solar, Inc.---Solar Panels and Solar Power Systems

Dan22 · 10-06-2007, 11:17 PM

AH, down here in Florida we have hurricanes and loss of power for up to two weeks is not uncommon.

How long do you think the fuel in your gas tank will last in a long-term survival situation?

I would rather save the fuel to use my vehicle and let the sun provide recharging of a car or tractor battery that would power your stuff.

Most devices you plug into your cigarette lighter take 2 amps or less so a 5-watt charger would more than be adequate, plus keep the battery up for night time use.

I see solar chargers as a source of free and renewable power that could keep you going for years.

A battery is a great source of smooth power with no variances as you might get from a generator.

Your main power source would be the battery with constant daytime recharging through solar power.

Even a 12 volt tractor battery can keep a portable TV running for many days without recharging. The solar charger would be for long-term use.

You could also find an umlimited source of car batteries, light bulbs and radios in abandoned vehicles.

TOMMY, Great site, I'll be doing some research there. Thanks

tommy · 10-06-2007, 11:48 PM

no problem . i been reading the web sight on and off for a while . i would like to one day get a whole house system. a good thing to get is a coleman generator with a 12 volt charger outlet. if you have two of them you can run things off the a/c part of the generator wich is about 1850 watts per generator and then run the 12 volt plug to a 8D truck battery so if you got two of them little coleman generators thats 3700 watts of a/c power on the generators and then you run 2 or possibly 3 of them big 8-D truck batteries and hook a power inverter to them about a 4or 5k inverter. that way you can have some good powere supply going into your house. and you can pickup a few pannels as backups for charging or get another 8d and run a pannel and an inverter to it too.. a good security system would be a marine deep cycle battery and a little pannel to trickle charge the battery during the day and a 700 watt power inverter wired to a set of 100 watt flood lights with motion sensors on them. it would probably be a good idea to break up the solar stuff into diferent sections instead of aving everything go to one power source .have a bunch of inverters frome 500 watts to 5k watts and multiple batteries hooked to them .

ArkansasHunter · 10-07-2007, 09:24 AM

Guys I'm sorry I meant for the generator to keep the batteries charged...None fuel driven.
We'll use a windmill as an example.
When the blades are turning on a windmill it is generating electrisity. Build a similar device with say a pulley instead of blades and connect it some way to one of the axles of your electric vehicle.
When the axle turns your also turning the generator to make electristy for keeping the batteries charged.
I didn't mean a gas operated generator...Now would that work ? If it would you wouldn't have to depend on the sunlight...A.H

tommy · 10-07-2007, 10:24 AM

you mean run a electric motor of the inverter and use the motor to turn a alternator to inturn charge the batteries. is that what i am reading. if so it won't work so good because the motor will pull more juice than you can put into the system. it would be better to have to sepertae systems and have them solar powered and wind drivin and when one runs low you can switch over to another and if you are chargeing one that is not being used then you can run the extra un used voltage over to the system you are useing prolonging it's use. and if there is a creek or bayou nere by that has running water most of the time or all the time then i would get a few high out put car alternators and mount them on a pole in the river so it would look likea paddle wheel boat and with the right pully you can get a 14v current running from that alternator as long as the water flows . and if you have two or three of them set up in the creek you could have a good thing going.we rigged up something like that on a shrimp barge for the 12v lightsand an inverter too but we never ran the inverter .the paddle wheel would lower onver the side the barge and the water current would turn the wheel that was hooked to a alternator by a belt and when it was hooked to a battery it worked very nicely.

KP90DC · 10-07-2007, 03:06 PM

I have camped all summer on my Ranch in a 30 Ft. Camping Trailer. I have just used Battery power from my vehicle, but I have been checking on Solar Panels. Have a Neighbor that has a Cabin that is also interested. We are going to go total solar with them at some point. Just trying to figure out the best route.

Dan22 · 10-07-2007, 03:45 PM

Calvin, that 12V solar panel on Ebay would be the answer to your travel trailer battery.

For bigger projects check out that site "tommy" showed us.

Lots of nice stuff there for any size job.

Inverters would be my last line of power sources as they use a lot of power to convert DC to AC.

Seems cheaper to just get DC powered stuff that would normally plug into a cigarette lighter.

AC has an advantage of being able to carry juice further over longer distances using smaller wires but for a trailer or camp DC is just fine and most modern electronics take very little power to operate. Don't be stingy on cable size when wiring up devices.

blaster · 10-07-2007, 04:16 PM

I have a few friends down here that live on islands with no power or water to them. rain gutters and cisterns supply the water (my house too) I have power poles to my house but use solar panels and a 4000 watt gen set as back up. the ones that depend on solar all have huge banks of large capacity batteries and their roofs are almost covered in solar cells. they still have to have a backup generator for periods of cloudy weather and if they need to run a high drain appliance like a washer or dryer. if you are going to go solar you'd better plan on spending a lot of money on solar panels and batteries. solar panels while much better now than in the past ,dont put out a lot of juice, especially when the sun is not bright. keep in mind that i live in the tropics where it is sunny most of the time. you guys up north dont have near the sun intensity that we do. on that note, i wired my cabin in michigan's upper peninsular for 12v and put 1 solar panel and an 8d battery. any time i went there all i had to do was hit the switch and i had lights but when we stayed for any amount of time , i would have to hook the jumper cables to the battery and charge it that way because the solar panel couldnt keep up with the drain. mostly we used gas lights or lanterns for light.

ezearln · 10-07-2007, 05:07 PM

True enough blaster , but the addition of or combination of wind, water (when available) and solar make a powerful combination that should if carefully engineered provide a respectable amount of minimal power to run basic needs. We aren't talking necessarily about sustaining a homestead and thumbing our noses at the grid we are however discussing means to provide minimal essential electricity when the grid goes down.

K75RT · 10-07-2007, 06:05 PM

As this is a survival section of the forum.....Solar is good for peace time but useless if Nukes are used. Nukes will lead to a Nuclear Winter and the debris in the atmosphere will cause a overcast day negating SOLAR ...

billy · 10-07-2007, 06:13 PM

you mean run a electric motor of the inverter and use the motor to turn a alternator to inturn charge the batteries. is that what i am reading. if so it won't work so good because the motor will pull more juice than you can put into the system.unquote
thats called perpetual motion machines.
they cant work.

Quote:

Originally Posted by K75RT

As this is a survival section of the forum.....Solar is good for peace time but useless if Nukes are used. Nukes will lead to a Nuclear Winter and the debris in the atmosphere will cause a overcast day negating SOLAR ...

suicide time for ol billy!
beats radiation poisoning....

tommy · 10-07-2007, 08:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by K75RT

As this is a survival section of the forum.....Solar is good for peace time but useless if Nukes are used. Nukes will lead to a Nuclear Winter and the debris in the atmosphere will cause a overcast day negating SOLAR ...

thats why i say get both wind and solar if you don't have light you can use wind and if you have light you cane use it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dan22

Calvin, that 12V solar panel on Ebay would be the answer to your travel trailer battery.
For bigger projects check out that site "tommy" showed us.
Lots of nice stuff there for any size job.
Inverters would be my last line of power sources as they use a lot of power to convert DC to AC.
Seems cheaper to just get DC powered stuff that would normally plug into a cigarette lighter.
AC has an advantage of being able to carry juice further over longer distances using smaller wires but for a trailer or camp DC is just fine and most modern electronics take very little power to operate. Don't be stingy on cable size when wiring up devices.

dan that web sight i posted has alot of stuff that run off of 12volts like refrigerators and stuff. and with the right hookup you can run all kinds of stuffrun as much as you can off of just the batteries then use a inverter. i know after katrina i ran a lamp /tv/fan for hours off my hpx and it's battery hooked to a 700 watt inverter . now if i had a constantly turning alternator i could have ran more indefinatly.sure a power inverter sucks juice but if you only use what you need and you have a big enough battery then you won't have any problems.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dan22

Calvin, that 12V solar panel on Ebay would be the answer to your travel trailer battery.
For bigger projects check out that site "tommy" showed us.
Lots of nice stuff there for any size job.
Inverters would be my last line of power sources as they use a lot of power to convert DC to AC.
Seems cheaper to just get DC powered stuff that would normally plug into a cigarette lighter.
AC has an advantage of being able to carry juice further over longer distances using smaller wires but for a trailer or camp DC is just fine and most modern electronics take very little power to operate. Don't be stingy on cable size when wiring up devices.

try this web site out for some 12 volt products
12 Volt and Portable Appliances | RV Supply Warehouse

ezearln · 10-07-2007, 11:48 PM

Fact is folks most if not all modern current manufacture campers (not caps) and travel trailers have inverters installed (as mine does) that provides a bank of both 12VDC and 115 VAC to operate installed systems. Used judiciously you can last quite awhile without hooking up fo ra recharge, Now that said I wouldn't advise running the AC off of it! LOL, but a coffee maker or other small appliance can be used without undue stress or drain on a quality deep cycle battery. (not a starting battery such as in your passenger car)

KP90DC · 10-08-2007, 06:21 AM

Thanks for the tips. I agree that DC is the way to go and use DC appliances in my situation. The main thing I need to run is a Refrig. I have plenty of battery power to run everything else I use and think a couple of panels would keep enough battery power to do me.

tommy · 10-08-2007, 11:18 AM

let me find the refrigerator for you i have it saved .
some of these that i posted come with thier ownw panel and thats all they need to run off of.
here is one web site they are expensive but they work on 12volts
Engel : 12 Volt Refrigerator : 12 Volt Freezer : Engel ACDC Fridge Freezers

another good web site for freezers
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/spinoff2003/er_1.html
price list of solar powered refrigerators and freezers

Dan22 · 10-08-2007, 11:38 AM

Tommy, Nice. That would be invaluable for a diebetic patient who needs to keep their insulin cool.

It's all about how many amps you have available and how many amps your devices draw. Then you need a solar panel or panels to keep up with the draw.

Most devices only run for a short time so the battery has a chance to recover with solar charging.

I wonder how much current draw that refrigerator requires for each 24 hour period.

10-06-2007, 10:11 PM	#1
Dan22 Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Central Florida Posts: 307 Trader Rating: (0)	What about a Solar power charger to keep your 12 Volt battery going. I saw some portable solar charging devices on Ebay that could keep a 12v car, tractor or motorcycle battery going for a long time. Seems to me this would be a handy device to have in a survival situation as you could power anything that normally plugs into your car cigarette lighter. Might be nice to have a radio or small CD player or even a portable DVD player if you have a permanent type shelter. Check out these listings. battery solar charger, Electrical Solar, Parts Accessories items on eBay.com

10-06-2007, 10:29 PM	#2
ezearln Senior Member Join Date: May 2007 Location: Texas Hill Country Posts: 3,178 Trader Rating: (0)	It would be an excellent set up to have a couple of high quality deep cycle batteries in the 800-900Amp hour range and a solar panel or two to keep them charged and then tie them into an inverter to get 115VAC , another set up I have seen and considered building is these large "Ornamental" windmills adapted and geared to drive an automotive alternator performing the same function. While the reserve and output would not be great it could provide enough to operate a small fridge and a light or two or even a small water pump. nearly silent and readily concealable or camoflaged they could be the answer for interim power in a crisis. __________________ "You can have my Freedom when I'm done with it!"

10-06-2007, 10:51 PM	#4
ezearln Senior Member Join Date: May 2007 Location: Texas Hill Country Posts: 3,178 Trader Rating: (0)	It will A.H. but consider fuel as an issue the two setups we are suggesting need none and provide you with a source of sustainable renewable energy to provide comfort and utility __________________ "You can have my Freedom when I'm done with it!"

10-06-2007, 11:17 PM	#6
Dan22 Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Central Florida Posts: 307 Trader Rating: (0)	AH, down here in Florida we have hurricanes and loss of power for up to two weeks is not uncommon. How long do you think the fuel in your gas tank will last in a long-term survival situation? I would rather save the fuel to use my vehicle and let the sun provide recharging of a car or tractor battery that would power your stuff. Most devices you plug into your cigarette lighter take 2 amps or less so a 5-watt charger would more than be adequate, plus keep the battery up for night time use. I see solar chargers as a source of free and renewable power that could keep you going for years. A battery is a great source of smooth power with no variances as you might get from a generator. Your main power source would be the battery with constant daytime recharging through solar power. Even a 12 volt tractor battery can keep a portable TV running for many days without recharging. The solar charger would be for long-term use. You could also find an umlimited source of car batteries, light bulbs and radios in abandoned vehicles. TOMMY, Great site, I'll be doing some research there. Thanks Last edited by Dan22; 10-06-2007 at 11:24 PM.

10-07-2007, 03:06 PM	#10
KP90DC Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Oklahoma Posts: 214 Trader Rating: (0)	I have camped all summer on my Ranch in a 30 Ft. Camping Trailer. I have just used Battery power from my vehicle, but I have been checking on Solar Panels. Have a Neighbor that has a Cabin that is also interested. We are going to go total solar with them at some point. Just trying to figure out the best route. __________________ Visit: earlyriserscoffeeshop.com Calvin Wiles !!! HAPPY AND SAFE SHOOTING

10-06-2007, 10:47 PM	#3
ArkansasHunter Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: South Arkansas Posts: 10,531 Trader Rating: (0)	Why would you need solar power if you could run a generater off the drive axle If the batteries are charged and the vehicle goes into motion and you have a Generator connected to the turning axle to cause the generater to generate to keep the batteries charged why wouldn't this work ? I thought of this when I was around 14 years old, does anyone know if it would work.

10-06-2007, 11:10 PM	#5
tommy Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: schriever la Posts: 3,893 Trader Rating: (0)	this web site is pretty good they have alot of stuff . i have been looking into solar power fur a few years now . if you have aht eright pannels and batteries you don't need city power at all. you can be even smarter and go both ways and get the little wind mills and have the panels and wind turbines that way when the sun goes down if the wind is still up you can still be running off the inverters and the wind instead of just the batteries. Remote Home: MrSolar.com, Online Solar, Inc.---Solar Panels and Solar Power Systems

10-06-2007, 11:48 PM	#7
tommy Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: schriever la Posts: 3,893 Trader Rating: (0)	no problem . i been reading the web sight on and off for a while . i would like to one day get a whole house system. a good thing to get is a coleman generator with a 12 volt charger outlet. if you have two of them you can run things off the a/c part of the generator wich is about 1850 watts per generator and then run the 12 volt plug to a 8D truck battery so if you got two of them little coleman generators thats 3700 watts of a/c power on the generators and then you run 2 or possibly 3 of them big 8-D truck batteries and hook a power inverter to them about a 4or 5k inverter. that way you can have some good powere supply going into your house. and you can pickup a few pannels as backups for charging or get another 8d and run a pannel and an inverter to it too.. a good security system would be a marine deep cycle battery and a little pannel to trickle charge the battery during the day and a 700 watt power inverter wired to a set of 100 watt flood lights with motion sensors on them. it would probably be a good idea to break up the solar stuff into diferent sections instead of aving everything go to one power source .have a bunch of inverters frome 500 watts to 5k watts and multiple batteries hooked to them .

10-07-2007, 09:24 AM	#8
ArkansasHunter Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: South Arkansas Posts: 10,531 Trader Rating: (0)	Guys I'm sorry I meant for the generator to keep the batteries charged...None fuel driven. We'll use a windmill as an example. When the blades are turning on a windmill it is generating electrisity. Build a similar device with say a pulley instead of blades and connect it some way to one of the axles of your electric vehicle. When the axle turns your also turning the generator to make electristy for keeping the batteries charged. I didn't mean a gas operated generator...Now would that work ? If it would you wouldn't have to depend on the sunlight...A.H

10-07-2007, 10:24 AM	#9
tommy Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: schriever la Posts: 3,893 Trader Rating: (0)	you mean run a electric motor of the inverter and use the motor to turn a alternator to inturn charge the batteries. is that what i am reading. if so it won't work so good because the motor will pull more juice than you can put into the system. it would be better to have to sepertae systems and have them solar powered and wind drivin and when one runs low you can switch over to another and if you are chargeing one that is not being used then you can run the extra un used voltage over to the system you are useing prolonging it's use. and if there is a creek or bayou nere by that has running water most of the time or all the time then i would get a few high out put car alternators and mount them on a pole in the river so it would look likea paddle wheel boat and with the right pully you can get a 14v current running from that alternator as long as the water flows . and if you have two or three of them set up in the creek you could have a good thing going.we rigged up something like that on a shrimp barge for the 12v lightsand an inverter too but we never ran the inverter .the paddle wheel would lower onver the side the barge and the water current would turn the wheel that was hooked to a alternator by a belt and when it was hooked to a battery it worked very nicely.

10-07-2007, 03:45 PM	#11
Dan22 Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Central Florida Posts: 307 Trader Rating: (0)	Calvin, that 12V solar panel on Ebay would be the answer to your travel trailer battery. For bigger projects check out that site "tommy" showed us. Lots of nice stuff there for any size job. Inverters would be my last line of power sources as they use a lot of power to convert DC to AC. Seems cheaper to just get DC powered stuff that would normally plug into a cigarette lighter. AC has an advantage of being able to carry juice further over longer distances using smaller wires but for a trailer or camp DC is just fine and most modern electronics take very little power to operate. Don't be stingy on cable size when wiring up devices.

10-07-2007, 04:16 PM	#12
blaster Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: big pine key, florida Posts: 402 Trader Rating: (0)	I have a few friends down here that live on islands with no power or water to them. rain gutters and cisterns supply the water (my house too) I have power poles to my house but use solar panels and a 4000 watt gen set as back up. the ones that depend on solar all have huge banks of large capacity batteries and their roofs are almost covered in solar cells. they still have to have a backup generator for periods of cloudy weather and if they need to run a high drain appliance like a washer or dryer. if you are going to go solar you'd better plan on spending a lot of money on solar panels and batteries. solar panels while much better now than in the past ,dont put out a lot of juice, especially when the sun is not bright. keep in mind that i live in the tropics where it is sunny most of the time. you guys up north dont have near the sun intensity that we do. on that note, i wired my cabin in michigan's upper peninsular for 12v and put 1 solar panel and an 8d battery. any time i went there all i had to do was hit the switch and i had lights but when we stayed for any amount of time , i would have to hook the jumper cables to the battery and charge it that way because the solar panel couldnt keep up with the drain. mostly we used gas lights or lanterns for light. __________________ peace through superior firepower

10-07-2007, 05:07 PM	#13
ezearln Senior Member Join Date: May 2007 Location: Texas Hill Country Posts: 3,178 Trader Rating: (0)	True enough blaster , but the addition of or combination of wind, water (when available) and solar make a powerful combination that should if carefully engineered provide a respectable amount of minimal power to run basic needs. We aren't talking necessarily about sustaining a homestead and thumbing our noses at the grid we are however discussing means to provide minimal essential electricity when the grid goes down. __________________ "You can have my Freedom when I'm done with it!"

10-07-2007, 06:05 PM	#14
K75RT Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 283 Trader Rating: (0)	As this is a survival section of the forum.....Solar is good for peace time but useless if Nukes are used. Nukes will lead to a Nuclear Winter and the debris in the atmosphere will cause a overcast day negating SOLAR ...

10-07-2007, 11:48 PM	#17
ezearln Senior Member Join Date: May 2007 Location: Texas Hill Country Posts: 3,178 Trader Rating: (0)	Fact is folks most if not all modern current manufacture campers (not caps) and travel trailers have inverters installed (as mine does) that provides a bank of both 12VDC and 115 VAC to operate installed systems. Used judiciously you can last quite awhile without hooking up fo ra recharge, Now that said I wouldn't advise running the AC off of it! LOL, but a coffee maker or other small appliance can be used without undue stress or drain on a quality deep cycle battery. (not a starting battery such as in your passenger car) __________________ "You can have my Freedom when I'm done with it!"

10-08-2007, 06:21 AM	#18
KP90DC Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Oklahoma Posts: 214 Trader Rating: (0)	Thanks for the tips. I agree that DC is the way to go and use DC appliances in my situation. The main thing I need to run is a Refrig. I have plenty of battery power to run everything else I use and think a couple of panels would keep enough battery power to do me. __________________ Visit: earlyriserscoffeeshop.com Calvin Wiles !!! HAPPY AND SAFE SHOOTING

10-08-2007, 11:18 AM	#19
tommy Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: schriever la Posts: 3,893 Trader Rating: (0)	let me find the refrigerator for you i have it saved . some of these that i posted come with thier ownw panel and thats all they need to run off of. here is one web site they are expensive but they work on 12volts Engel : 12 Volt Refrigerator : 12 Volt Freezer : Engel ACDC Fridge Freezers another good web site for freezers http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/spinoff2003/er_1.html price list of solar powered refrigerators and freezers Last edited by tommy; 10-08-2007 at 11:39 AM. Reason: Automerged Doublepost

10-08-2007, 11:38 AM	#20
Dan22 Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Central Florida Posts: 307 Trader Rating: (0)	Tommy, Nice. That would be invaluable for a diebetic patient who needs to keep their insulin cool. It's all about how many amps you have available and how many amps your devices draw. Then you need a solar panel or panels to keep up with the draw. Most devices only run for a short time so the battery has a chance to recover with solar charging. I wonder how much current draw that refrigerator requires for each 24 hour period.