Powering through Power Cuts SL-2022 #GoHomeGota

The intention of this project is to set up a temporary power source to get through a few hours of Power failure without hindering the work at office. Since I was regularly taking international conference calls for work, it is not always acceptable to be excused every time I have a power cut. To achieve this, I only needed power for a few facilities. These were my router/WiFi access point, Laptop and a pedestal fan since I live in a tropical country.

To get started I initially purchased a 330W Solar panel which I was able to place on the roof of my house. The power generated through this was then directed through a 20A Solar charge controller which I purchased online. As an energy storage device, I used my cars’ existing 12V lead acid battery and I purchased a new battery for my car. The existing battery in my car was about 1.5 years old and had a stated capacity of about 35Ah. In this case it is safe to use I have about 30% usable energy in the battery which provides me with only a measly 126Wh. Given that my router requires 9W, laptop requires 65W and my fan requires 50W I am able to manage as long as clouds don’t block the sun light hitting the panel for more than an hour at a stretch. However, working after hours (during a Power cut) when there is no sunlight is difficult unless I upgrade to a better battery (which is also quite expensive due to the Dollar/logistics crisis in the country).

Once the battery was hooked up to my Solar charge controller, I was able to use the stable 12V output from the solar charge controller to power up my DC sources. This included a small light to see around the setup, my router/WiFi access point, Speakers (For music during a power cut) and a Raspberry Pi (which manages my house security devices).

The DC source on the solar charge controller can only output roughly 3A although it can handle an input of 20A. This foiled my plans of using this boost converter to power my laptop directly from this source.

To overcome this, I initially ordered the cheapest inverter which I could find to overcome this. This in hindsight was a bad choice as what I ordered was an approximately 50W (3000W in the label is apparently peak power) modified sine wave inverter which was not even able to charge my laptop without overloading instantly (peak power was also a lie). I was about to power up my fan but it would make a horrible noise as the motor on the fan did not respond well to modified sine waves. The only way to get around this noise was to use my fan at max speed which dulled down the noise to a large extent.

Giving up, I finally purchased a power 500W continuous power Pure Sinewave inverter (in hope I would improve the battery capacity in the future) and this solved all the issues. The laptop and fan were able to be powered up without any issues.

So this is my final set up for the time being. I have made a purchase for power meters which I can use to track my power usage to calculate the payback for my solar panel. I am still contemplating on the need to buy the new 100Ah battery. I'm sure I will be pushed in 1 direction after seeing the outcome of my payback calculation. Will keep you updated.