Adventures in Solar

[Flack]

Another company sent me a 110w solar panel for the van. I have two other portable solar panels in that same range that both suck but this one from a company with a ridiculous name (EasyLonger) was pretty impressive. I was getting 98w from it without messing with angles or anything. The best part is that it has a couple of USB ports right on the panel so you can charge USB stuff without needed to go through any battery system. I don't need it on a day to day basic but if we lose power this winter, that thing will be on standby.

I still have that AllPowers R3500 (3,000Wh) battery new in the box. It still sells news for $1,500 and the best offer I've got for it on FB Marketplace is $800 (that's excluding the offer to trade for a "mostly running" Ford F150...) so I may end up just eating the cost and hooking it up out in my building. I could run 99% of what I do out there off that battery and a couple of panels.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Right? Like at this point, the amount of solar solutions and battery options these places have sent you, I would imagine you are starting to get to the point where you can run the essentials for a while during an outage.

On Tuesday, I was at the BeauJo's in Idaho Springs with Beaver's Kurt. Afterwards, I ducked us into an ice cream / jam / gift shop place before we drove back. They had a cocktail Galaga there, and when I pointed it out, the gal working said that it died when the store and block and town lost power, in the many times they lost power last winter.

WELL SHIVER ME TIMBERS' I wanted to talk to her about that. I said we also suffered the same fate and the power companies out here are truly awful. She said they had to throw out days of their product (ice cream!) because the freezers did not work. They lost thousands of dollars of product. Apparently her father owns the place and ... here is a small business suffering because the power companies can't do their fucking job.

I bought $10 of jam, we're all in this together.

We're all together that for the most part, small business is a wonderful thing for America? Right? I mean the people here, not Xcel Energy, who couldn't give a fuck what they destroy if it means getting off their fucking ass and ensuring that the grid is safe, effect and UP like it is everywhere else in America except for Texas.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

We lost power yesterday at 5:37 for a few minutes.

Lost it today for three hours, from 3:30AM to 5:30AM.

At 3:30AM in the morning, I woke up, my CPAP was not working. I tried adjusting it. My wife told me there was a lightning strike and we lost power. I think that because I fiddled with the CPAP, I was not aware that power came back. I slept without it for 3 hours and woke up again at 6:30AM and she told me it came back "relatively soon." Okay. You'd like to think that with the raised rates, they could use some of that extra money to build technology that could seamlessly continue to operate when lightning hits the earth. You'd think! I give them no credit for getting power on "quickly," as it should have never gone fucking out.

So this takes us to the following:

September 3rd, 2026: 2 hours of loss starting at 3:30AM. In theory a controlled shut-off.
September 2nd, 2026: Lost it at 5:37AM for a few minutes. In theory a controlled shut-off.
October 14th, 2026: Lightning caused power loss for less than 3 hours, but I won't be able to see how long.

This is incompetent. Right? They turned it off for 2 days last month after intending to shut it off for one. So whatever they tried the first day didn't work and then whatever they did didn't save against a lightning. I doubt we got the strongest strike since Ben Franklin was out there banging milfs and putting keys on kites. And, not trying to be a baby about this, but I took the rest of the week off to use my computers and make music and all I could think about was of fucking course the electric company would have me burn vacation and be unable to get power going. But that did not happen, so I don't want to dwell.

I'm at $2000 saved of the $6000 I want to save before getting the backup solution, whatever it may be. I guess we're going gas lines after all to something,

[Da King]

I guess we're going gas lines after all to something,

You have chosen... wisely.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I went with this.

https://us.ecoflow.com/products/ecoflow ... 7251526729

Found a site selling that for $799 and then their website had a 10% off coupon, which worked.

More on it in a second.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

The second date I ever had with my wife, I took her to a nice restaurant. Not a steak house, but one that certainly had that as an offering among other nice things.

I remember that there were so many options, the waitress had to come by three times until my wife was ready for her order. It was the second date, it was wonderful, charming. On the other hand, I can look at a menu and be ready in 15 seconds.

This pattern has persisted with other things. It's okay! People have their quirks, I certainly have mine. The water heater thread showed a little of this - I did grow frustrated with thinking we were in agreement about what to do, and then the indecision would kick in and we'd be back to square one, but I grew frustrated because it was three weeks without hot water.

We are coming up on "they shut off our power" season. I will maintain that this behavior by our power companies is criminal and the decision-makers have been locked up. I have talked to people at our energy co-op, they think it's great to just shut the power off because the wind is blowing. I wrote my representative in congress, I got back a stupid form letter that did keyword scanning on the wrong thing. I voted against her in the primary, I will vote against her in the primary every chance I get. But this means I gotta self-serve here.

We looked at solar. We got a quote of 30,000 dollars and the rep was trying to trick me to sign something that would have committed me before someone came out here to look at our land. Yesterday, our neighbors came over for breakfast. The husband of our married couple pair is very handy, he can do anything on a house. They have solar installed and he said it does not work when the electricity is out. This blew me away, I did not think such a system was possible. And lastly, a, what 8,000 dollar - 12,000 dollar credit for solar installation was specifically removed by the Trump administration in 2026. It really makes it difficult to get past the pedophilia, Donald, when you're specifically still fucking the rest of us. My wife made it clear that her ultimate preference would be that our house totally runs on solar. Well, that came with the implication that it would still energize our house when our power was cut.

The "solar collectors along with a big giant battery on the side of our house" that was the Ansler/Anxler/whoever solution would be a good one, but that was gonna run $6000 and we had to find an electrician to install it. Not insurmountable, except for the literal part to the giant solar collectors - those would need to be mounted. (Sorry, this sentence has potential to be Oscar Wilde-like witty, I just didn't get there if you are reading this.) My wife did recommend it as a solution. However, she did a thing that I had to react to with a stiff upper lip. She wants a ductless mini-split installed in our bedroom. In her mind, she wanted to tie one to the other. I am not being small, petty or sexist. The planet is getting hotter, we have no A/C of any kind. Sure. We can use a mini-split. That is not the problem I am trying to solve right now. It is difficult for me to take feedback and plan thing #1 when someone mentions thing #2. I don't like it when it happens at work, I find that it makes it difficult to get thing #1 complete.

The Generac one where you tie into the gas lines was the next possible solution. This would work great. I don't know what it costs to run your house on natural gas for the 4-8 hours we typically lose power for. I genuinely don't. And is it "worth" it to have power for those times? That brings up another thing...

There are two things going on here.

1) We don't want to lose our refrigerated food and frozen foods when we lose power
2) It would be nice to have water when we lose power (we are on a well, so we need electricity for water to flow)

But also, when we lose power for short periods of time, I find it pleasant to be able to use my computer.

The above Ecoflow battery that I went with allows that. I think that will stop me from instantly diving into rage. Our power will be shut off. I will have a giant battery in my closet that is charged. I will take the power strip for the computer I am writing this on, plug it into that, and have it working. I am not a monster. Yesterday I asked my wife if she would also want power going to her laptop to have it work. Her work laptop does not use much power, she had stated that its charge is enough for her to work during the day when we lose power. We also have a Jackery unit that she can run off of. I will credit laptops for not needing much power.

I think eventually we go with the Generac system and tie into natural gas, but that was thousands of dollars away, so I made a command decision and got the above unit which will keep me from being totally insane. I threw a 200 watt solar collector on it and if all of this works, I'll get a 500 watt one (or another one to reach that total.) I just want to see how this all goes first!

[Roody_Yogurt]

We are getting solar installed next year. I imagine there are better deals out there where one gets paid for electricity surpluses as I've heard on online anecdotes, but we're satisfied with the terms of our situation- we don't have to foot any of the installation costs and we'll pay a fixed rate for X number of years that is very close to what we currently pay for the budget plan offered through WE Energy. With the current trend of pushing private company costs onto the public, it's almost certain that our rates will go up at some point and it's nice to have a guaranteed cost. Plus, once the X number of years has been paid off (and one can pay in advance if they choose to), electricity will be free. The solar company also handles all equipment upkeep and are even upgrading our breaker box and fixing some shingles on our roof at no cost.

As far as the other thing goes, I want to say about five years ago or so, some researchers somewhere in the Pacific Northwest designed a giant battery that could conceivably have residential usage; they said these things could hold about five years' worth of electricity (the main complication being that they produce enough radiation that they would need their own shed or other thing to keep people away a safe distance). Anyhow, one of the researchers on the team was Chinese and instantly sent all of this info back to China so they'll have them before us (maybe they already have them now?), but who knows, maybe we'll start seeing this available in the American consumer market in the next 10 years. I didn't google as I write this to research the current state of things, but I imagine the information is out there.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I have read that China is the largest importer of crude oil, and one thing I guess ya "gotta hand it" to their dictatorship is that my guess is that they give a lot less of a shit of simply telling a Chinese oil company, whatever their equivalent of Exxon is, to go fuck themselves, we are going solar.

It is infuriating that there is this giant ball of energy in the sky and as a country, as our country (the US) we aren't just taking the energy it provides to run our country. It is so stupid to consider any other energy source. We have collectively done a terrible job harvesting it, and by "we" I mean the cocksucking corporations who are keeping us all down and all collectively away from real progress.

[Roody_Yogurt]

I often feel like our current administration is trying to actualize the fever dream of an elderly robber baron on his deathbed sometime in the first half of the 20th century as so many of their goals seem so inexplicably out of touch.

[Da King]

After all that, you just got a portable battery pack? LOLZ. Well done.

I do like that one though. It has enough power to handle a sump pump's need for "surge power". I want a review when you get it and use it.

[Da King]

We are getting solar installed next year. I imagine there are better deals out there where one gets paid for electricity surpluses as I've heard on online anecdotes, but we're satisfied with the terms of our situation- we don't have to foot any of the installation costs and we'll pay a fixed rate for X number of years that is very close to what we currently pay for the budget plan offered through WE Energy. With the current trend of pushing private company costs onto the public, it's almost certain that our rates will go up at some point and it's nice to have a guaranteed cost. Plus, once the X number of years has been paid off (and one can pay in advance if they choose to), electricity will be free. The solar company also handles all equipment upkeep and are even upgrading our breaker box and fixing some shingles on our roof at no cost.

This is essentially what I have. So far, I am very happy!

[Da King]

It is infuriating that there is this giant ball of energy in the sky and as a country, as our country (the US) we aren't just taking the energy it provides to run our country. It is so stupid to consider any other energy source. We have collectively done a terrible job harvesting it, and by "we" I mean the cocksucking corporations who are keeping us all down and all collectively away from real progress.

We do do this!

Well, if we = China.

https://www.solarpaces.org/china-genera ... n-qinghai/

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

After all that, you just got a portable battery pack? LOLZ. Well done. I do like that one though. It has enough power to handle a sump pump's need for "surge power". I want a review when you get it and use it.

Yeah, this is going to hopefully solve the issue of a short term loss of power - but we'll see how this late fall, early winter goes. If we have an outage that is so long that it exhausts the battery pack then I will again be furious, but I'll be able to move on a more expensive unit like the natural gas/Generac one and justify it. I can also get a larger solar collector for this pack.

I think when it arrives this week I am going to charge it and then make sure the devices I care about can run off it and give it a test, yeah. I cleared out some space in my office for it and doing a little spring cleaning here has also been pleasant.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

It arrived today! It is not that large!

I am going to hook my computer and monitor up to it right now. It was at 44% when it arrived. That is fair. It charged really quickly, which is nice. My solar collector is a different shipment, but it is nice to know that the thing can charge up quickly. Frequently we are without power and a place I can drive to 5 minutes away has power, so if I can quickly charge the thing and get hours of use, this may make it very realistic to keep this PC going.

OK, going to power off. See you guys soon!

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Ok, well, it started. For simple browsing, after boot up where it got to about 250 watts, I seem to be at like 121 watts. With no solar plates coming in because it is night. A bug; I'll write that up. It is saying it can go 13 hours and 22 minutes at like 125 watts.

Usually when the power is out, I am able to focus and be productive, so I'd have an IDE up and work on Cyberganked. I can't imagine that would take much power.

It looks like it would cover the three losses we had in September and October.

The outage we had last year, December of 2025, it was off at 9:45PM on Wednesday and came back on at 4:15PM on a Sunday. So, Thu, Fri, Sat at 24 hours a piece, that is 72 hours. Add 2 more on Wednesday and 16 on Sunday.... what, 90 hours? That was the worst we had ever had.

I want to say we had a couple more earlier in 2026.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Let it get to 94%, and then accidentally pressed the power off button on the unit. I connected my computer and monitor back up to my regular electricity. And then plugged the unit in to charge it up.

Annnnd it tripped the circuit of my office.

So that might be annoying: having to take it to another circuit to charge. But I may just upgrade the office if I can do it to have more juice coming in here. Which I should do, as this is where I am most of the time.