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WOW! Hooking up your system to a solar generator...

It’s been 14 hours since the power went out. The Anker is showing 50% life left. It started at 90%. At times the Anker shows 150 watts usage but often shows zero. Right now I am watching TV and it shows 12 hours of battery life left on the Anker.
 
It’s the same here: I have prolonged periods of 120–200W consumption and brief spikes of 2.2–2.5kW; in my case, the generator is used only when solar radiation is very low and there is no grid power.
My advice to those with an auxiliary system featuring an inverter and a battery is to invest in at least two photovoltaic panels of at least 450W each. This way, they can charge 1.5–2.5 kWh into the battery during two or three hours of sunlight.
I oversized the number of panels because I live in an area with little sunlight and prolonged shading.
 
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Some great info here. I have been messing with solar for a few years now with a rooftop system and a balcony/plug-in system. Lately I've been looking at solar chargers, battery backup and more. If I can possibly get cleaner power and more detailed sound - it is an added bonus. If anyone is considering buying a solar generator, the specifications on various models and brands can be quite daunting. I have watched a lot of youtube videos on them but take the influencer opinions with a grain of salt. One of the influencers has a good comparison spreadsheet though, where the specs of lots of generators are compared. If you are thinking of buying one, this spreadsheet may be of interest.

docs.google.com

Minute Man Solar Power Station Comparison Charts

docs.google.com docs.google.com

Glad that LaLa did not cause too much damage in Hawaii.
 
Update... Adding to my woes, the Board of Water Supply issued an alert last night that our area has no water available. There is a water tank at the top of our area which water is pumped into from the main water line. The power outages affected the pumps so what water we have is whatever is left in the tank feeding the homes via gravity but no new water is being pumped into the tank. Last night, some neighbors higher up from our home reported water stopped flowing. As the water is being used by the lower homes, the upper homes are running dry. They hope to fix the issue in about 12 hours.

I fully charged my 6,000 batteries yesterday and was listening to music and watching movies. The batteries dropped to 75% in six hours of use. The consumption was about a steady 300-400 watts during that time. I'm going to run the batteries down to 20% and then do a 80% charge, I'm going to keep at this routine in order to keep the batteries in top condition.

Someone I know had a battery system in his garage with the batteries at 100% when he put them in storage. When he pulled it out of storage during the hurricane, the batteries were dead and would not charge. Apparently he broke three cardinal rules of storing batteries:
1. Do not store them fully charged
2. Do not store them in hot areas (enclosed garages can easily exceed 100 degrees in Hawaii)
3. Do not store in humid areas (Hawaii is very humid)

Another rule, store batteries at 40-60% and recharge when the batteries reach 20% or every three months.
 
Personally, in a situation like this, I would charge to 100%. I've done a lot of research on the topic and, yeah, charging to 100% every time can reduce the ultimate, maximum, theoretical perfect number of cycles type thing but it doesn't appreciably change the useful life of the battery for the typical user over time. It's one of those 1%er type of things, then again this tends to be a 1%er place. In an emergency like this I suggest 100% or at least a lot closer to it is a very reasonable thing.

As well, it may be necessary to charge to 100% on occasion to keep the cells in balance.
 
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Not above 60% applies to some batteries, but not all. Further, charging batteries only to 60% means that you only have 60%, for example if you have 100ah of battery, charged to 60% you have 60ah, … and it will take a lot of 100% charge cycles to degrade the batteries to 60% (and the 60% charge does degrade the battery also, just more slowly, where heat and time will take their toll even at 60%).

I store at ~60%, but when using my battery devices I charge to 100% to get the useful energy out. My batteries always live very long compared to the mean.

I am puzzled by how bad your power would have to be to make an audible change when powered by an inverter (solar-battery).
 
I plan to charge the unit to 100% every three months or so, as well as right before any storms... Otherwise, 80% it is.
 
Certainly your call, but you know that capacity and life of the cells are the least likely reason there will be a problem with the unit as a whole.

The capacity of the unit will never be more than it is right now despite trying to go easy on the cells. Use as much as you can when it has the most to offer.
 
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It appears we are heading for another hurricane hitting us next week Monday. It will be named Moke or Adele depending where the hurricane is when it is formed. The forecast is a cat 1 following the same path as Lala, There is also the possibility of another hurricane following that one in the following week. Everybody is scrambling to find power stations or gas generators right now. Everyone is sold out,

It is a real pain that they cannot be shipped to Hawaii. You have to buy them from the one local distributor and obviously they are not going to stock too many in inventory. You cannot buy them online or at Lowes or Home Depot, it responds not available in Hawaii due to shipping regulations. The local distributor said that they will not get any inventory for about four-six weeks.
 
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