Anyone need power advice? I can help.

mseth · Post by **mseth** » Tue Aug 10, 2010 6:21 pm

Hellooo,
I am trying to light 140 feet of LED rope light. Most sites say they use .8 watts per foot = 112 watts. I'm not sure about amps, or any of the other acronyms used for power. I'm thinking a deep cycle battery with an inverter and charging it back at camp during the day (I'm on the grid). I've heard of float chargers and trickle chargers. I would also consider solar, but there are more acronyms and mystery terms I don't understand. I really don't want to use a gas generator. Of course I want an economical solution, but the effect is the most important.
My questions:
What rating battery should I get?
What rating inverter should I get?
Thanks for any advice you can give.
Seth McG
Pyramid Cocoon

TeddsAdventure · Post by **TeddsAdventure** » Wed Aug 11, 2010 8:10 am

they do sell small 12V RV fridges in most travel centers, and also larger PROPANE-POWERED units on ebay, and elsewhere, but what i've been using (for my fully-insulated air-conditioned sleep-during-the-heat-of-the-day TENT) is just a standard 45W solar system, with marine batteries and an inverter, keeping them topped off with a 12V charger - when AC is available... this allows me to run during the heat of the day, when most of the AC is consumed, and at our camp - we experience rolling blackouts...

[quote="southcoaster"]hey dude, it's not really medium or huge scale stuff but i want to know the most economical way i can go about running a refridgerator for the week. my camp (bacon without borders) cooks a large amount of bacon each year and in addition to the meat (which usually is ok in a cooler) we have lots of fresh ingredients for use on the bar that DONT handle the cooler too well (stuff like veggies, mint and other herbs, eggs, etc).

mseth · Post by **mseth** » Wed Aug 11, 2010 9:59 am

I'm with Pigmalions and we bring up about 100 lbs of bacon every year. We freeze it before leaving and have a dedicated ice chest for it. If you're on the grid, they say not to run refrigerators or air conditioning units because it will overload the system.

portaplaya · Post by **portaplaya** » Wed Aug 11, 2010 1:31 pm

I'm trying to be cheap. It seems to me that I can use my 14W camera battery charger with a 100W inverter off of my truck for a couple of hours and then run the motor for about 10 minutes to recharge the non-deep cell battery back to full.

Does that sound reasonable? Seems crazy to build batteries, solar power, charge controllers, etc. for a situation that just needs 14W for 4 hours each day. But I'm looking to get this vetted before I put it into practice.

Jesus · Post by **Jesus** » Sun Aug 15, 2010 3:17 pm

[quote="whaleboy"]Hmmmmm....
@southcoaster:
Ok from what I know, fridges pull a fair amount of power.... your best bet might be either xxx, yyy, or going a whole different route, like dry ice(which might over-chill your stuff).

I posted a few times in this long dry ice thread (on page 8 ), on how to NOT over-chill stuff, and conserve your dry ice:

http://eplaya.burningman.org/viewtopic.php?t=3232

good info from many folks, but some crap too.

Anyone need power advice? I can help.

Bacon

Small power question