Punished Wankula
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2022
With global uncertainty rising along with the price of gas and electricity due in part to AI datacenters shitting up the place, the grid has become unstable as of late.
Basically, there's a degree of overhead that power plants leave for things like hot or cold days when people are using a lot of electricity to regulate the temperature of their homes.
And those new AI datacenters have completely eaten into that margin, making brownouts and load shedding a more regular occurrence.
Besides that though, weather has gotten quite a bit more extreme lately and, having experienced a few extended power outages (> 1 week) before, I'm eager to not go through that again.
To that end, I purchased a generator. Just the one, and just a small one. Pure sine wave, dual fuel. 2500 watts, enough to cook breakfast, make coffee and run an air conditioner.
A small inverter generator like that sips gas so the one dedicated gas can I keep around for it will last quite a while on it's own, but the reason I don't have more is that gas doesn't keep, it spoils.
My life is complicated enough without having to keep track of which gas I've cycled out or not. I don't feel like having to drag my cans down to the gas station and refill them every six months to a year.
That's why dual fuel generators are nice, you can use propane. The power rating is lower, but propane doesn't go bad. You can store it in 100lb cylinders and run the generator for ages.
But I use that propane for other stuff, too. Heating and cooking being the main ones, and my tanks are rarely ever all full. I don't have dedicated tanks for the generator, because they're expensive.
Well, people like to steal expensive shit. Especially if it's just sitting outside, and these tanks are huge, so you're going to want to store them outside.
You could rent a 500 gallon tank from a propane supplier, but then it's not exactly portable. At least you can strap a 100lb tank to a dolly and move it around.
Generators are nice, but they're not a long-term solution for anything.
You have to keep them dry, but they also have to be far from your house so that you don't give yourself carbon monoxide poisoning.
And they're noisy. Especially when the power's out and nobody has any white noise from TVs, AC units or whatever else. Even a quiet one is loud as fuck, making you and your generator a target.
People build little doghouses for their generators for this reason, mainly to keep them dry and quiet.
I'll probably do that at some point, but the point is generators are a pain in the ass just by existing.
I want something more convenient. That's what I thought to myself.
So I started looking into inverters. They run on battery power, usually either 12v, 24v or 48v depending on what kind of loads you're trying to supply.
And all they do is convert DC electricity from the batteries into AC electricity like you'd get from the wall. This is what your inverter generator is doing, basically.
There are some benefits to this. Mainly, it's quiet and you can use it indoors. In fact if you use a UPS to protect your computer, you're already doing this.
The UPS is just a lead acid battery and an inverter.
What I want though, is the same capability as that generator. The ability to make breakfast, boil my coffee, play some videogames and run a small window AC unit.
And that's where it starts to get expensive. If all you want is to charge your phone then you don't even need an inverter. Your phone runs on batteries, on DC power to begin with.
Which means you can just buy a twenty dollar battery bank from walmart and you're good to go.
But batteries that can run a 2kw load for a long time are way more expensive. Your phone draws like 5-15 watts, that's why you can get away with a tiny little battery bank.
A cheap chinese inverter that'll produce 2kw of power is like $130, which isn't too bad on it's own. But if you want to run that load for half a day with no input, you'll need like $6,000 in batteries.
Forget lead acid. If you discharge them to under half their capacity they're ruined. So you need lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries instead. They can be deeply discharged without damaging them.
That means you get nearly the full rated capacity of the battery. Cheap ones cost about the same amount as a lead acid battery for the same amount of stored energy.
The problem is the current. Batteries like this are typically 12v, although you can get them in higher voltages like 24v or 48v like I talked about before.
If you want to run 2kw off a 12v battery, you're going to need 2/0 welding cables between the battery and inverter.
The higher the voltage of the battery, the lower the current on the wires. In other words, thinner wires for the same amount of power, and therefore cheaper.
In theory anyways. Most DC stuff runs on 12v, so if your system is 24v or 48v you'll need to step it down to 12v using a buck converter, which adds cost to the system.
But let's say you're not worried about running DC equipment and just want to run a DC-AC inverter, which can natively support 48v.
Say your cheap inverter has about an 80% conversion efficiency, which is about average. You want to run that 2kw load for 12 hours, which is unrealistic continuous draw but let's go with it.
You would need about 800Ah worth of LFP battery storage for 80% depth of discharge. Say you get eight batteries for around $750, that's six grand to run your house for 12 hours.
If that sounds ridiculous it's because it is, in a lot of ways. Storing power just isn't realistic. Those batteries are a buffer, that's all.
They keep your shit from turning off the instant you lose power, nothing more.
Realistically, you need a way of generating power continuously to offset whatever loads you have, be it fridges or computers or fans or whatever else.
Just sitting here doing nothing, my office is currently drawing about 400 watts of power continuously. It's not 2kw, but it's not nothing either.
Now I could reduce that to about 150w if i wanted, but I don't want to do that. I want to keep using my office exactly as it is.
So let's say I wanted some solar panels to offset the power draw of my office. I'd need probably at least 6-800 watts of panels to do so.
Why? Well, there's a lot of reasons. For one, the sun isn't always shining. If a cloud passes over, your power instantly drops to anywhere from 60-20% of the max.
If your solar panels aren't facing straight towards the sun, the power drops. Guess what, the sun moves across the sky during the day. They're not going to be lined up.
And guess what else, there's line losses for DC. There's efficiency losses for the charge controller, and again for the inverter.
You're probably going to get about half of the power your panels are rated for at the end of the day, realistically.
So what does 800 watts of solar panels look like?
Well, if you buy them new you can get 800 watts of solar panels for about $650. This will take up about 43 square feet somewhere on your roof or in your yard and require mounting equipment.
But solar panels don't run at a consistent voltage, and your 48v batteries need about 60 volts to charge, so you need a charge controller to even out the voltage from the panels.
For around 800 watts at 48v, a 30A charge controller will do the job. That'll run you about $30-40. Then you need wire, which the price will depend on the length of the run.
But we'll say you spend another $50 on solar cables for this little project.
Then you still need a 48v battery because again, the sun isn't consistent. You need a buffer, even if it's a small one.
A cheap, 50Ah 48v LFP battery will run you about $360. More cables, more connectors. Call that another $50, not even including the tools needed to cut, crimp, heat-shrink and so-on.
Already we're looking at like $1100 just to run a 400 watt load while the sun is up. It'll die nearly the second the sun goes down or clouds pass over.
Realistically, that cost is going to a lot higher. You're going to need more stuff than you realized. You're going to want to do this or that. Fuses, battery monitors, whatever.
It's all going to jack up the price way beyond just a basic A->B->C system.
There is no good, easy, cheap solution.
You might say that maybe you could do easy, just go with a generator. Well it's not easy, you have to maintain it. It's not cheap, the generator is also like $600, and the gas is expensive too.
Is that a good solution? I don't feel like it's good. Or cheap. Or easy. Batteries, solar and inverters sure as fuck aren't cheap or easy either. You need to do a lot of work to set them up.
You could go cheaper and easier with solar and batteries, too. Just get a commercial unit, a jackery or whatever for like $600. Then some panels for a few hundred more.
But they have a habit of crapping out on you. Inverters always do eventually, and now you don't have the knowledge or tools needed to repair it when that happens.
There's always a trade-off. What you save in time and money costs you somewhere else.
Nevertheless, I have a generator, and I have batteries and solar panels and an inverter.
I spend time building this shit and maintaining it for the rare occasion when the power goes out. Thousands of dollars, tons of free time spent on this.
Learning to build my own cables and wire them up, all the little bits and bobs needed for a safe and functional solar system. I can build it from scratch, so repairing it is easy.
It's hard to say if it's worth it, though. It's nice, for sure. I've used it when the power goes out, and it's satisfying to keep on chugging like nothing's wrong, but is it really worth it?
Yes and no.
Right now, I'd say it's not worth it. The grid is stable enough that power outages tend to be short. Maybe a few hours, maybe a day.
I can sit on my phone and eat canned beans in the dark every once in a while, that's not going to kill me. I don't need any of this shit right now.
But if things got worse, it would matter more. If power outages were more frequent, if the storms and heat waves got worse, then I might come to rely on it a lot more.
I don't know. I don't want to call all of this a wasted effort, even though it might be. I guess I'm just betting on things getting worse rather than better.
Maybe that's pessimistic of me, but I haven't seen a lot of things in this world that inspire confidence in the future as of late.
I don't even really know what I'm trying to say here. I've just had it on my mind for a while, I guess.
People act like backup power is a simple thing and it's really just not. There's too much that goes into it that people just ignore when trying to sell some product.
I don't want to live like a fucking caveman though. I live in America, in the year of our lord 2026. Everything runs on electricity. Everything.
Like I said, it's not going to kill me to go without power once in a while, but I think it's unreasonable to expect an American to deal with regular outages.
I have shit to do. I want to microwave my fucking burrito, sit down in a nice cool living room and watch youtube because I work my ass off and I deserve it.
What if it's hot outside? What if it's 100F and humid, and i don't have AC?
Am I supposed to just sit on my couch with heat stroke and hope for the best? What about my family? What about my kids?
This isn't south africa. I shouldn't have to think about this. It shouldn't even be a concern in my mind, but here I am.
Anyways, I'm currently building a portable "solar generator" cart that I can drag around my yard and reposition easily. It's an all-in-one system so i don't feel bad calling it a generator.
It's a lot of damn work though and I don't have a lot of free time or cash to work on it, but I'm getting close to making significant progress, so if I think to do it, I'll post updates on that here.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on the practicality of this stuff. I know some of you have a lot more money and free time than me, so maybe you feel differently about it.
Basically, there's a degree of overhead that power plants leave for things like hot or cold days when people are using a lot of electricity to regulate the temperature of their homes.
And those new AI datacenters have completely eaten into that margin, making brownouts and load shedding a more regular occurrence.
Besides that though, weather has gotten quite a bit more extreme lately and, having experienced a few extended power outages (> 1 week) before, I'm eager to not go through that again.
To that end, I purchased a generator. Just the one, and just a small one. Pure sine wave, dual fuel. 2500 watts, enough to cook breakfast, make coffee and run an air conditioner.
A small inverter generator like that sips gas so the one dedicated gas can I keep around for it will last quite a while on it's own, but the reason I don't have more is that gas doesn't keep, it spoils.
My life is complicated enough without having to keep track of which gas I've cycled out or not. I don't feel like having to drag my cans down to the gas station and refill them every six months to a year.
That's why dual fuel generators are nice, you can use propane. The power rating is lower, but propane doesn't go bad. You can store it in 100lb cylinders and run the generator for ages.
But I use that propane for other stuff, too. Heating and cooking being the main ones, and my tanks are rarely ever all full. I don't have dedicated tanks for the generator, because they're expensive.
Well, people like to steal expensive shit. Especially if it's just sitting outside, and these tanks are huge, so you're going to want to store them outside.
You could rent a 500 gallon tank from a propane supplier, but then it's not exactly portable. At least you can strap a 100lb tank to a dolly and move it around.
Generators are nice, but they're not a long-term solution for anything.
You have to keep them dry, but they also have to be far from your house so that you don't give yourself carbon monoxide poisoning.
And they're noisy. Especially when the power's out and nobody has any white noise from TVs, AC units or whatever else. Even a quiet one is loud as fuck, making you and your generator a target.
People build little doghouses for their generators for this reason, mainly to keep them dry and quiet.
I'll probably do that at some point, but the point is generators are a pain in the ass just by existing.
I want something more convenient. That's what I thought to myself.
So I started looking into inverters. They run on battery power, usually either 12v, 24v or 48v depending on what kind of loads you're trying to supply.
And all they do is convert DC electricity from the batteries into AC electricity like you'd get from the wall. This is what your inverter generator is doing, basically.
There are some benefits to this. Mainly, it's quiet and you can use it indoors. In fact if you use a UPS to protect your computer, you're already doing this.
The UPS is just a lead acid battery and an inverter.
What I want though, is the same capability as that generator. The ability to make breakfast, boil my coffee, play some videogames and run a small window AC unit.
And that's where it starts to get expensive. If all you want is to charge your phone then you don't even need an inverter. Your phone runs on batteries, on DC power to begin with.
Which means you can just buy a twenty dollar battery bank from walmart and you're good to go.
But batteries that can run a 2kw load for a long time are way more expensive. Your phone draws like 5-15 watts, that's why you can get away with a tiny little battery bank.
A cheap chinese inverter that'll produce 2kw of power is like $130, which isn't too bad on it's own. But if you want to run that load for half a day with no input, you'll need like $6,000 in batteries.
Forget lead acid. If you discharge them to under half their capacity they're ruined. So you need lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries instead. They can be deeply discharged without damaging them.
That means you get nearly the full rated capacity of the battery. Cheap ones cost about the same amount as a lead acid battery for the same amount of stored energy.
The problem is the current. Batteries like this are typically 12v, although you can get them in higher voltages like 24v or 48v like I talked about before.
If you want to run 2kw off a 12v battery, you're going to need 2/0 welding cables between the battery and inverter.
The higher the voltage of the battery, the lower the current on the wires. In other words, thinner wires for the same amount of power, and therefore cheaper.
In theory anyways. Most DC stuff runs on 12v, so if your system is 24v or 48v you'll need to step it down to 12v using a buck converter, which adds cost to the system.
But let's say you're not worried about running DC equipment and just want to run a DC-AC inverter, which can natively support 48v.
Say your cheap inverter has about an 80% conversion efficiency, which is about average. You want to run that 2kw load for 12 hours, which is unrealistic continuous draw but let's go with it.
You would need about 800Ah worth of LFP battery storage for 80% depth of discharge. Say you get eight batteries for around $750, that's six grand to run your house for 12 hours.
If that sounds ridiculous it's because it is, in a lot of ways. Storing power just isn't realistic. Those batteries are a buffer, that's all.
They keep your shit from turning off the instant you lose power, nothing more.
Realistically, you need a way of generating power continuously to offset whatever loads you have, be it fridges or computers or fans or whatever else.
Just sitting here doing nothing, my office is currently drawing about 400 watts of power continuously. It's not 2kw, but it's not nothing either.
Now I could reduce that to about 150w if i wanted, but I don't want to do that. I want to keep using my office exactly as it is.
So let's say I wanted some solar panels to offset the power draw of my office. I'd need probably at least 6-800 watts of panels to do so.
Why? Well, there's a lot of reasons. For one, the sun isn't always shining. If a cloud passes over, your power instantly drops to anywhere from 60-20% of the max.
If your solar panels aren't facing straight towards the sun, the power drops. Guess what, the sun moves across the sky during the day. They're not going to be lined up.
And guess what else, there's line losses for DC. There's efficiency losses for the charge controller, and again for the inverter.
You're probably going to get about half of the power your panels are rated for at the end of the day, realistically.
So what does 800 watts of solar panels look like?
Well, if you buy them new you can get 800 watts of solar panels for about $650. This will take up about 43 square feet somewhere on your roof or in your yard and require mounting equipment.
But solar panels don't run at a consistent voltage, and your 48v batteries need about 60 volts to charge, so you need a charge controller to even out the voltage from the panels.
For around 800 watts at 48v, a 30A charge controller will do the job. That'll run you about $30-40. Then you need wire, which the price will depend on the length of the run.
But we'll say you spend another $50 on solar cables for this little project.
Then you still need a 48v battery because again, the sun isn't consistent. You need a buffer, even if it's a small one.
A cheap, 50Ah 48v LFP battery will run you about $360. More cables, more connectors. Call that another $50, not even including the tools needed to cut, crimp, heat-shrink and so-on.
Already we're looking at like $1100 just to run a 400 watt load while the sun is up. It'll die nearly the second the sun goes down or clouds pass over.
Realistically, that cost is going to a lot higher. You're going to need more stuff than you realized. You're going to want to do this or that. Fuses, battery monitors, whatever.
It's all going to jack up the price way beyond just a basic A->B->C system.
There is no good, easy, cheap solution.
You might say that maybe you could do easy, just go with a generator. Well it's not easy, you have to maintain it. It's not cheap, the generator is also like $600, and the gas is expensive too.
Is that a good solution? I don't feel like it's good. Or cheap. Or easy. Batteries, solar and inverters sure as fuck aren't cheap or easy either. You need to do a lot of work to set them up.
You could go cheaper and easier with solar and batteries, too. Just get a commercial unit, a jackery or whatever for like $600. Then some panels for a few hundred more.
But they have a habit of crapping out on you. Inverters always do eventually, and now you don't have the knowledge or tools needed to repair it when that happens.
There's always a trade-off. What you save in time and money costs you somewhere else.
Nevertheless, I have a generator, and I have batteries and solar panels and an inverter.
I spend time building this shit and maintaining it for the rare occasion when the power goes out. Thousands of dollars, tons of free time spent on this.
Learning to build my own cables and wire them up, all the little bits and bobs needed for a safe and functional solar system. I can build it from scratch, so repairing it is easy.
It's hard to say if it's worth it, though. It's nice, for sure. I've used it when the power goes out, and it's satisfying to keep on chugging like nothing's wrong, but is it really worth it?
Yes and no.
Right now, I'd say it's not worth it. The grid is stable enough that power outages tend to be short. Maybe a few hours, maybe a day.
I can sit on my phone and eat canned beans in the dark every once in a while, that's not going to kill me. I don't need any of this shit right now.
But if things got worse, it would matter more. If power outages were more frequent, if the storms and heat waves got worse, then I might come to rely on it a lot more.
I don't know. I don't want to call all of this a wasted effort, even though it might be. I guess I'm just betting on things getting worse rather than better.
Maybe that's pessimistic of me, but I haven't seen a lot of things in this world that inspire confidence in the future as of late.
I don't even really know what I'm trying to say here. I've just had it on my mind for a while, I guess.
People act like backup power is a simple thing and it's really just not. There's too much that goes into it that people just ignore when trying to sell some product.
I don't want to live like a fucking caveman though. I live in America, in the year of our lord 2026. Everything runs on electricity. Everything.
Like I said, it's not going to kill me to go without power once in a while, but I think it's unreasonable to expect an American to deal with regular outages.
I have shit to do. I want to microwave my fucking burrito, sit down in a nice cool living room and watch youtube because I work my ass off and I deserve it.
What if it's hot outside? What if it's 100F and humid, and i don't have AC?
Am I supposed to just sit on my couch with heat stroke and hope for the best? What about my family? What about my kids?
This isn't south africa. I shouldn't have to think about this. It shouldn't even be a concern in my mind, but here I am.
Anyways, I'm currently building a portable "solar generator" cart that I can drag around my yard and reposition easily. It's an all-in-one system so i don't feel bad calling it a generator.
It's a lot of damn work though and I don't have a lot of free time or cash to work on it, but I'm getting close to making significant progress, so if I think to do it, I'll post updates on that here.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on the practicality of this stuff. I know some of you have a lot more money and free time than me, so maybe you feel differently about it.
