Storm Checkin

[HarryN]

How much run time do you get from the power station with your fridge plugged in?

There are two loads on a power station running a refrigerator:
- The standby power of the inverter portion just being turned on
- The refrigerator or load itself

There is a Department of energy sticker inside of the fridge for a 1 year / 365 day average, and most of them are in the 1 - 2 kW-hrs range per day. This includes the automatic defrost cycle. So depending if the fridge is making ice, defrosting, or just running, it might only use 1 kW-hr that day, especially if you keep the door shut a bit more those days.

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The standby power draw of inverters varies by model, but it is commonly in the 20 - 40 watts range, and this adds up. Using 25 watts for run:

( 25 watts ) x ( 24 hrs / day ) ~ 600 watt-hrs , so it can be 30 -40 % or more of the power used from the battery pack.

My inverter pulls 20 watts but I have seen some pull 80 watts standby power.

The standby power used is a constant, so you can run multiple loads on it and that part does not change.

The inverter that I use ( and many of them ) has a TTL terminal point to turn on / off the inverter with an external switch. I am thinking about adding a timer so that the inverter is off 50% of the time to save some power, but have not done it yet.

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So my 4 kw-hr system can run it for a few days and the 2 kW-hr system obviously less. So far we have been lucky and I have never had to run more than 1 day.

When I had my van, it had 2 each x 150 watt solar panels on it, so nominal 300 watts. I also have another 4 of those in the garage that I can put in the driveway to supplement during outages.

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So when I have that much solar out there, it keeps up on a sunny day. On cloudy days, more or less not much solar is collected.


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The main challenge with the commercial power stations is that one of the on-line influencers pushed them all to go with larger inverters and small batter packs, which is kind of the opposite of what is needed in a power the refrigerator in an outage situation. You would really like to have 2 days of stored power if possible to carry it over for a 3 day outage.


A bit of a complicated response but I hope that makes sense.

 

[Robocop]

It appears as if winter is finished here as well and as such my dang grass needs to be cut. I absolutely despise cutting grass even with a riding mower. It takes me about 3 1/2 hours total as I have 2.5 acres. The riding part is easy it is holding that dang 2 stroke weed wacker for an hour straight that gets me. As much as I hate the lawn maintenance I love this time of year. The worst part of this time of year is that it is now tornado season in the South. We are lucky here with mild winters yet have to endure the risk of tornadoes.

 

[TPA]

We haven't been in the Daytona area since last month. Back then everything was browned out / dead from the hard freezes. This time around much of it has greened up nicely, almost as if the freeze hadn't happened. There are still plenty of plants which haven't recovered yet, but we're starting to see new growth on those.

 

[Chauncey Gardener]

 

[Candleometry]

View attachment 93036

Love the colors of spring.

 

[orbital]

+

Friday night I could hear it raining hard, far more than forecasted,, pouring at times.
It's uphill in three directions in front of my garage, so it's very easy for the drain in front of it to get clogged ****
stuff flowing from everywhere.
if my drain clogs,, my garage floods, huge hassle!!

Got up at 4:10am and grabbed an Armytek light from my cupboard, went up to my garage in the rain to make sure the drain was clear..
.. it wasn't completely clogged, cleared it ~ Got back down to my house, went back to bed.

Laid there wondering if not worrying about things that can go wrong is possible;;;;;;; no!

at 9:50am that morning having coffee on my couch I hear this massive sound, "is that thunder, what the *(*&(??"
the sound grew louder and out of the corner of my eye I see branches and foliage everywhere with all that tearing/thundering noise.

I had a large tree come down from the base!@!!!!!!
it careened off a huge pine in my front yard and sheered off several large pine branches in the process.
Just missed my house.
++++++ Have to say, it was a minor miracle that tree didn't completely crash through my house.

I try not to worry, but I'm also realistic

____________________

Good thing I own a ECHO CS-680 chainsaw 24" bar
stock pic

 

[Candleometry]

+

Friday night I could hear it raining hard, far more than forecasted,, pouring at times.
It's uphill in three directions in front of my garage, so it's very easy for the drain in front of it to get clogged ****
stuff flowing from everywhere.
if my drain clogs,, my garage floods, huge hassle!!

Got up at 4:10am and grabbed an Armytek light from my cupboard, went up to my garage in the rain to make sure the drain was clear..
.. it wasn't completely clogged, cleared it ~ Got back down to my house, went back to bed.

Laid there wondering if not worrying about things that can go wrong is possible;;;;;;; no!

at 9:50am that morning having coffee on my couch I hear this massive sound, "is that thunder, what the *(*&(??"
the sound grew louder and out of the corner of my eye I see branches and foliage everywhere with all that tearing/thundering noise.

I had a large tree come down from the base!@!!!!!!
it careened off a huge pine in my front yard and sheered off several large pine branches in the process.
Just missed my house.
++++++ Have to say, it was a minor miracle that tree didn't completely crash through my house.

I try not to worry, but I'm also realistic

____________________

Good thing I own a ECHO CS-680 chainsaw 24" bar
stock pic
View attachment 93037

Wow. Glad everyone and everything is ok. That’s a scary sound.
Last year one weekend my wife and I pulled up to our cabin. Just as we got out I heard this eerie creaking sound, then scraping, then crash! A tree came down in the woods right by the cabin. Didn’t hit anything but it was close enough to think it might. It was strange how it occurred just as we got there.

 

[TPA]

Has anyone ever hear a palm tree snap? It's totally different than a traditional northern tree. They're very flexible by nature, so this doesn't happen often, but if winds get >100+mph, sometimes a few of them will go. It's a very loud snap/bang. No creaking or any warning before it goes. Other than the obvious hurricane blowing outside.

 

[orbital]

Has anyone ever hear a palm tree snap? It's totally different than a traditional northern tree. They're very flexible by nature, so this doesn't happen often, but if winds get >100+mph, sometimes a few of them will go. It's a very loud snap/bang. No creaking or any warning before it goes. Other than the obvious hurricane blowing outside.

+

If a palm tree didn't flex as much as it does, it would not be able to make 'baby palm trees' with all the tropical storms & hurricanes in FL.
how many in just 100 years?

 

[TPA]

Far fewer hurricanes per city than the Oklahoma City metro has been hit with tornadoes, for sure.