Solar Power for the Partisan, by BePrepared
If you missed the first part, you can find it here.
I know what you are thinking after my first two articles, I know I know. “Well BePrepared, I mean you can run your freezer reliably on solar power. How does this help me defeat the CCP PLA?” Yea, I get it all the time.
As Prince Herbert of Swamp Castle said, “Well I’ll tell you.” It’s damn hard to find an electrical outlet on a tree in a conflict, if you know of this happening let me know, but I’ve never seen it. So I decided if I’m going to spend a week or more outdoors, with radios, tablets, and the like I needed a way to recharge them. A way that could possibly work for for weeks or months. So as you can guess, it is a portable solar set up. “Big deal,” you might say, “you bought a solar generator.”
(I hate the term Solar Generator. It’s a battery.)
Well, as I mentioned I build and work on electrical systems, why would I buy one? And if some Chinesium circuit goes out on a proprietary board, how can I fix it? If I can build it, I can fix it. So I did.
I started with a generic toolbox from a big box store, a plastic one to cut down on possible shorts with wiring. I already knew the solar controller I wanted, another MPPT from Victron Energy, one picked because of the panels I would use. I then bought a cheap-ish power distribution setup to mount in the toolbox. It required using a hole saw bit on my drill to mount but it works pretty well. It has an on-off switch, a voltage display, two USB outlets and a 12vDC accessory outlet (cigarette plug for us old folks) because, options.
I’ve purchased a “all weather”ASE plug to install in the tool box, so I have a standard plug to plug in my panels or 12v source, this goes to my solar controller. All of which has two LiFePO4 20aH batteries to keep the charge. They are remarkable for solar setups as they can be drawn down deeply over and over and over and recover better than SLA (Sealed Lead Acid) batteries. Not to mention a lot lighter than SLA batteries. However, LiFePO4 batteries do face one major disadvantage in cold weather; they can’t be charged at freezing temperatures. You should never attempt to charge a LiFePO4 battery if the temperature is below 32°F. Doing so can cause lithium plating, a process that lowers your battery’s capacity and can cause short circuits, which is “a bad bad thing.” I used these batteries in my portable setup and not my house setup, for EXACTLY this reason.
“But BP,” you say, “in the field it can get damn cold and those batteries won’t charge!” Well, you are right that is why I also keep some cheap oxygen activated hand warmers I can put in between the two batteries to keep them warm(ish) for early morning charging.
Now for the elephant in the room. The solar panels. Everyone wants to know about them. They are .mil surplus which means I already paid for them once as a tax payer. Sourcing them is tough, buying them is worse, but they are worth it. If you want to try, do a search for Iris SPACES II. You can probably find some on E bay, in fact I just found some. This configuration can take four of those panels.
A company in Huntsville, AL named Gigaparts has the same sort of thing from 60w panels to a 160w panel. Or you can use whatever panels you like, as long as you make the connectors match your box. I fabricated a 15 foot extension from the panel connectors to the box.
Now this is all well and good, I have some panels and a tool box with some batteries. Why is this special?
Because the second half of how to help defeat the CCP PLA is in how you use it.
If you work at it, ALL your power needs, radios, scanners or lights can be met with rechargeable. Either with rechargeable batteries or recharging their internal batteries. This is how this box fills that role.
In the spare space, I have a USB powered battery charger, https://www.amazon.com/BONAI-Universal- … XBBZ4?th=1 it does AAA through D cells, including 9v. I also have VERY small inverters that will take the wall wart units to recharge radios that don’t have rechargeable yet (Looking at you QYT, where is my battery with a plug?) so you can put them in the AC cradle.
You can also use this setup to recharge cellphone battery banks. But why would I want to do that? Because some of the 40k maH batteries you can buy https://www.amazon.com/Portable-40000mA … B0CZRZ5H4S can do a lot in the field and take up less space in you gear than hauling around a small tool box. These might weight a full 16-20 oz, but I have had one of these “cellphone” battery banks full recharge the flat battery on an AR-152… and still have 50% charge. These batteries have what we call a USB-A outlet, what you need is the USB-A to whatever you need to charge.
There are various places you can buy USB-A to AR-152 cables, same with USB-A to UV5R extended battery. Or whatever your radio of choice. Or a USB-A to USB-C for just about anything else. Tablets. TinySA Ultras.
Highly portable and able to be disguised as ordinary work tools, you could take this unit just about anywhere (and it has already been to a few training evolutions to work out some kinks) and combined with the ultra portable power banks, I believe you can cover your power needs in the field.