Just a link to an entry on Survival Blog. I'll be interested to see what Nadja and TnAndy have to say about this. I just don't think 3 60W panels is going to do as much as this person thinks. Maybe I've got a different idea about what a walk-in cooler is.
Long read ! Some good, and some not so good. Ok, lets start with the bread maker. IF you have a whole lot more solar then the three panels and couple of car batteries he is talking about, ok, if not, not so ok. Make your bread like grandma did. Rolling pin, and reg oven Power tools, well, although you could fire up a skill saw , it would only be for a minute or two, and you would by then take your batteries down to a level, where you wouldn't have much in them for the rest of the day or evening. I realize that you have small needs as to elec. and this home built solar generator so to speak, would certainly give you led lighting in the evenings and of course during the day charge your small batteries. It would not run freezers and the like for very long. Also, you can buy solar now for around a dollar a watt. When I started, it was $5.00 per watt, and therefore for me a very slow build. So, it litterly took a weeks paycheck to buy just one 80 watt kyrocera solar panel. It is only the last year or so, that they started coming down in price. Batteries.,.... Trojen T-105's are now getting up to the $125.00 range and up, plus core charge of around $25.00 per unit. Now, on inverters, you can buy the mod sine wave trace/xantrax 1500 watt inverters for around $750.00 and they have a couple of nice redeaming features to them. One, is they have a sleep mode, which allows them to search for a signal every 2-3 seconds, therefore saving you a lot of power late at night when you don't need it. They sense a switch being turned on and turn themselves on when you need it. But not good for motors of any kind. These are the ones I used for 15 years. They work fine, but again, I lost a few motors before I figured out that it was the cause. A better inverter would be a pure sine wave, which are a lot more pricy. But a lot of times , you can watch craigs list and find a good deal on a used one there. I have, and several friends of mine have done the same. IF you were to buy about 4 Trojen type T-105 batteries, which are basicly golf cart 6 volt batteries, 1 or 2 125 watt 12 volt solar panels, a c-60 trace charge controller, and of courses your inverter, add a little wire, also pricy for what you would need, you would have an even better very small system which would actually do a lot more then the described unit.
