Generator musings

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Commander Zero

I suppose I should figure out precisely what my needs are in terms of a generator.

I’m on city water, so a well pump isn’t an issue. Although, it would be nice to help out frieds who did have pumps.

All my major appliances (stove, furnace, hot water heater) run on natural gas. For heating, I have a pair of kerosene heaters and about 60 gallons of kero in storage. For cooking I can cook on top of the kerosene heaters or use any of several camp stoves that run on multifuels. If for somer eason there’s no gas or no water, then hot water comes from heating it up on top of the kerosene heater or camp stoves. Not great for taking a shower, but a basin and a washcloth will probably do in a pinch. Lighting is accomplished through kerosene and propane lamps, supplemented with some minor 12v lighting.

So, really, where is the need for electricity? Well, there’s the fridge and the freezer. Those are pretty much the only things that are mission-critical. It’s sounding like something like the EU2000 or EU3000 would be enough to take care of those and perhaps charge up a small 12v bank for lighting. If thats the case, the more expensive EU generator, with it’s smaller output and greatly reduced fuel requirements might be the way to go. In a crisis, I don’t need to have every room in the house lit up, and since the internet will most likely be down the computers arent a high priority. so I guess really an EU would be the most practical choice.

Someone mentioned in comments that another option would be to play both sides of it. Get the fuel-sipping EU for running the freezer and a few small lights, and have the big generator for heavy-duty uses that might arise. Certainly, that makes a lot of sense to me, the problem is it isn’t a very economical way to go. Of course, sometimes economy is trounced by the need to cover all the bases.

This is one of those things I’m still going to have to weigh and think about. I’m tempted to go the less expensive (up front) route and get the larger genny first…then start socking away greenbacks until a good used EU turns up on craigslist.

Also, what I really, really need to do is talk to one of the ‘alternative energy’ vendors in town and explain to them I want a simple battery system for running 12v lighting, charging AA and D batts, and running radios. Since that would all be 12v there’d be no need for an inverter and no resultant power loss in the conversion from DC to AC. Man, thats something I really, really need to get busy on.

And, of course, there’s always ballistic things that need purchasing…..

Scenes from Costco

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Commander Zero

Well, now…….

That looks six kinds of yummy.

That little baby would be enough to run my house rather handily. Hell, probably the neighbor’s too.Nothing kills like overkill…..Whats the punchline? Not too bad:

See, this is about what I’d figure a Honda EU2000 would set me back. But this is more than three times the power. But, the question of the moment is: would my needs be met with the smaller, more fuel-efficient EU2000 even though the EU2000 is more expensive for (much) less power. Or, put another way, dollar-to-watt ratio says the larger genny is the better bargain…until you factor in the fuel efficiency. If The EU2000 is 2000 watts and this thing is 6800 wattsm and my average load in a crisis is gonna be, say, 1500 watts….then why burn the extra fuel in the larger genny when I can get the same results with less fuel in the smaller one. BUT….while I can run small loads, expensively, on the larger genny I cannot run the larger loads at all on the small one. While the small one may be just fine for keeping the freezer cold, if something comes up and I need more power for something dramatic like helping out a buddies well pump or similar big-draw item…well, then the bigger one will save the day.

Gonna have to think about this one for a while.

Lighting minimalism

Posted on November 4, 2012 by Commander Zero

This post is mostly for my friends in NY who got stuck without any lighting other than their MagLites and a handful of batteries.While some light is better than no light, you can do a lot better, for little money, than brushing your teeth with one hand while holding your flashlight in the bathroom mirror with the other.

The simplest and, done properly, most rugged and safe system would be some LED lights that run off of a 12v battery. I actually have just such a set up in storage. It’s bare-bones simple but it beats the crap outta wearing a headlamp to make a sandwich.

Here’s a simple rig that I keep around – it’s nothing more than a 12v marine battery (115 aH) and a couple of the Goal0 lights. A battery clip-to-cigarette adapter lets me run the light straight from the charged battery. The light is 3 watts at 12v, so that means it draws .25 amp/hour. Some math shows that 115 divided by .25 is 460….so, in theory, this fully charged battery would run this light for 460 hours. But…I’m a cautious guy…I don’t discharge batteries more than 50% so, really, its 230 hours…or almost ten solid days of light. (or almost a month of 8-hour usage.)

The Goal0 lights are better described in this post. Two very nice features, other than the low draw of power, is that they can be daisy-chained together. Each light has a socket on top that lets another let be plugged into it. Here’s two of them daisy-chained together and plugged in.

Each light has about nine feet of cord so you can stretch string of lights along the length of a house or whatever. Each light also has a hook to allow you to hang it from whatever nearby object is suitable.

The box in the background, by the way, is an old (pre-Y2K) ConSci PPP ‘battery in a box’ that I bought many years ago. It’s basically a couple 6v batteries and a charge controller mounted in a .50 ammo can. It gives me a small amount of electrical power in a waterproof container that can run lights, radios, etc. They apparently don’t make them anymore but you can easily engineer one on your own with a trip to Radio Shack and Home Depot.

Enough space for a small inverter, spare fuses and 12v accessories. But…you can build a better one.

If you’re an instant gratification guy like me, you can just buy one of those battery-jump-booster things you see at CostCo and Home Depot. Theyre pretty much the same thing but with more capacity. Keep it charged up and you’d have at least a couple days worth of lights. Buy a 12v-to-USB car charger and you could also charge your toys off of it.

Goal0, by the way, makes an all-in-one package for this sort of thing. It’s a battery, light, and panel to charge the battery.(Goal Zero Escape Combo Pack) Combo isn’t cheap, but if you have daylight to run the panel youre pretty much assured of no dark nights.

Realistically, though…you can do this on the cheap for emergency use. Get the battery clips, get the lights, and go scavenge some car batteries out of all those flooded cars out there. Or just spend the $50 and buy the marine battery/battery-booster and a charger.

Out the door you’d be looking at about $100 for the light and a battery that when charged would run that one light for, oh, about a month….which probably seems like a smoking bargain at the moment.

Goal0 lights

Posted on August 23, 2012 by Commander Zero

For my birthday, a lovely gal I know got me one of these (Goal Zero 24001 Light-A-Life LED Lamp) off my Amazon Wish List. I had been curious to try one of these out since it looked like it had a lot of the things I was looking for in emergency lighting – runs on 12 v., doesn’t use much electricity, uses long-life LEDs, and lent itself to be operated off several different forms of power supply. So, with one in hand, I started playing with it.

The light comes with a connector to plug it into the proprietary batteries the company sells. However, they also send along an adapter to allow you to run it from anything that has the usual ‘cigarette plug’-style outlet. I happened to have an old ConSci portable power pack laying around and hooked it up to that. (And, to go off on a tangent, that ConSci PPP is pre-Y2K and still seems to run just fine for a little battery-in-a-box portable power supply. Very rugged, very durable…so, of course, it appears to be no longer available. No big deal, easy enough to make your own similar device.) The light gives of the usual sterile cold white LED light but it gives enough to light up the bunker enough to get around. A nice touch is that each light has nine feet of cord and a socket to daisy chain more lights. Well, that certainly sounds interesting..let’s explore that.

Turns out that this week the local CostCo is having Goal0 as one of their visiting ‘roadshow’ products…you know, they clear off a section of floor, the sales rep sets up a little kiosk or something and starts shilling his product. So I went up to CostCo and price checked. On sale at CostCo for $26.99…that was about ten bucks off what Amazon had them at. Ok, I picked up three more and brought them home, giving me a total of four. I daisy-chained ‘em all together and strung them across the length of the house. Killed the lights, flipped a switch on the ConSci PPP and -behold- light. Not just light, mind you, but good light. See, you stand in a dark room and stick a flashlight or other small portable light int he corner and the room looks…stark…and downright brutal, like some sort of interrogation chamber. But, two, three or four lights spread around the room actually lights it up so it looks rather homey. I was quite pleased with how these lights worked. I need to get a few more and then need to start doing some battery math. Ideally I’d want a battery that could run five lights for eight hours a day, for several days, without needing to charge the battery. Hmm..actually, let’s see how this would go… each light is 3 watt at 12 v. so it’s .25 amp. Five lights = 5 x .25amp= 1.25 ah. Run those five lights for eight hours a day comes out to 10 ah/day (8 x 1.25). Run those lights for five days would be 50ah. If I didn’t want to discharge my battery below 50% I’d need a 100 amp battery. Or a 200 amp battery if I didn’t want to discharge below 75%. That sound right?

After playing with these lights for the last couple of days I gotta say I’m pretty pleased. The ability to daisy-chain them together is a huge, huge plus. For setting up a small, self-contained, ‘renewable’ emergency lighting system these things look like the way to go. I need to scale up the battery to some sort of low-maintenance, non-venting type, set it up somewhere out of the way, get a decent solar panel to keep it topped off, and I think that’ll do it. As I said, I just need to sit down and figure out a buncha battery math.

Charging the smartphone

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Commander Zero

I’ve become rather convinced that, for me anyway, the smartphone-type device has a definite bit of utility in preparedness. Currently, I have an iPhone. (I actually like the BlackBerry but given the enormous amount of support for the iPhone product it made more sense on a logistical basis than the BB.) I’m not going to really beat the topic of why I think it has utility, I’ve done that elsewhere, but I want to discuss one of the logical issues about these smartphones – how do you keep them charged when the power is off?

I received, as birthday gifts (thank you!), two different hand-crank chargers. Both use the same technology and have similar uses, although with slight differences. The first was the Freeplay FreeCharge and the other was a similar device marketed as Etón American Red Cross Clipray. Both are basically hand-crank generators with DC output at 12 v. The Eton has a USB port since it seems aimed specifically at USB-style devices, the FreePlay has a 12 v. ‘cigarette lighter’ plug. The Eton is less bulky and also supports a built-in rechargeable LED flashlight…a nice touch..along with a carabiner-style clip to affix the unit to a piece of gear.

Handcrank charger -> smartphone. Yeah, it might work but it’s not a really great Plan A. Beats being in the dark, though.

Here’s where the problems come in. There is no free lunch in power generation. Not only do you have to sit there and crank a lot to recharge a cell phone, but the amount of energy you produce fluctuates wildly unless you keep a steady pace that is rather difficult to maintain. In short, don’t think youre going to plug your phone into one of these, crank like a madman for five minutes, and get a charged cellphone. Nope. You’re going to appreciate how much physical effort is required to generate electricity and develop a new understanding of why hydroelectric turbines and other mechanical-energy-to-electrical-energy systems are so wonderful. Plus, since your electrical output is so wildly varied, your sensitive electrical device is going to freak out in a major way and start giving messages about ‘device not charging’ and that sort of thing.

Solutions? Matter of fact, yes. In the comments/reviews on Amazon a fella noted this problem and said what was needed was some sort of regulator between the charger and the device…a buffer to capture the erratic electrical output and hoard it until there was enough charge to be smoothly and uniformly discharged. A battery. Enter this device: Duracell Instant USB Charger with Lithium Ion Battery. Normally you plug this little rechargeable unit into a USB port, on your computer for example, and it charges the on-board battery for use later when you plug your phone into it. All well and good, but for our needs you plug the battery into your handcrank device and use that to charge the battery as you have your smartphone charge from the battery. The battery smooths out the uneven output from your cramp-inducing flurry of handcranking and your smartphone doesn’t freak out at the uneven voltage.

Handcrank -> rechargeable battery -> smartphone. Better, but there’s a lot of time involved with turning that crank. Battery evens out the uneven output from the handcrank.

Now, as I said, once you try recharging any device with one of these handcrank units you are going to really come to appreciate things like wind and hydro turbines and…small solar panels. Personally, when the apocalypse happens I’m not going to have the time to sit around endlessly cranking a little geegaw to charge a battery so I can use my smartphone to read TM’s, take photos for historical purposes, calculate food rations, track consumables, etc, etc…I’ll be too busy doing all the other things that need doing. So…would my Goal0 Nomad 7M Solar Panel suffice to charge the little Duracell battery USB charger? As it turns out, yes. So, rather than sit around cranking away for hours to get my smartphone charged up I just plug the Duracell USB battery into the panel, lay the panel out in the sun and let it do the charging for me. Tedious, repetitive, physical exertion vs. passive solar charging…..no contest. Let me just lay the panel in the sun and get back to hanging looters.

Panel -> battery -> smartphone. I like this setup. The battery charges as the phone charges, and if the weather is uncooperative I still have a charge in the battery to use to charge the ‘phone. Plus, I don’t have to sit there turning a crank.

Does this mean that there’s no point to the handcrank generators? Not at all. Sometimes there just isn’t any sun to be had. And, sometimes you don’t need to charge a battery..you just need to run a light for a few moments or something similar. Certainly it doesn’t hurt anything to have these options available. Day may come where you’re holed up in your basement for a week with nothing better to do than charge small batteries by hand as you wait for water levels or radiation levels to recede.

Of course, if you’ve got yourself a nice solar panel array already in place, or a happy little min-hydro in your yard, then you can pretty much skip most of this and just add a regulated USB port to your system.

One other thing that I haven’t had a chance to try, and wouldn’t mind some input on, is bicycle-mounted USB chargers. I’ve seen some commercial models that are similar to the old bottle-shaped dynamos that we used to use to run headlights when I as a kid. There aren’t as many out there as I would have thought, but there are a few and also a few DIY plans. I’d be interested in hearing of anyone’s experiences with ‘em.

Windup roundup

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Commander Zero

I have some of the early generation BayGen flashlights in storage. I bought them back around…mmm..must have been around 2000 or 2001 when CostCo cleared ‘em out when the Y2k stampede was done. These are the ones made in South Africa and use incandescent bulbs. They’ve sat , patiently, awaiting the time they’d be needed. I think they were about $20 ea. when I got them. (I also have one of the older SW/AM/FM radios as well.) Of course, now it’s ten years later and everyone seems to be making a handcrank light or radio. As is usual in technology, the prices dropped and the technology improved. The incandescent bulbs are replaced with far superior LED bulbs, and the bulky mechanisms have been made smaller. More interestingly, the ‘clockwork’ technology has been used in other devices as well.

Two of the most interesting devices, which I have no experience with, by the way, are the Freeplay Weza generator and their 12v device charger. The Weza is basically, as I understand it, a cross between one of those 12v battery packs you buy for jumping vehicles and a Stairmaster. You step on the pedal to turn a flywheel generator that charges the internal battery. I’m guessing it’s gonna take alot of pseudo-stairstepping to charge a 12v battery but if you have nothing else to do and its the only thing standing between you and no lights/communications………….

As I’m discovering the increasing utility of devices like IPhones and iPads I am becoming convinced that even without phone service these devices have tremendous utility. Depending on what you stuff into them they do spreadsheets, note taking, photography, take and view video, provide translations, hold reference books, calculations (inc. ballistics), etc, etc, and they do it all in a package smaller than 20-round rifle mag. This handcrank device charger (Freeplay FreeCharge 12V Black- AK060) looks like just the ticket for keeping the iPhone or iPod charge…although the amount of cranking might be onerous…which is why I have one of these tucked away. (That little Goal0 panel really does work…you have to keep it in direct sun, but I’ve used it a bunch of times and it will indeed charge up an iPhone although some people report mixed results.) However, the ability to produce enough power to charge up a USB device when the sun isn’t cooperating is something that I can see being mighty handy.

For small AM/FM/weather radios, I wound up with one of these Etón radios and have been quite pleased with it. I keep it in my everyday bag so that if things get weird in a hurry I can at least glean some inforamation off of the AM/FM bands. The flashlight function is also quite good for indoor navigation.

Interestingly, someone brought this to my attention. It’s a windup headlamp. I had no idea such things existed. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised….I’m rather pleased this is a technology that has started to go mainstream after being almost exclusively limited to Third World relief products.

One of the common complaints about these things is that the handcrank invariably breaks. Well, that makes sense since it’s a fairly high-stress part. The trick is to wind the devices purposefully and carefully. If you just grab the crank and start rotating it as fast as you can like your landing a fish then when the spring hits the end of the spool youre either going to rip the handle off the thing or similarly damage it. Wind it in a manner so that if the handle comes to a sudden stop your grip either naturally slips or you have enough time to stop your movement. I’ve yet to break a windup device this way.

There are tons of cheapo windup lights and stuff out there. Even the cheap 3-in-a-package ones from CostCo do a decent job of throwing light around a darkened house. But, be smart….check the reviews and don’t be hesitant to spend a few more bucks. Ive a Freeplay 360 that I use in my kitchen when I’m cooking or cleaning and have never had a problem. On a sunny day, with the volume kept fairly reasonable, I can just sit it in the sun and not even have to crank the thing. I’ve got plenty of flashlights and a goodly amount of batteries to run them but these newer windup lights and radios really do provide a secondary level of redundancy that is very appealing. If you havent checked out getting such devices I think you may find them worth your time.

12v project

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Commander Zero

Anyone want to contribute their two cents to a project I want to do?

I want to rewire an ordinary table lamp, much like the kind you would find sitting on an end table, to run on 12v and use LEDs. I was thinking the easiest way would be to head to an automotive store and buy an LED trouble light and use that for the guts of the thing and replace the bulb with an LED bulb meant for regular threaded sockets.

Opinions? Ideas?

Genny musings

Posted on July 3, 2011 by Commander Zero

I was reviewing some of the generators for sale on the local Craigslist. While there were some small ones (Generac, Honda, etc) that were pretty much the size I would need, there were also some rather massive ones that looked like bulldozers someone took the blade and wheels off of. Nice to know that if I so desired I could completely power my house and the ones on either side of it. But, while normally I think of overkill as a baseline, I think something like this or like this is a wee bit over the top…but in a really nice to have kinda way. (20kW and 50kW would not only run this house it would be enough to put this house in orbit.) My needs for electrical power in an emergency are really quite small. Other than needing to keep the freezer up, I only need three things:
1) LED lighting
b) Power for radios and charging radio batts
III) Charging rechargeable batteries
Those things are easily addressed with a small DC power generation system. A few solar panels and a couple good batteries would probably do the trick. The big ticket item is the freezer. As I think about it, I suppose I could go a different direction and replace the current freezer with one that runs on propane. Problem is, then I have to do a bit of plumbing to run the delivery line from outside the house, have to buy and position a large storage tank, and theres the added risks of all of that.

Currently, I keep the freezer as full as possible and store bottles water in it to help keep the temperature during a brief outage. Obviously, I wouldnt need to run the generator 24/7 for the freezer. Just long enough to keep everything cold and then let it sit for a while. There should be plenty of thermal mass in there with all the bricks of meat and whatnot.

A small gas generator is probably going to be the way to go. I just need to figure out how to make it happen. Then theres the new vs. used debate….save money with a used one and hope they took care of it, or buy a new one so you know what youre getting but pay more up front. Decisions, decisions……..
Thats it.

CostCo GoalZero promo

Posted on May 29, 2011 by Commander Zero

Was wandering around CostCo yesterday. Every week it seems that some manufacturer rents a little floorspace up there and brings in someone to demo their products. This week, surprisingly, they had some gal there pimping the GoalZero line of 12v/solar stuff.

Selection was limited to about a half dozen of their ‘flagship’ items. Prices were about 1/3 off of MSRP which seems okay but several of the products could be found a few dollars cheaper than that at other sources, however shipping charges might be involved in those cases. For you local LMI who have Costco memberships it might be worth taking a look. She’ll be there until next Sunday. (The Sunday after tomorrow.)

Items:
Escape 150 – $129.99
Light-A-Life – $33.99
Luna LED Light – $7.99 (I have one of these plugged into my monitors USB port for late night gaming use so I can see the keyboard in a dark room)
Nomad 7 portable panel – $63.99
Boulder 15 panel – $99.99

It’s interesting stuff. Is it a value? I’m not sure. People more savvy on this subject than I will probably point out that you could buy a simple marine battery and charge controller/charge combo for less than $129, and the $/watt ratio on the panels isnt as good as if you parted one yourself from other sources. On the other hand, for someone who wants to just write a check and have some emergency lighting and device recharging capabilities, this could be attractive.

One thing I found awesome was this:

The saleslady had it sitting around to demonstrate how to charge devices off of the Escape 150. It has no less than TEN different plugs on it for just about every handheld device you can imagine. I asked her how much. She said it wasnt for sale. The comapny handed them out to the sales people for demonstration purposes. Think Geek has a similar product , I’m sure, but I cant seem to find it at the moment.

My own needs for emergency power are pretty low. I need to run some emergency LED lighting, charge AA batts, and run a radio. Thats pretty much it. (The freezer is a whole other story.) Those needs can be addressed with a fairly minimal system. I do like the small ‘pocket’ panel charger for cellphones. That has some utility and I might wind up with one of those.

Anyway, you local LMI who have an interest may wanna head up and check it out.

CostCo item

Posted on May 17, 2009 by Commander Zero

Was up at CostCo the other day and was kinda surprised to see this in one of the aisles:

Looks interesting enough. For someone who simply wants a turnkey system it would have some appeal. No getting parts from five different vendors, wire/outlet compatability issues, etc, etc. So..what does $300 get you from CostCo? Lets look:

Now I am no expert, not by a long shot…but I think that a careful consumer could get a lot more bang for his buck shopping ala carte rather than going for the combo platter here. Im not really sure, to be honest. I’ve been meaning to investigate setting up a small system for quite a while now but it keeps getting shoved on to the back burner.

Before anyone asks, yes the label that I saw did say “Made In China”. I bet youre not surprised, right? I noticed these kits are available on eBay at various prices…most of them north of $300.

Anyone have any comments or opinions on this versus putting something together on one’s own?

Notes From The Bunker

Category Archives: energy