oldmaninsaline
New Member
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2022
- Messages
- 68
The power station that I built has been used for 15 months now to power the cabin and the main home during power failures. I was in the printing industry for 40 years and had to do a lot of repairs on equipment and for several years, I was an electronics field tech - so I've seen what works and what doesn't so I took 6 months to design the thing. The amount of breadboarding I did was probably a little too much type A personality but it paid off in the end. The whole I idea was to build a power station that I could upgrade if I wanted to so the cost target was $1000 or under which I achieved.
I'm surprised that I had to do virtually no troubleshooting on it - it worked the first time out. It's worked flawlessly - the only issue was a blown fuse that was my own fault.
At some point I need to post the full build article but every time I turn around I'm editing it and it's super long as well. At any rate, the power station has 4 USB ports, two 12 volt outlets and three AC outlets. It all sits in a Seahorse 920 rolling case. I can charge it from AC chargers, laptop chargers, solar panels and from my wet cell bank using a car laptop charger. Three AC chargers, solar panels and laptop chargers. I've also built an expansion battery pack for it that also powers my boat.
On the more technical side, the cabin has never needed more than a pure sine 600 watt inverter so I stuck with that, the charge controller is rated to 20 amps. For chargers, one 20 amp, two 6 amp, one 12 amp laptop charger and one 12 volt car laptop charger. All circuits powered by closed loop relays (the USB power is relayed to the main power). The inverter cooling (since I mounted just the circuit board) is done by a high flow mini pancake fan mounted above the case with a positive pressure release valve on the back of the case.
I'm surprised that I had to do virtually no troubleshooting on it - it worked the first time out. It's worked flawlessly - the only issue was a blown fuse that was my own fault.
At some point I need to post the full build article but every time I turn around I'm editing it and it's super long as well. At any rate, the power station has 4 USB ports, two 12 volt outlets and three AC outlets. It all sits in a Seahorse 920 rolling case. I can charge it from AC chargers, laptop chargers, solar panels and from my wet cell bank using a car laptop charger. Three AC chargers, solar panels and laptop chargers. I've also built an expansion battery pack for it that also powers my boat.
On the more technical side, the cabin has never needed more than a pure sine 600 watt inverter so I stuck with that, the charge controller is rated to 20 amps. For chargers, one 20 amp, two 6 amp, one 12 amp laptop charger and one 12 volt car laptop charger. All circuits powered by closed loop relays (the USB power is relayed to the main power). The inverter cooling (since I mounted just the circuit board) is done by a high flow mini pancake fan mounted above the case with a positive pressure release valve on the back of the case.
