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Had a power outage for 4 hours and it was cooler in Tuscon outside than inside with out the AC. Not a breath of air, so I soaked in my own juices until the power came back on.
I used to own a car jumper, air compressor and inverter until the charging system took a dump.
I am not a fan of lead batteries.
The Blueitti EB3a is Li chemistry.


This guy does a good job.
I hunted about and found a page on Ebay where I getting the new toy delivered for less than $200 bucks.

As I am sure all of you know if you put a huge load on batteries the discharge fast.
 
So you powered your AC off this device? That's pretty awesome! My wife and I just moved, our old place had solar, and enough solar that it pretty much wiped out the electricity bills. We have had some extended power outages over there though, the burried electrical has been on the fritz over the last 10 years or so, and we've had a number of outages that have lasted days to weeks. The power company will often come out with a large diesel genset to keep the neighborhood online, but it frequently cuts out, and brown-outs during refueling were common. The crap part, about our solar system it didn't keep the house going when the power was out. This summer has been really humid, unfortunately, we haven't had much rain, but pretty much everywhere else has been bombarded.

I'm thinking we're going to need some solar, and some solar with some battery storage. I don't think this would be up to the challenge we have, but that's still pretty handy for $200. It's good to see the prices coming down.
 
Sorry to burst your bubble, there is no AC that will run off something this small. I was looking for some light if needed and powering a 10" fan for a few hours. While the POCO returned the volts to my home.

If your looking for something home sized there are products out there for about $5 grand plus installation. As you have discovered not all inverters can handle a battery. Worse even fewer can handle a battery and generator. It is all about the functions that the inverter can handle. Most of the inverters installed 5 years ago did not have this feature.
I have a neighbor that has a 7 kw system and when the power goes out so does his. No battery no ability to add one. Since his system is leased they are not interested in making any upgrades until the end of the contract
 
. . . there are products out there for about $5000 plus installation. . .
That would be a stand-alone generator, like a Generac and a few others. I did a quick look on my phone and see several that are 2000 watts, 2500 watts and up for less than $1000. If the power goes out, all you really want is for your freezers to stay frozen and any vitally-important medical equipment in your home to be kept supplied.
 
Actually if the freezers are left along, not opened and are at least half full they will last a week in 80-90F temps.

The reason I chose this one was the UPS feature and the LI batter tech. I just can not get myself to put money in lead tech any more. I live in a area of the planet that a good car battery is 2 years, which is the warrantee so I keep getting a new one for cheap. I bought a pair of Optima's for my land cruiser, and they worked well with all the electrical gizmos I had on the truck. I had installed 40 amps @12 of air craft landing lights 4 of them. I could get written apologizes from drivers in the day time if I flashed them for some driving infraction. Still in the end the 6 minutes of winching or 10 minutes of light with out the motor running and I could not start the 6 cylinder in the cruiser. That's with 2 batteries.
It has been said before we need a better battery.
 
I wasn't sure if it was able to power up a wall unit for long enough to make life a bit more comfy, doing all the overland stuff I do, battery setups are something I'm very familiar with, and portable battery banks of every variety. We've long used SLA batteries that were built into ammo can that would have APP and CLA plugs, sometimes they'd have 12V->USB outputs and the like for keeping LED light strips, and other stuff running on the trail. Main advantage to 12V, you just plug it into the vehicle when you're packing out the next morning and it keeps the batteries floated, can also boost your vic in the morning if need be.

As far as building my own battery bank, I've done it a few times before, usually we use truck or golfcart batteries, a regular auto starting battery doesn't have the watts needed. Golfcart batteries have historically been the cheapest option. If I'm doing it again, I'd probably be going with a 24 or 48V battery and inverter system, I'm debating whether I'd use microinverters, to back-feed the grid when there's excess power, and use grid power to keep the batteries floated, when the power goes out, the inverter would need to provide a low impedence 60hz sync to keep the panels making juice.

Over all since most of our power use is going to be 110VAC I'd rather limit the load on the inverter and the batteries by using microinverters, but that poses unique problems for backup power applications. I might have to use a hybrid system where there's some limited DC output panels into the charge controller, but the bulk of the panels are connected to the inverter, with a grid cut off switch.

I haven't messed with these Lithium units much, they do seem to have some really good power densities and are clearly superior to the SLA in an ammocan, the cost early on has been kinda prohibitive. A lot of offroaders have had Jackery or other units, but $5-700 for a battery is a bit steep if you're on a budget.
 
I might have to get one. The woman across from my apartment pissed me off so I just planned on taking hers when SHTF but she just moved so...lucky her, unlucky me. Jk btw...
 

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