I mentioned a couple days ago. When I searched on amazon for "balcony "plug and play" solar" I got matches that look interesting. A long-time concern that I have had about PV systems as civil defense is EMP damage. If you bought one of these and put in a Faraday cage, you would have a post-apocalyptic power solution that you could be pretty sure will work.
Wednesday, December 3, 2025
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The problem is, everything you didn't put in the Faraday cage is toast. Your phone, radio, computer, ...
ReplyDeleteIf I put a radio in a Faraday cage, it would be my emergency radio that has a hand crank and a solar panel. But are any government/commercial broadcasters hardened against EMP? They weren't the last time I looked, though that was years ago.
My after the end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it supplies are lower-tech than electric. To be fair, I haven't kept up with all of them.
20 years ago I was of a mind to survive such a calamity. I was younger, thinner, more optimistic. Today I am less optimistic.
As I commented on the previous post, "balcony solar" / "Plug-and-play solar" have inverters to take the DC produced by the panel(s) to ~120v AC for the home, and these inverters ONLY work when they see power from another source on the household plug that they are connected to.
ReplyDeletePart of the point of this is "anti islanding", so that you aren't inadvertently feeding power back into the grid and causing hazard for line-workers. And part is just practical: having an inverter that is synchronous with the utility power (necessary, if it is going to add rather than subtract power. . . ) necessitates power to sync to.
For a "lock in the faraday cage to work when the utility power isn't coming back for a while", you'll want one of the portable-power systems from Jackery, Ecoflow River Pro, Goal-zero yeti, bluetti, etc.
Battery packs with inverters to create 120v power, and solar panel inputs so that you get power input to compensate power use.
My home's breaker panel is from a maker (Eaton) that offers a simple cheap mechanical interlock kit that makes it so the main breaker and a 2-pole breaker in the 1st slots can't both be "on" at the same time. One can then install an "inlet" (male plug) that feeds power into the homes circuits via that breaker and can never be a 'live' hazard. This is useful not only for portable generators, but also for Jackery power banks, big UPS as a power source, extension cable to the car that has 120v outlet, etc.
instead of paying the inflated prices of the Jackery or whatever "Power Bank" you are using, you could as easily and for less than half the price buy some decent batteries and an inverter along with a charge controller and have 3-5 times the storage/standby capacity.....and you could have an inverter with enough overhead to actually start inductive loads...which most "Solar Generators" like the Jackery won't ..add enough photovoltaic panels to keep it topped up (again, for less than half the Jackery's solar panel prices) and you have a decent standby
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