The winter time up here in the
North Country leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to sunlight. First of all, the
lake effect from Lake Erie not only dumps feet of snow all over the place, it keeps it somewhat cloudy throughout the season. If you add the angle of the sun this time of year, at best I can expect 4-5 hours of solar at my yurt, and that is only if there is a clear sunny day.
Normally when I am up at camp, the power I use on
my system is restored almost daily during the spring and summer. During the winter though, I have left for a couple weeks and when I returned, the system had not fully recharged. I finally had to rethink how I was going to manage this.
I had a 20% off coupon at Harbor Freight and after reading some reviews, I bought this very small and extremely portable gasoline powered generator:
It was on sale and with my 20% coupon, plus a two year no hassle warranty, I was able to get it for about $95. I put the link here to Amazon because HF is not everywhere, and I think you will probably get a better price if you are having it shipped to you (and you are a prime member).
I use this in conjunction with a battery charger to charge up the solar batteries before I leave camp. Yeah, it is a little inefficient to convert DC to AC and then back to DC, but this also allows me to use this generator for other tasks. It is truly portable, meaning you don't have to be as strong as an ox to carry it. It doesn't seem to care for the cold, so I leave it inside for a bit before I take it outside to start it. While I am cleaning up camp and packing up to go, I have this running and charging up the system. It runs a LONG time on 1 gallon of gas. In fact, I think I charged the system 3 times on one tank. Now when I come back to camp, the batteries are topped off with no worries for a couple days.
Just figured I would share.
Winter Solar Blues
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