Using the sun to make a cup of coffee is now within the possibilities of my solar power experiments! 
During the crazy black Friday week I have bought a PowerStation! It's basically a powerbank on steroids intended to be used when you are outdoors a lot, when camping, or whatever people with RV's and caravans do. I have posted before about my experiments with solar panels and the electrical installation challenges that come with it. Learning about SolarCharge controllers, battery types, how to use and charge them, how not to destroy your batteries by discharging below 50% in case of lead acid, proper wire sizes, electrical safety.....and the list goes on quite a bit 
I am still going with the full solar equipment with big batteries and stuff, I just wanted to have something more portable and that I could more easily explain...(or show off...get those confused sometimes) to other people what it can do! One of the downside is that using really big heavy batteries and solar equipment means that the system is not going to be portable! Unless you put it all in a trolley or something else that has wheels on it! The solar box I am working on right now will have 2 60Ah AGM batteries and they weigh 15KG each! This does not include copper wire, the wooden box that will house everything, the fuses and sockets etc.... I estimate the thing will weigh at least 50KG when it's all done!
So...I started looking at what some people call "Solar Generators"....but that term makes my skin itch!! It's not a generator!!! You do not put fuel into it! There is no engine! No motor! so...NO generator! A better name in my opinion is "Portable Power Station" because that's what it is. I would even accept "PowerBank" for non technical people. It has USB ports to charge phones and other devices ofcourse, but also a 12v socket "cigarette lighter" like in a car and on the side it has two 220V sockets in my case. The 110V version has three because they are smaller I guess.
The brand and model I decided to go with is the EcoFlow River. It's small enough to be considered portable and it has a feature that NO other brand offers! It has an inverter rated for 600 watts but using a cool technique it can work with some devices that need up to 1600 watts! It does this by lowering the voltage and some other tricks to keep it at 600 watts maximum! This mean you can use heat guns, hairdryers, water boilers andddd coffeemakers!!!
Not that I am a huge coffee drinker or anything...it's just something simple enough people understand does not easily work on most camp grounds. Or in the middle of a field with no AC outlets anywhere! I do have a small tiny 12V water kettle that can boil 1L of water in about 35 minutes! It uses 11-15 Amps at 12V to do it....so it drains my batteries a LOT while testing it out! Most important reason I bought it is to test my wires and connection when there is a high load like this! It has melted a fuse holder and I learned my 1mm2 wires got really warm/hot while it was running! Even a switch that is rated for 20A got far to hot to touch from just the power that was going through it! But that might have just been the small wires causing it....need to retest with better thicker wires.
Sorry for the confusing and jumping around in this story....and it's getting long. hopefully it's not to boring
Where was I....ehm....right! Coffeemaker on sunpower. Not all people agree that a Senseo with coffeepads is "Real coffee" but it's the machine I have and it uses 1500 watts to boil water and makes coffee in about 1 minute when plugged into the wall. Using it with the PowerStation it takes about 3 minutes to warm all the way up and then...it only gave me half a cup of coffee!! I guess it's using the voltage for timing the amount of water or something, so I just pressed the button again! I made a personal video of it...but it's bad so not sharing it...and the firmware of the powerstation had a bug at that time! It was not showing me the remaining battery time on the display...but everything else seemed to work fine. After reporting it to EcoFlow they released a firmware update in about two days that fixed the issue! ....and now I feel I am making a commercial. Not getting paid for this! I promise! ....I wish I was actually
Having nearly no sun for two weeks....or at least not enough to actually charge the thing with real solar power I did not want to make another video of it making coffee. But yesterday I have recharged it from 9% -> 37% with only solar power going into it! Right....that's the advantage of a powerstation compared to the "regular solar system setup" that this is an ALL-IN-ONE device! It has it's AC power input build into the unit to recharge in less than 2 hours! It also has a DC power in socket to recharge from a 12v car socket in 3-4 hours and the same socket can plug directly into "12V" solar panels. I quoted that because the actual voltage is more like 19-22 when solar panels generate power...and you need to take that into account! While it works and the included cable uses normal MC4 solar panel connectors they warn about only using their own brand of panels offcourse. But...since I learned a few things in the last few months about solar panels I knew the voltage was safe to use here.
Thanks for reading. Just needed this out of my head as usual.
Going to make some pictures of making coffee with it and add them later. Maybe even a video
During the crazy black Friday week I have bought a PowerStation! It's basically a powerbank on steroids intended to be used when you are outdoors a lot, when camping, or whatever people with RV's and caravans do
. I have posted before about my experiments with solar panels and the electrical installation challenges that come with it. Learning about SolarCharge controllers, battery types, how to use and charge them, how not to destroy your batteries by discharging below 50% in case of lead acid, proper wire sizes, electrical safety.....and the list goes on quite a bit I am still going with the full solar equipment with big batteries and stuff, I just wanted to have something more portable and that I could more easily explain...(or show off...get those confused sometimes) to other people what it can do!
One of the downside is that using really big heavy batteries and solar equipment means that the system is not going to be portable! Unless you put it all in a trolley or something else that has wheels on it! The solar box I am working on right now will have 2 60Ah AGM batteries and they weigh 15KG each! This does not include copper wire, the wooden box that will house everything, the fuses and sockets etc.... I estimate the thing will weigh at least 50KG when it's all done!So...I started looking at what some people call "Solar Generators"....but that term makes my skin itch!! It's not a generator!!! You do not put fuel into it! There is no engine! No motor! so...NO generator! A better name in my opinion is "Portable Power Station" because that's what it is. I would even accept "PowerBank" for non technical people. It has USB ports to charge phones and other devices ofcourse, but also a 12v socket "cigarette lighter" like in a car and on the side it has two 220V sockets in my case. The 110V version has three because they are smaller I guess.
The brand and model I decided to go with is the EcoFlow River. It's small enough to be considered portable and it has a feature that NO other brand offers! It has an inverter rated for 600 watts but using a cool technique it can work with some devices that need up to 1600 watts! It does this by lowering the voltage and some other tricks to keep it at 600 watts maximum! This mean you can use heat guns, hairdryers, water boilers andddd coffeemakers!!!
Not that I am a huge coffee drinker or anything...it's just something simple enough people understand does not easily work on most camp grounds. Or in the middle of a field with no AC outlets anywhere! I do have a small tiny 12V water kettle that can boil 1L of water in about 35 minutes! It uses 11-15 Amps at 12V to do it....so it drains my batteries a LOT while testing it out! Most important reason I bought it is to test my wires and connection when there is a high load like this! It has melted a fuse holder and I learned my 1mm2 wires got really warm/hot while it was running! Even a switch that is rated for 20A got far to hot to touch from just the power that was going through it! But that might have just been the small wires causing it....need to retest with better thicker wires.
Sorry for the confusing and jumping around in this story....and it's getting long. hopefully it's not to boring
Where was I....ehm....right! Coffeemaker on sunpower.
Not all people agree that a Senseo with coffeepads is "Real coffee" but it's the machine I have and it uses 1500 watts to boil water and makes coffee in about 1 minute when plugged into the wall. Using it with the PowerStation it takes about 3 minutes to warm all the way up and then...it only gave me half a cup of coffee!! I guess it's using the voltage for timing the amount of water or something, so I just pressed the button again! I made a personal video of it...but it's bad so not sharing it...and the firmware of the powerstation had a bug at that time! It was not showing me the remaining battery time on the display...but everything else seemed to work fine. After reporting it to EcoFlow they released a firmware update in about two days that fixed the issue! ....and now I feel I am making a commercial. Not getting paid for this! I promise! ....I wish I was actuallyHaving nearly no sun for two weeks....or at least not enough to actually charge the thing with real solar power I did not want to make another video of it making coffee. But yesterday I have recharged it from 9% -> 37% with only solar power going into it! Right....that's the advantage of a powerstation compared to the "regular solar system setup" that this is an ALL-IN-ONE device! It has it's AC power input build into the unit to recharge in less than 2 hours! It also has a DC power in socket to recharge from a 12v car socket in 3-4 hours and the same socket can plug directly into "12V" solar panels. I quoted that because the actual voltage is more like 19-22 when solar panels generate power...and you need to take that into account! While it works and the included cable uses normal MC4 solar panel connectors they warn about only using their own brand of panels offcourse. But...since I learned a few things in the last few months about solar panels I knew the voltage was safe to use here.
Thanks for reading. Just needed this out of my head as usual.
Going to make some pictures of making coffee with it and add them later. Maybe even a video
