In a typical wilderness or camping setting, an individual commonly plans for various sources and uses of energy. Fire for example, is very important. We can easily use it as a source of light, warmth, cooking, and in desperate times, a signal for help. Of course as we all know by now, our magical and multipurpose fire requires a source of fuel like wood. Imagine for a moment having to tough it out for a day or two in a primitive scenario. You might be injured, sick, or just plain frustrated. Finding a small pile of pre-cut firewood near your campsite would certainly be a real gift at a moment like that. In the northern forests, trees and the wood they provide are a definite go to source for energy. But what about back home?
At home, most of us typically don't rely on wood to supply the energy for our basic needs. We instead get our power from the local electric company. Due to various events that power supply can be interrupted due to storms, repairs, accidents, etc. Of course, now your computer, lighting, and communication tools like radio and tv are now often useless. It's at these times that many homeowners are scrambling to find some old flashlight in a crowded junk drawer. The kids are likely to be complaining since the TV is off, and they recently discovered their other electronic gadgets have dead batteries. You might want to call your spouse or even friends and relatives across town, and discover your cell phone is hovering around 5% and you debate saving the remaining power just in case.
Electricity is certainly important to the average homeowner. When back up plans are discussed, the conversation often leads to considerations that are very large scale. A 10,000 watt generator, or a multi-panel solar system costing thousands of dollars. Many of those large scale options are not available for those living in small houses or apartments. Often times however a small emergency back up system is all that is really required in the majority of cases. A small system can get those cell phones, ham radios, some lamps, radio, tv, computer, wifi, and modem back up and running very quickly. Just think, while your neighbor is still rummaging through that junk drawer for his flashlight, you will be enjoying your normal house lighting, reading Survival Skillcraft on your laptop, while the kids enjoy a little tv for a while.
These capabilities do not need to break your budget. In fact, a back up system can be tailored to your specific needs and added to at a later time as funds become available. It's something that can meet immediate concerns, and later on can become as elaborate as your imagination will allow. In future articles, I will be discussing some of the tools and equipment that can be used to create a workable system that just about anyone including an apartment dweller can benefit from. The purpose of this article is to lay out a few concepts that will be kept in mind as we continue on.
The first concept to keep in mind is size. It is unnessesary to create a super huge, do everything system. Start small, get some immediate benefit, and go larger as you become more knowledgable about your actual needs, budget, and energy sources.
The second concept will be to keep in mind that three things need to be done with the energy. It needs to be aquired, stored, and distributed. These three aspects all need to be considered when buiding a balanced system. For example, when the lights go out, the average person still retains an excellent distribution system, but can no longer aquire energy, and usually has very little stored in the form of a couple of batteries in a flashlight somewhere. Another person may have stored numerous batteries, yet has an ineffective distribution system, since he cannot power his computer with all those packs of AA batteries. We also want to have a way to aquire more energy in the event the power company does not get things back online in a short amount of time.
The last concept to keep in mind is efficiency. When crafting a small power system, the devices you choose to distribute your precious energy to, need to be as efficent as possible, or that you can afford. The small system will work a lot better for example powering a couple of 5 watt lights than one 75 watt lamp. It is more efficient to use a laptop, or cell phone to get the weather report from the web, than trying to power a large desktop with an older monitor. Efficiency of devices is critical to the success of a small back up system.
As stated before, there will be future articles on this topic that will go into more detail and explain aspects more clearly. For now, I would like to show you a very capable, and inexpensive system that I was experimenting with that has the above concepts demonstrated.
Many people may have a jumpstart pack in their vehicles, or garage already. This is a very capable storage device since there is a battery contained in it. With a couple of inexpensive items such as a 100 watt inverter, or car cell phone charger the stored energy can now be distributed into useful devices such as a cell phone, and in this case a laptop computer. In testing I also used an electric shaver, hair clippers, a small lamp and they all worked fine. With this small system, it is easy to power the laptop for a few hours, and charge all the phones of my family members. The only weakness, is there is not a way to aquire energy if that battery should run out.
I had a folding solar panel that puts out around 13 watts of energy. It's not super powerful, but consider that the laptop averages about 15 watts while in use, the panel could easily extend the battery life to power the computer all day long.
Again, this is not a model system. It is just to demonstrate that with a few simple items, critical needs can be met. Watch for future articles on this topic. Hopefully the material will help you create an effective back up power system that meets your needs.
//EE
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