Solar system update: I just spent an amount of money that is quite frankly frightening to the likes of me

See, there's a bunch of different ways you can Do Solar, depending on how Into It you wanna get. I'm typically on the raccoon end of the spectrum y'know, scavenge parts and cobble together and try to do it all on the cheap, which would normally rule out the sort of all-in-one inverter/chargecontroller/battery devices that rich folk go for. These are devices where you literally just plug solar panels in, keep your voltage below the max, and it does it all for you with an app, you don't have to know anything.

But. Big part of my use case was, frankly, next time there's a massive storm and half my mates are without power for days at a time and they need their freezer to get cold and their phone to get hot, I wanna be able to chuck a thing in the car, wheel it over, give them a couple cycles and take it back to get charged up in the sun again, and that ain't happening with the sort of screwed-into-a-big-plywood-board system I'd initially been thinking about. Plus I'd saved some money on the actual panels by finding a bloke who's upgrading all his, so the panels I'm getting are gonna be big and old and heavy and blue and not very efficient for their size but very very very cheap.

So. Gulp.

Ecoflow Delta Pro Three

which coincidentally has the same number of words as Two Fucking Grand Christ

@ifixcoinops

two fucking grand christ O_O

@pixx @ifixcoinops Yeah, EcoFlow is pretty nice consumer grade kit

Fitting the batteries and inverters and everything into a case that can replace a petrol generator does drive the costs up somewhat

@cmdrmoto @ifixcoinops

Yeah, it's just... I've got an inverter-charger on the way and I'm wincing at the $250 price tag rn (it's... probably worth it, since it should pay for itself in reduced electricity costs within 3 months), and I already had a separate 24V battery (~$300)

That kit is _way_ nicer, it's just... so expensive O_O

@pixx @cmdrmoto yyyyup, had to have a good few lucky breaks to be in this position and boy I know it

@ifixcoinops @cmdrmoto

I mean tbh if not for house fire I'd probably have wanted to go for something like that too

but a few lucky breaks can be reversed by a reaaaaaal unlucky break, if that break breaks enough :P

@pixx @ifixcoinops And of course, in accordance with the Vimes “Boots” Theory of Socioeconomic Injustice, the nice expensive kit is less likely to burn down your house.
@cmdrmoto @pixx being self-employed means feast or famine and nowt in between so I get to oscillate wildly between boots
@ifixcoinops @pixx Being in the tech industry and extremely fireable gave me a similar economic outlook 😂

@ifixcoinops @cmdrmoto

and an advantage to getting something like this is that it reduces how much you need for the next famine :)

@pixx @ifixcoinops Yup. Buy the good shit while you can, cause when the lean times come it’ll pay dividends right as you need them most

@cmdrmoto @ifixcoinops Yeahhh I'm in _very_ lean times right now, still forcing myself to get the cheapest inverter I can

Ensures that in the worst case scenario, even if I can't afford grid power in a few months, I'll still have cooling. And, more likely, it means bringing electricity bills down >75% for me...

@cmdrmoto @ifixcoinops again*

less likely to burn down my house _again_ :P