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The Common Sense Practical Prepper
Welcome to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, where I, a novice prepper, share my successes, stumbles, and lessons to make prepping approachable for all. Discover how to build long-term food storage with budget-friendly options like freeze-dried meals and bulk grains, while keeping your supplies fresh and ready.
I’ll also dive into situational awareness to stay sharp in any crisis, personal safety tips to protect yourself and loved ones, and bartering strategies for when cash isn’t king. Each episode ties real-world examples to current events, like recent storms or supply shortages, to keep you prepared. Have feedback or ideas? Email practicalpreppodcast@gmail.com.
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The Common Sense Practical Prepper
Sunshine in a Box: Making Sense of Portable Solar Power
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Fear itself might be our greatest enemy, but a lack of power during emergencies runs a close second. In this practical exploration of solar generator technology, we break down everything you need to know about these increasingly popular portable power stations that are revolutionizing how preppers approach energy independence.
Solar generators represent the perfect marriage of sustainability and practicality – capturing free energy from the sun through panels, converting DC to AC power, and storing it in increasingly efficient batteries. Unlike traditional gas generators with their noise, fumes, and constant fuel requirements, these silent workhorses require minimal maintenance while providing clean, reliable power for everything from smartphone charging to running small appliances. We examine how these systems function, comparing industry leaders EcoFlow and BluEddy, while addressing common concerns about customer service and reliability.
Understanding capacity is crucial when selecting a solar generator, so we demystify watt-hours and explain how to properly size a system for your specific needs. Whether you're powering a chicken coop (as our host does), creating a home backup system, or seeking off-grid capabilities for a tiny home, today's solar generators offer remarkable versatility with expanding capabilities as technology improves. While weather dependency remains their primary limitation, we discuss practical workarounds and how lithium iron phosphate batteries now offer thousands of cycles with minimal capacity loss. As battery technology continues its rapid evolution and prices steadily decrease, solar generators are becoming an increasingly attractive option for those seeking energy resilience without the hassles of traditional generators.
Ready to harness the power of the sun for your emergency preparations? Subscribe to the Common Sense Practical Prepper podcast for more practical solutions for a self-reliant life, and visit our website where you'll find resources, links to recommended products, and our complete archive of practical prepping advice.
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The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm warning. Welcome to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, where prepping doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. Coming to you from a well-defended, off-grid compound high in the mountains, coming to you from his Florida room in Richmond Virginia Neither off-grid nor well-defended, unless you count as chickens and cats, here is your host, keith.
Speaker 2:Hey, all this is Keith and welcome back to the Common Sense Practical Prepper podcast, august the 26th 2025. The podcast where we explore practical solutions for a self-reliant life. A couple of administrative things to get out of the way. I am taking a well-deserved vacation here. In the next couple of days I, for the most part, will be completely offline. I did consider posting a couple podcasts, but I will be out of the country and one of the countries I'll be visiting is very strict. They have a lot of guidelines on what you can post, how you post it, all sorts of disclaimers. So, in the interest of not getting myself in trouble with a foreign government and their law enforcement agencies, I will probably forego bringing my laptop and my microphone. However, that does not preclude us from maybe a one minute survival tip here and there. Take plenty of photos and maybe share a few once I get back. Okay, let's talk about solar generators. I've spoken about solar generators versus gas powered generators. Gosh, it was probably a year and a half ago and that I think I called it Generator 101 or Generators 101. That, by far, of all the podcasts I have put out, has been the most popular, the most downloaded podcast out of all of them. So it appears that at least provided some useful information to some folks.
Speaker 2:But today let's go ahead and concentrate on solar generators. All right, so a solar generator? Unlike a traditional gas or diesel generator, it's a portable system that harnesses sun through solar panels, converts it to electricity. So you've got the DC coming in. It's DC power that it takes from the solar panels. It goes into the solar generator itself. It does its little magic solar magic and it spits it out as AC. So it takes DC sun, turns it into AC, so we can go ahead and run our appliances. That is stored in a battery. We'll talk about battery battery sizes and the size system that you might need. The setup is quiet, emission-free and perfect for emergencies or daily use. You can think of it as a mini power plant. You can take it anywhere. Most of these units are very, very portable. That's one of the draws to these the fact that you can pick it up and take it with you. You can power lights, charge your devices, even run small appliances. As a quick sidebar, my chicken coops are run completely off solar generators that are obviously connected to solar panels. Solar generators are very versatile and it can be home backup. It can be camping. It can be everyday use. Now, how do they compare with our traditional generators? Gas powered units are loud, require fuel, produce fumes, which can be a hassle, especially if it's indoors which you never use a generator, a gas powered generator indoors If it's inside your garage, please, please, have plenty of ventilation and they are considered.
Speaker 2:It's considered sustainable energy or renewable energy. Now, I am not a founding member of the Sierra Club, nor do I donate to Greenpeace. However, I really think that solar power generators and solar power in general, I think solar power certainly has a place as an energy source. Solar panels are getting more and more efficient every week. Batteries are becoming even more efficient and we'll talk about that in a few minutes. So I think eventually, solar power is going to be much more acceptable than it is now. So when we talk about the benefits, all right. So, like I mentioned before, why should we consider having a solar generator setup? All right, sustainable energy. It's free energy from the sun, no ongoing fuel costs or environmental impact. Once you make the initial investment, there's really not much more you're going to have to add on to it. You could always grab larger solar panels, upgrade cables, but maintenance is very, very low. There's no engine to tune up. Maybe you need to clean your panels every once in a while, hit it with a hose or hit it with the leaf blower, but for the most part there's not a lot of maintenance.
Speaker 2:Now the two standout companies in this space in my opinion are EcoFlow and BlueEddy. Now a quick notation about EcoFlow. I've I have several of their products. I've had several of their products over the last few years, and the EcoFlow Delta Pro a year ago was their top of the line. They've since gone to much larger systems. Now some folks will tell you EcoFlow customer service is terrible. But I think these are kind of one-offs and individual mileage may vary.
Speaker 2:I can tell you that I have had issues lately with one of my EcoFlow Delta Pros. I emailed back and forth with customer service. We rolled back some patches, some software updates, some firmware updates, and it did not fix the issue. I was able to send the unit back under warranty. They sent it back a week later saying it was fixed. It was not. Now the emails took a bit of a turn and I explained how disappointed I was in them because I've been a customer of theirs for years and spent probably way too much money on their product. Where this issue stands now is, once I get back from vacation, I'm sending my old unit back and they're going to replace it with a brand new EcoFlow Delta Pro. So with all the bad press they've been getting out there about customer service not living up to expectations, for me personally they've done very well, all right.
Speaker 2:So we have EcoFlow and then we have BlueEddy. There's also Jackery. There are several different companies out there, but for the most part, blue Eddy, ecoflow and Jackery are the ones that you're going to hear about. So when we're talking about a solar generator and the system that you're going to tie to it, when we talk about the Delta series with EcoFlow, one of their big claims to fame is that they'll recharge up to 80% in one hour. All sorts of different caveats to that what size solar panels, what kind of angle, what kind of shade so there's all sorts of variables, but that's kind of their big claim to fame. Blue Eddy, on the other hand, exceeds with high capacity options like the AC200, designed for long-term use with lithium ion phosphate batteries. Some of these lithium ion phosphate batteries will last several thousand cycles, and a cycle in a lithium ion battery is you charge it to a hundred percent and then you discharge it all the way down to near zero, and that is what's considered a complete cycle. So both of the systems, both of BlueEddy and EcoFlow, are expandable. You attach additional batteries, you can scale it to pretty much whatever you need.
Speaker 2:But, as with all solar generators and all solar systems, it depends on sunlight. All solar generators and all solar systems, it depends on sunlight. So even on cloudy days, you're still going to get some solar input. At night, obviously not so much Clouds, heavy cloud rain again, depending on your panels, you're going to get very little solar input to charge your system. Keep that in mind. Solar input to charge your system. Keep that in mind.
Speaker 2:And it is not uncommon for folks to use a small gas power generator to charge their solar generator system. On days when you have an extended period of rain or cloudy skies for several days, certainly an option to have a small gas generator on standby. Now the cost, the upfront cost, can be a bit prohibitive, prohibitive. The cost can be too much for some people and they're not going to be able to purchase them. So it's like anything else you have the convenience. Now you can do DIY you can get. So a solar generator has the battery, the solar charge controller, that's the thing that does all the magic that turns DC into AC, and it's all compact, so everything's in one big case. You can certainly go DIY and spend gosh sometimes half as much, sometimes a third as much, depending on what is on sale and DIY solar generators are not that complicated if it's something that you want to put together Million different YouTube videos on that. So I'm not going to waste your time going through those. But just look up like DIY solar generator, diy solar power generator system, and you'll get more, more than enough hits.
Speaker 2:So we talk about the size. The size is super important. When you want to purchase a solar generator. You want to make sure that the battery let's just talk about the battery the battery is going to suit your needs. So the batteries that they're using now are lithium ion phosphate batteries. The batteries come in what they call amp hours, so it could be a 100 amp hour battery or a 200 amp hour battery.
Speaker 2:Now, when you look at the solar powered generators, we want to talk in watt hours. So, for the sake of conversation, if you have a solar generator, that is, the capacity is 300 watt hours. That means a device that uses 300 watts can be powered by your system for one hour, 300 watt hours. Or three 100 watt devices for the 300 watt hours. The EcoFlow Delta Pro, just the Delta Pro itself 3,500, so 3.5 kilowatts. You add the extra battery and then basically you have 7,000 watt hours. So again, do the math, just say, oh, it's 700 watts. And then you just do the math and you can figure out how long that device will run.
Speaker 2:On that system, with solar panels connected, you're going to get a constant influx or a constant input of solar power. And then you know hopefully that balances out, hopefully your solar panels are bringing in more Watts than the solar generator is kicking out to your different devices. All these different devices have apps. You can look on the screen, you can look on the app in real time. You can make all sorts of adjustments. So there's a lot to these and the convenience, I think, is what really drives people to purchase these as opposed to the DIY systems. But they both certainly have their pluses and their minuses.
Speaker 2:Pairing your battery as a backup, as a UPS, uninterrupted power supply, is what a lot of the nicer systems if you have your laptop plugged into the grid and you have your solar generator also plugged into your main panel in your home. There are transfer switches and some of these are so quick to move over and start working, pulling from the battery backup from your solar generator. In the event you do have it connected to the grid that you're not going to lose connectivity. Laptop will not blink, you will not lose your internet, it'll just keep going on and you won't even notice. The lights may flicker for a second, but you really won't know that the solar generator has kicked in.
Speaker 2:Now, when it comes to tying your solar generator system to the grid, depending on where you live, there are all sorts of permits, different things you might have to get from the county or the city that you live in. So just be very careful. Don't just call Joe Electrician and say hey, here's a transfer switch, connect this to my main panel in my laundry room, because there's a lot of stuff you have to consider not to get too, too deep into weeds, but some of the smaller systems are only 120. Your HVAC and a lot of your other larger appliances will run on 240. So, depending on the legs, they're called legs in your in your main breaker box. There's also sorts of different considerations, but for the sake of conversation, let's go ahead and keep this as a it's a very simple type of explanation and a system that you want to set up. So no technology is perfect.
Speaker 2:So here's some of the challenges. The biggest hurdle we talked about is weather. If it's a rainy week, you're not going to have a lot of input. You're going to have to rely on grid power, shore power, whatever you want to call it. Battery life is another factor, However. The lithium ion phosphate batteries will last for years and years go through thousands of cycles. Now some of these will tell you oh, it's good for 6,000 cycles, up to 80% of the capacity. So basically what it's saying is kind of like your iPhone, after two or three years, you have to have it on the charger constantly. A lot of these larger systems they'll give you, for example, 6,000 cycles up to 80% capacity. So as the battery gets older, as your system gets older, as it goes through more cycles whether it's charged all the way up and depleted all the way near the bottom at roughly 6,000 cycles, you're going to get 80% of that capacity that it was before. But again, a lot of these systems will go for an awfully long time, unless you're really like super hardcore.
Speaker 2:When my battery generator or my solar generators get down to the 80%, I probably won't even notice. I might. Hey, you know, this is, it's been kind of sunny. What's going on? It seems to be depleting a little bit quicker. You can always look at the cycles. You can see how much power you've been bringing in, how much power it's been going out Again. The apps have all sorts of information and EcoFlow has recently come out with these whole house backup systems that to me are kind of pricey.
Speaker 2:I do not have the money and nor do I have the money to do like a whole home gas power generator or one of the Generac I think they're called. That's the largest company. They run on propane or natural gas. Those things run about 12 grand. The EcoFlow system that will back up your entire home, assuming you want to run your HVAC, your washer, your dryer, your microwave and basically just run your home like you still have grid power. That is going to be very expensive as well. But the great thing about these systems are scalable. You can keep adding batteries and every single week batteries become less expensive. The technology for batteries are getting better. There's a new battery out. I'm not even going to give you the name of it in case they change it tomorrow, but it's very similar to. It's like a lithium ion and some of them are called just like ion batteries. So different companies have different names, but trust me, the technology is there. It's being improved upon a daily basis. It's a very good source.
Speaker 2:Solar energy, like I've said before, I think has its place in your entire power structure or grid structure, whatever you happen to have for emergencies or everyday use. So EcoFlow, blueeddy, jackery, jackery recently came out with some of these monster systems to try to compete with BlueEddy and EcoFlow. I don't have any. I have a really small Jackery but it's several years old and it seems to be doing okay. It's literally something just to charge a cell phone. I may get like three full charges out of a cell phone. It's a very small system. First little system I got gosh, maybe 10 years ago and something I just messed around with, and that's what I kind of got started into just messing around with solar. What can it do, what it can't do, how efficient or how inefficient solar panels are, but how far the efficiency has come in the last several years.
Speaker 2:Signature Solar and other companies have those little mini split air conditioners or they're kind of a air conditioner, a little mini HVAC system. It will heat and cool. They have some of those that tie directly to the grid also can tie to your solar power generator or whatever system you have. There are times when you can tell it hey, go ahead and run off solar power until the batteries hit 15%. Then I want you to switch to grid power and then, while it does that, the solar generator and the solar panels and charge it back up. And mini splits are very efficient.
Speaker 2:I was really surprised when I actually did some research on these mini splits and if you have a shed or even a small home, a tiny home, mini splits are absolutely the way to go. They will heat and they will cool. In the summer you got cool, in the winter you got heat, and a lot of them are. They're very efficient. Again, I was surprised on how efficient they are and how small they are and a lot of them have the little MC4 connectors, which is the, I guess, the most recognized connector that will connect your solar charging panel. So you take the MC4 connector to the cable, you connect it to a panel and then you run that to your system. So an MC4 connector is probably the most widely recognized type of connector and your mini splits actually have some of the mini splits actually have the MC4 connectors already ready to go.
Speaker 2:The system is charged, you unbox it and make sure you don't kink you know, kink the copper lines, but so much. You get everything set and you get it. You get it locked in, get everything screwed in and then you literally just connect your solar panels with the MC4s and you're good to go. You're then able to run the mini split, have it, charge up your system and then switch to grid power if you need it. All right, folks. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:If you want to get in touch with me, I'm on the Twitter common sense practical prepper podcast. You can search that or prep underscore. Podcast is the handle. You could also email me at practical prep podcast at gmailcom. And a podcast would not be complete if I gave you my shameless commercial plug In the show notes. There'll be an affiliate link for Augustin Farms. Click on the affiliate link. There is a chance that I will get a small commission from your order if placed through the affiliate link. In addition at checkout, add podcast prep. All one word podcast prep at checkout and getting an additional 10%. All right, folks, if you don't hear from me during my vacation, you'll hear from me after my vacation. Everybody had a good couple weeks. In the event, I don't talk to you until then and, as always, be safe out there, take care of one another and until next time.
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