Hey All,
For those of you looking for some battery and solar alternatives, I thought I would give you some first hand positve experience with a company I stumbled upon during my personal search. Thus far, very impressed.
About a month back I had submitted a post trying to seek knowledge on battery systems for when I take off for extensive camp trips. I had looked dual battery systems, goal zero (tried a yeti 400 for about a month last summary but was dissapointed) and finally was looking at Smartbattery as a lifepo4 drop in for my truck battery. I simply could not get my hands around lugging a heavy AGM battery to camp sites as a power source. Lithium had to be the way.
In my search, I stumbled about 3 weeks ago upon a smaller company in Broomfield, Colorado called Aspect Solar when I was digging around for portable lithium battery power. They were offering a pretty slick combo on their site of 55 watt solar panels and a 20 AH/250 Watt Hour lifepo battery pack (called the Energy Bar) for about $599. I knew I wanted the weight savings and significant advantage of cycles that lithium offered, and so i gave them a call. Jerry, the tech person probably spent 45 minutes on the phone with me walking through the system, how it works, expected charge times (faster for lithium than lead acid) and even mentioned that another customer had bought a system for his Engel MR 040 such as mine. We determined that for starters I would try and use one of their energy bars to see how long it would run my fridge before running out of power. I bought the combo pack from them. It arrived 2 days later in an extremely well packaged/protected box. The battery weigh a whopping 8 pounds.
Once i had the Energy Bar out of the box and fully charged, I decided to do a basic test that attempted to replicate a weekend camp trip that my family and I might take, and perhaps one where I would not have the benefit of solar (rainy day) or as often in our case a late night arrival at our campsite for the weekend. I placed into the cooler two small frozen NuIce packs (I always use these, worth every penny) as a core cooling source and the remainder of the cooler was empty. The Engel fridge was set to refrigeration mode (number 1 on the dial). I had determined that the Engel fridge used about 30-40 watts of power (but only on perhaps 50% of the tme) and thus I had roughly 6 - 12 hours of life in the battery before it would die (considering it can be taken down to near zero and not be ruined is a good thing).
All I was wanting was a battery pack that would get through the evening before running out of power. I would have been happy to have woken up to 1 bar on the battery. To my surprise, in the AM the next day the battery was still at full. The fridge temp was showing 37 degrees (with some help from the Nu Ice I realize). I figured "what the hell lets see how long it will last" and left it alone for another day. 8:00am next day (now 36 hours) the temp on the fridge was still 37 degrees and the Aspect energy bar had finally dropped to about 3 bars from 5. I decided then I would go to work and just crack up if it were still running when I came home. You probably know where I'm going with this. At 3 PM, I came home for a late lunch and sure enough the fridge was still running and the battery had finally dropped to 1 Bar. I figured at that point the test was a success since I was seeking 10 hours and I was now at 44 hours and running with still some power remaining. Keep in mind as well that if there was any of the 55 watts of their solar power (this was in the basement of my house at 70 degrees) I could have infinate power for my fridge especially given the charging efficiency of lithium ion over lead acid and the thousands of cycles versus a couple hundred for L.A. or AGM. Considering as well that you can daisy chain I believe 5 of these things together you really have a pretty scaled system that still would only weigh 40 pounds for 100 AH/1250 WH of power. Pretty cool.
I recognize this test may be a one off, so I'm going to do a couple more tests but this time capture it using a go pro on time lapse. I'll do a test with Nu Ice and one test without just to see the difference and try to submit here if I can.
Either way, I suspect many of you are looking for some battery and/or solar options. There are many good solutions from lots of companies out there in what I suspect will be a rapidly evolving space. If you are carrying out your due diligence, give them a look.
http://www.aspectsolar.com/
Thanks,
Brian
For those of you looking for some battery and solar alternatives, I thought I would give you some first hand positve experience with a company I stumbled upon during my personal search. Thus far, very impressed.
About a month back I had submitted a post trying to seek knowledge on battery systems for when I take off for extensive camp trips. I had looked dual battery systems, goal zero (tried a yeti 400 for about a month last summary but was dissapointed) and finally was looking at Smartbattery as a lifepo4 drop in for my truck battery. I simply could not get my hands around lugging a heavy AGM battery to camp sites as a power source. Lithium had to be the way.
In my search, I stumbled about 3 weeks ago upon a smaller company in Broomfield, Colorado called Aspect Solar when I was digging around for portable lithium battery power. They were offering a pretty slick combo on their site of 55 watt solar panels and a 20 AH/250 Watt Hour lifepo battery pack (called the Energy Bar) for about $599. I knew I wanted the weight savings and significant advantage of cycles that lithium offered, and so i gave them a call. Jerry, the tech person probably spent 45 minutes on the phone with me walking through the system, how it works, expected charge times (faster for lithium than lead acid) and even mentioned that another customer had bought a system for his Engel MR 040 such as mine. We determined that for starters I would try and use one of their energy bars to see how long it would run my fridge before running out of power. I bought the combo pack from them. It arrived 2 days later in an extremely well packaged/protected box. The battery weigh a whopping 8 pounds.
Once i had the Energy Bar out of the box and fully charged, I decided to do a basic test that attempted to replicate a weekend camp trip that my family and I might take, and perhaps one where I would not have the benefit of solar (rainy day) or as often in our case a late night arrival at our campsite for the weekend. I placed into the cooler two small frozen NuIce packs (I always use these, worth every penny) as a core cooling source and the remainder of the cooler was empty. The Engel fridge was set to refrigeration mode (number 1 on the dial). I had determined that the Engel fridge used about 30-40 watts of power (but only on perhaps 50% of the tme) and thus I had roughly 6 - 12 hours of life in the battery before it would die (considering it can be taken down to near zero and not be ruined is a good thing).
All I was wanting was a battery pack that would get through the evening before running out of power. I would have been happy to have woken up to 1 bar on the battery. To my surprise, in the AM the next day the battery was still at full. The fridge temp was showing 37 degrees (with some help from the Nu Ice I realize). I figured "what the hell lets see how long it will last" and left it alone for another day. 8:00am next day (now 36 hours) the temp on the fridge was still 37 degrees and the Aspect energy bar had finally dropped to about 3 bars from 5. I decided then I would go to work and just crack up if it were still running when I came home. You probably know where I'm going with this. At 3 PM, I came home for a late lunch and sure enough the fridge was still running and the battery had finally dropped to 1 Bar. I figured at that point the test was a success since I was seeking 10 hours and I was now at 44 hours and running with still some power remaining. Keep in mind as well that if there was any of the 55 watts of their solar power (this was in the basement of my house at 70 degrees) I could have infinate power for my fridge especially given the charging efficiency of lithium ion over lead acid and the thousands of cycles versus a couple hundred for L.A. or AGM. Considering as well that you can daisy chain I believe 5 of these things together you really have a pretty scaled system that still would only weigh 40 pounds for 100 AH/1250 WH of power. Pretty cool.
I recognize this test may be a one off, so I'm going to do a couple more tests but this time capture it using a go pro on time lapse. I'll do a test with Nu Ice and one test without just to see the difference and try to submit here if I can.
Either way, I suspect many of you are looking for some battery and/or solar options. There are many good solutions from lots of companies out there in what I suspect will be a rapidly evolving space. If you are carrying out your due diligence, give them a look.
http://www.aspectsolar.com/
Thanks,
Brian
