What Preps are you doing this week? Part 9

How are you preparing
GillyBee
Posts: 1047
Joined: Tue Apr 07, 2020 6:46 am

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 9

Post by GillyBee »

Just bought a 100W starter solar kit from these guys. T'other half is considering if he can take his shed/man cave off grid to help keep energy costs down and it will give us a baseline to start from.
The prices are impressive this weekend so I hope the kit stacks up too.
https://uk.renogy.com/products/solar-panels/
jennyjj01
Posts: 3429
Joined: Sun Jun 04, 2017 11:09 pm

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 9

Post by jennyjj01 »

GillyBee wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 9:48 am Just bought a 100W starter solar kit from these guys. T'other half is considering if he can take his shed/man cave off grid to help keep energy costs down and it will give us a baseline to start from.
The prices are impressive this weekend so I hope the kit stacks up too.
https://uk.renogy.com/products/solar-panels/
Renology seems to be a respected brand and their current prices seem very reasonable, e.g. £170 for a 200W panel,

Free delivery is certainly a bonus!

GillyBee, please report back on how it goes. Are you planning on using an inverter? or 12V devices.

I would recommend anyone to install some baseline kit, such as 100W or 200W on a shed roof, for resilience and practice.
BUT..... As I already mentioned elsewhere, Don't be under the illusion that it will cost in very well from an electricity cost perspective on current electricity prices. Payback will be more than 5 Years. and maybe much more.

The way to make it cost in is to actually USE every Watt hour of electricity that it can possibly generate and that means you need expensive batteries to store the energy and you need to be studiously powering enough devices to keep using energy as it's produced, else it's wasted. Every glimmer of sunshine is wasted if your reservoir battery is full. Thus the need to buy monitors and alarms.
Graceful Degradation! Prepping's objective summed up in two words. Turning Disaster into Mild Inconvenience by the power of fore-thought

Not Feeling Optimistic. Let me be wrong
Frnc
Posts: 3182
Joined: Sat Mar 12, 2022 1:54 pm

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 9

Post by Frnc »

Re masks, I got a box of 20 in 6 colours, Kn95/FFp2 5-Layer CE 0598 certified EN149
£10.99
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B095H7C8TX/
GillyBee
Posts: 1047
Joined: Tue Apr 07, 2020 6:46 am

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 9

Post by GillyBee »

We plan to use it to charge 12 V car batteries The shed is running on a mix of 12V and 240V equiment so we will power the 12V direct. We have a tiny inverter for testing but would need to buy a bigger one for the power tools. The laptop, lighting, fans, guitar tech will be mostly good though.

I did some sums on the value of solar.

If I assume solar panel production to battery storage efficiency is 30% and I averages 10 hours of daylight across the year, the maths looks like this. I have used 36p/KwH for the sums (as expected for the October cap) but have shown the workings if you want to play with different figures.

Cost of Kit £139
Rated Watts 100
Cost of electricity per KwH £0.36
Output per year in KwH 109.5 (i.e.100/1000*0.3*10*365)
Value per year £39.42 (i.e. 109.5*0.36)
Payback time 3.5 years (i.e.£139/£39.42)

My savings are not getting much in the way of interest. My estimated interest rate on this as an investment is 28% . Whether I get that or not will depend on our energy storage and usage capability and the assumptions I made.
jennyjj01
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Joined: Sun Jun 04, 2017 11:09 pm

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 9

Post by jennyjj01 »

Last edited by jennyjj01 on Sat Jul 16, 2022 3:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Graceful Degradation! Prepping's objective summed up in two words. Turning Disaster into Mild Inconvenience by the power of fore-thought

Not Feeling Optimistic. Let me be wrong
GillyBee
Posts: 1047
Joined: Tue Apr 07, 2020 6:46 am

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 9

Post by GillyBee »

And we won't know how often that will happen until we are actually up and running which is why i didn't shell out for a biger system at this point.
jennyjj01
Posts: 3429
Joined: Sun Jun 04, 2017 11:09 pm

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 9

Post by jennyjj01 »

Last edited by jennyjj01 on Sat Jul 16, 2022 3:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Graceful Degradation! Prepping's objective summed up in two words. Turning Disaster into Mild Inconvenience by the power of fore-thought

Not Feeling Optimistic. Let me be wrong
moominmama
Posts: 39
Joined: Mon Dec 18, 2017 1:23 pm

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 9

Post by moominmama »

linking this to the posting 'Do You Feel We Are Heading For The Perfect Storm?' I am starting to think about 'longer' term preps as well as what I would classify as short to medium term preparing.

short to medium terms prep - food, water, medicines, energy storage, growing our own food, etc.

longer term - saving like mad and thinking about moving to another area with bigger garden for growing, more storage, and safer area*

*we live in a town near a big city, and I worry about potential civil unrest (my husband does think I am paranoid), I have only recently stopped volunteering at local food bank as I was finding it all very stressful and emotional. We are getting fewer donations as demand has skyrocket! Users used to be often one time or infrequent users looking for a bit of help to tide over a difficult time, now it is regulars - often working people who find salaries do not cover rent, food, fuel. This is only going to get worse in the coming winter, and I don't know if those in power really grasp the sense of helplessness, despair and anger that some people are feeling. Police and courts are failing and in my opinion no deterrent to crime, my thinking is that best idea is to move to a less vulnerable area, make property as secure as possible, and be discreet about prepping and food storage.
izzy_mack
Posts: 562
Joined: Thu Aug 15, 2013 12:35 pm

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 9

Post by izzy_mack »

Started on the jam making , just a couple of pots each of rhubarb and fig and of strawberry, crops ripen much later in the highlands so that was all I had so far.
Worrying thing I've noticed is that last week there was a lot of helicopters flying about and 3 jets flying low. Today 6 or 7 fighter jets flew over together VERY low and seem to be heading towards the bombing range at Tain. I can't remember ever seeing that many in one flight before. Maybe I need to stock up EVEN more ! WW3 anybody?
GeeGee
Posts: 363
Joined: Sat Aug 15, 2015 3:35 pm

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 9

Post by GeeGee »

Bang on Izzy ive been jam making and the roof nearly came off my house..globemaster ..scared the cats witless and me with it ...seeing a lot of this... very low flying..and its not normal for this area we do get some with Leeds Bradford airport but the usual its going to land and photographers out ... and having Menwith Hill about 20 miles away but lived here a long long time and never seen anything like it
Puts the creepies right up me !