Did any of you watch the first season of the Walking Dead? You know that bit when they're in the CDC and Noah Emmerich's character bemoans that they never thought to make the CDC run on solar? So then everything goes to shit, but that little line, that stuck with me. So as Bethany and I are talking about how we want to feed our hungry electronics that are coming with us on our trip. So we talked long and hard about getting a deep cycle battery setup, but if we're in a place for the long(er) haul, we'd have to run Sweetcakes for up to 45 minutes to recharge the batteries. So we took the Eco route:
solar.
So in addition, we had to pick up several other items to make the beast work to our advantage:
And the rest of the crew to pull it together:
So the plan, for the uninitiated [and myself] is to have the solar panel run through the charge converter [which maximizes the power output to the battery], into the battery to charge. The LED meter keeps us informed of the charge on the battery. Lines out to the power inverter, and electronics into the inverter!
The challenge over the next few weeks is seeing if we can effectively run wiring from the solar panel on the roof [the mounting of which will warrant its own post] into the vehicle, and figure out where to store the battery system and place the inverter so it's easily accessible. We'll keep you posted!
