For this typhoon, I pulled out some basics. Most importantly, I got the food and water that would last me, as long as they weren’t destroyed in the storm, for a week. They say about that much time, rule of thumb. The solar power system that was to go up at my apartment is just used as serious backup power. I could run the fridge for days and all my personal stuff and fans. So I went through the stuff I shipped and hooked up the charger to the 80 pound LiFePO4 battery and hooked up the fused battery to the inverter and I’ll be fine through this one. Fortunately it might be a somewhat dry run since the typhoon may hit down Guam way and we only get maybe up to a little more wind/rain than the last storm that passed couple weeks ago. We would be very lucky and that can change though this close, about 24 hours and it’s hopefully not too unpredictable. Bad news for Guam, great news for my island to the north.
I was really hitting the villages driving each one and talking to anyone/everyone to get my long term place. Then I stopped as soon as the “action” mode was declared to get ready for incoming storm.
All those years living on boats I only remember once going to shore to charge batteries and getting completely soaked in the rain. I ran a solar panel to a 486 laptop to get 14.4 modem through my phone for the internet on my first boat. Things are very different now. The tech is much more advanced, simplified, cheap. This is 4 times bigger than what I’m used to running on a boat, and I’ve made enough mistakes on my first LiFePO4 to keep things clean with this. There was a lot of in-between; on my last boat I replaced 4 deep cycle lead acid 80ah ea. for main battery bank and I got two 6 volt golf cart batteries for bank #2. Over the years I managed to learn how to cycle through them and charge back up with a generator and solar panels. Then eventually the new batteries were old and I finally bought my first LiFePO4. I think it was an old controller that I set to Lithium chemistry. I did stupid stuff like run it all the way to zero and let it sit and not run it all the way to the top and leave it topped so that the BMS equalizes the cells. This one I’m taking more seriously, with the efficient controller made for these batteries and a battery that is equal to 4x100ah 12v batteries. I originally designed the system to run the 4x12v batteries, thinking I could easily find that size on the island. Until I found out 2 important things. First it’s considerable more effort to make sure those 4 batteries stay balanced, so it’s more work to maintain properly. And it would be more expensive to buy them on the island or ship them than to buy one big battery and ship it. This helped me decide a more efficient voltage too, that fits nicely. If I have space and power needs later, I could replicate this system as needed simple enough.
Nice to unbox some of the stuff and use it for what it’s meant for; Not just backup, but a daily necessity for my new band The Typhoon Alley Cats.
Last sail in Newport