Amateur question: Is there a way you can use a solar generator to off-grid power hogs in a house?
TL,DR: Can I use a Bluetti 2000wh solar generator in my attic with panels running to the roof to off-grid my two biggest power hogs: two PCs in an upstairs office and a downstairs home theater? Is it possible to accomplish this without using an extension cord because apparently none are supposed to run through walls?
So I recently got stuck in the Austin storm, and it maybe wasn't as bad as it looked except we kept running out of phone and tablet charge to entertain ourselves while huddled under eight blankets and eating the paltry amount of fritos and bottled water that we rationed in our hotel until our rebooked flight and kept having to go to the car for hours to recharge the devices. When I got home I started looking into generators and solar chargers for my phone. I saw a solar generator pop up as I was looking for solar phone chargers and a thought occurred to me, but combing reviews and posts, I haven't seen this exact use case and before I plow ahead with it, I wanted to make sure I'm not missing any pitfalls, and I need a solution for running power. I live in a sunny place and have a roof facing the correct direction, but I don't want to pay the multiple tens of thousands it would cost me to go solar because of the size of my house. My electric bill is low anyway: only about $75/month for a big house (another reason solar doesn't make sense). However, my bill used to be only about $25 before I really expanded my smart home devices (can't fix that with solar unless I wire it to the box, I get that) and I expanded my PC and home theater setup, as well as my wife started working from home due to covid so we now have two PCs running morning until night. In other words, the biggest daily power hogs are the home theater power strip and the pc power strip. They use about 700w if running at the same time, but they usually don't run at the same time, so I think that the charge gained from the sun while running should theoretically be enough to keep them powered all day off grid most of the time in our area. One is upstairs one is downstairs. Both the upstairs and downstairs have wires running to them through walls for direct internet. My thought was to sort of do a janky solar setup this way: buy a Bluetti 2000wh generator, put it in the attic, mount some smaller 120 solar panels to the roof from Amazon, keeping them out of sight from the exterior (important to my wife) by running the cord straight down from the roof into the attic, and maybe use the existing wall holes for internet to run electricity (how do I do this too because apparently there's no extension cord that can run through walls?) from the unit to the home theater downstairs and the pc setup upstairs, thus eliminating the two biggest power hogs. My break even for this just on raw energy use is many years, but I feel that it would be worth it just to have the generator upstairs running on solar so that if we needed it for an emergency, we could just unplug the home theater and PCs from it and repurpose it immediately for, say, the refrigerator. Is there a way to make this work?
https://redd.it/m0h1f7
@r_preppers
TL,DR: Can I use a Bluetti 2000wh solar generator in my attic with panels running to the roof to off-grid my two biggest power hogs: two PCs in an upstairs office and a downstairs home theater? Is it possible to accomplish this without using an extension cord because apparently none are supposed to run through walls?
So I recently got stuck in the Austin storm, and it maybe wasn't as bad as it looked except we kept running out of phone and tablet charge to entertain ourselves while huddled under eight blankets and eating the paltry amount of fritos and bottled water that we rationed in our hotel until our rebooked flight and kept having to go to the car for hours to recharge the devices. When I got home I started looking into generators and solar chargers for my phone. I saw a solar generator pop up as I was looking for solar phone chargers and a thought occurred to me, but combing reviews and posts, I haven't seen this exact use case and before I plow ahead with it, I wanted to make sure I'm not missing any pitfalls, and I need a solution for running power. I live in a sunny place and have a roof facing the correct direction, but I don't want to pay the multiple tens of thousands it would cost me to go solar because of the size of my house. My electric bill is low anyway: only about $75/month for a big house (another reason solar doesn't make sense). However, my bill used to be only about $25 before I really expanded my smart home devices (can't fix that with solar unless I wire it to the box, I get that) and I expanded my PC and home theater setup, as well as my wife started working from home due to covid so we now have two PCs running morning until night. In other words, the biggest daily power hogs are the home theater power strip and the pc power strip. They use about 700w if running at the same time, but they usually don't run at the same time, so I think that the charge gained from the sun while running should theoretically be enough to keep them powered all day off grid most of the time in our area. One is upstairs one is downstairs. Both the upstairs and downstairs have wires running to them through walls for direct internet. My thought was to sort of do a janky solar setup this way: buy a Bluetti 2000wh generator, put it in the attic, mount some smaller 120 solar panels to the roof from Amazon, keeping them out of sight from the exterior (important to my wife) by running the cord straight down from the roof into the attic, and maybe use the existing wall holes for internet to run electricity (how do I do this too because apparently there's no extension cord that can run through walls?) from the unit to the home theater downstairs and the pc setup upstairs, thus eliminating the two biggest power hogs. My break even for this just on raw energy use is many years, but I feel that it would be worth it just to have the generator upstairs running on solar so that if we needed it for an emergency, we could just unplug the home theater and PCs from it and repurpose it immediately for, say, the refrigerator. Is there a way to make this work?
https://redd.it/m0h1f7
@r_preppers