How long can you communicate in a post grid world?
A critical capability
We live in dangerous times, whether we like it or not. The new multi-polar world we are entering will be rife with conflict and our adversaries have a demonstrated interest in civil destabilization as evidenced by programs we know of such as the Chinese “Volt Typhoon” project and Russian HEMP testing, and those are just efforts that are known publicly. If and when a conflict erupts we can expect our civil infrastructure to be targeted, either by malware from afar or the battalions of military aged adversaries that our treasonous federal government is flooding across the southern border. The hour is late to prepare, but there is still time.
I have been augmenting my ability to operate in the field with solar for some time and have been successful given my realistic expectations. But even a limited home capability is a different task altogether. The power requirements are much higher, and so is the cost! And that’s just for the home radio station! Until recently the largest battery I had was a 36 AH lead acid marine battery and while I could operate however long that lasted, once the 36 AH were gone (or whatever charge it actually had when called for) I would have to go portable or shut down and put the battery outside with a solar panel.
My goal for a permanent home system was to maximize simplicity, mirroring the setup of a portable op but with larger more powerful components. The operational goal was to be able to operate at 50% power with the main station (Icom 7300) as I normally do when home, and monitor continually using low power equipment such as the G90 or TX-500 when required.
Components are:
Bioenno charge controller (not linked as I don’t recommend)
Plus some assorted cables, some of which I had already or made, and some additional red black DC wire to get the electrons from the solar panel into the house.
With the solar panel on the roof and temporarily attached to an old mast system that I no longer use to keep it from moving in the wind (and my 150’ window line fed doublet @ 50’ in the background) I set everything up indoors.
This set up worked phenomenally well for the first week. I operated for approximately 60 or so hours during that time (basically whenever I was home and awake, plus monitoring to receive the AIB on Monday), and never saw the battery drop lower than 92%. However, when we got a little rare PNW sun and the amps rose past 2.5 from the panel I noticed that I was getting S5 level noise on the radio, which dropped back down to S1 when I unplugged the Bioenno charge controller. Since I have had good luck with the 150 watt very simplistic Powerwerx charge controllers in the past, I gave their larger 300 watt rated version a try. While there was still a little interference on the bands while running in full sun, it appeared much more isolated and avoidable.
Even though we are still locked in the PNW winter gloom at this point of the year the goals appear to have been met. The system is sufficient to power my normal operations and then some at QRO power. Switching over to the xeigu g90 with its low power consumption on receive gives me truly persistent presence capability with no more than 10% battery discharge overnight which is easily made up even while operating on a cloudy day.
Next steps include incorporating a power inverter into this setup so that AC equipment such as laptops can also be recharged from this infrastructure. Total cost of this project given my starting point was about $700, but the ability to communicate indefinitely without the grid makes it money well spent.