Topband: OFF-Topic Now: Battery/Generator Shack Power for TopBand Systems

[Steve Harrison]

On 8/12/2024 10:54 AM, Jim Brown wrote:
> That's the kit. AG6EE, who's adapted many of George's ideas to the
> activation of rare grids on 6M, and even for moonbounce, turned me on
> to the EG4 integrated line of batteries and inverters. I settled on a
> single 6KV inverter, with six 100Ah 54V LiFePO4 batteries.
That's the same supplier of my own system of two, the larger of which
comprises two synced 5.7 kVA all-in-ones with two 48V 100 A/hr batteries
to obtain 240 VAC. I was originally guided to the EG-4s by my high
school best buddy KF7LK (whose father was K6SVL, whom a few of you may
remember as a notable HF SSB DX contester of long ago). Mine will be
recharged through 6 kW of solar panels when completed. I'll probably
have to add more afterward now that I've found how precarious and
precious bright sunlight is, even out here in the desert with no
vegetation to obscure solar panels.
> Signature Solar is a distributor, and I've been happy with them.
So have I. But man, they sure send out a LOT of spam e-mail ads  8-/
> I used the system once when contesting, and found it relatively quiet
> -- noted one very strong modulated carrier somewhere in 40M, maybe
> around 7090 kHz.
My smaller, interim system has 2 kW of panels recharging 630 A/hr 13.8V
LiFePO4 batteries through a pair of 50A Victron controller-chargers.
This is capable of powering my Alpha 8410 for about 6 - 9 hours (i.e.:
overnight) when kept down to about 1 kW output. I haven't had to yet
(mainly because I havent yet engaged in any 48-hour contests), but can
swap over to the Duramax XP7500DX if the batteries get too low.
> We don't have any A/C here
I have a 8000 BTU window AC, barely adequate to keep the shack about 10
- 12 degrees cooler than ambient. This depletes the present battery
system too much, even in the summer sunlight, to keep running at sundown.
> Because the starting current of the battery chargers I've found give
> generators a hard time, I must run the EU2200i significantly below its
> rated loading, so it can't keep up. I've recently bought a larger
> dual-fuel gen from Costco. It's not yet seen service.

I use a Duramax XP7500DX dual-fuel to run the generator and Alpha after
dark when daytime sunlight isn't sufficient to fully-recharge the
batteries. One huge drawback is the dang engine, being an
American-design 4-stroke, is physically NOISY. Another is that because
of the number of hours I've had to run it, oil changes have to be
performed nearly weekly. That gets old REAL fast because they didn't
properly design the drain plug in the crankcase to allow mess-free oil
drain. I've considered filing a class action lawsuit over that, but
what'd be the point... it won't fix the lousy design.

Steve, K0XP