The Sun

Surely, I can affordably rig up some solar input to safely charge a marine deep-cycle 12V battery or two...?  Y'all have ideers? Maybe I'll ask at Habitat for Humanity.

The present setup will yield about 24 hours of APAP*-only juice, so that'd be three normal days. But having the phone charger connected to the inverter one night made me 2.5 hrs. short of Night #3, so I just bring it back to town every other day, basically.

However, inverting the 12VDC to 120VAC uses up more than half the ampere-hours that the battery has to offer. If I had a box that would step down 24VDC (two batteries in series) to 5VDC, and also have a direct 24VDC tap to power the APAP (that's what it takes), then I'd get about five days, I estimate.

With a solar charger of sufficient size, I'm guessing I could keep the APA and phone going indefinitely, with no need for the grid for that stuff.

However, I'm doing very well on the new machine. Here's some of the patient-friendly data:

BigBuck suggested some parts at Amazon for me to rig such a setup together.


*APAP = Automatic Positive Air Pressure; a Continuous PAP device that auto-sets its pressure within a prescribed range. It's a tiny fan with a sealed blower connected to a CPU.
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