Been contemplating powering my outdoor lighting again. Starting to think about getting one of those Bluetti or Ecoflow portable power stations. Or even making my own and getting an inverter and a lifepo4 deep cycle battery. I would also need a charger for it I guess, I'm not sure I would save any money either. It's also a lot more than I wanted to spend on this. Why does everything have to be expensive!

[–] Dave 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

So much for wanting a solution that wasn't so expensive! It does sound like a fun project, though. For you, not for me, I'd be worried about electrocuting myself 😆

[–] eagleeyedtiger 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Haha yeah I haven't committed to anything yet. It's just the cheaper options I'm not 100% sure are going to work correctly and if I that happens I'm going to have to spend even more to fix it anyway!

But I've thought about making a portable solar charging station for a long time to learn a bit of how it all works. I've found there is actually a lot of information online for setting up solar and batteries in the RV/camping and vanlife communities, although it's definitely overkill to just power some lights 😂

I'm not as nervous around batteries as I am around messing with 240V. I know it's all dangerous though, I'll do a lot of reading first before I do anything I'm not sure about. Got to make life a little exciting somehow 😁

[–] Dave 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I assumed it was 240v, since you have normal plugs for plugging in to, right? I guess with lights you can set it up specifically for the lights and get away with a lot lower voltage.

[–] eagleeyedtiger 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

The inverter will be for converting 12v to 240v. I think it's just simply wiring it to the 12v lithium battery, then plug in lights to inverter. I can't find a simple answer on if it's possible to convert the lights to use DC and it seems way more difficult, even though I lose some efficiency from using an inverter. If I ever add more I'd go the route of looking for DC powered lighting.

Inverter will be handy though as I could use the battery in a power outage to power other things as well.

[–] Dave 2 points 6 months ago

It will be interesting to hear what you decide to go with and how it works out. Good luck!