Prepper Recon

Backup Power-Prepping on a Budget

Hurricane season is here and for preppers on the east coast, it is a time to review our preps. Once you have your beans, bullets and band-aids covered, you can think about back up power. We are all subject to losing power in an electrical storm, but here on the east coast, we could go for weeks without power.

The most obvious solution to having backup power is a generator. The downside to generators is their size. If you are working with limited storage space, it may be difficult to find storage for that big machine. Plus, you can’t bring it in the house once you have gas in it.

An easy alternative to a generator is an inverter. An inverter can be hooked up to run off of your car battery while you run the car engine. I just bought a Bestek inverter from amazon for $65. It produces 1000 watts which is enough to run my refrigerator plus a few other small devices. By keeping a full tank of gas and 8 extra gallons in my shed, I can keep the fridge cool for several days. To keep the fridge cold, you only have to run the power for a couple hours a day.

Another great advantage to having an inverter is that you can also purchase an extra deep cycle battery to run for the first few hours of the power outage. That will buy you a few more hours of power before you have to hook the  inverter up to your car.

Once you get the deep cycle battery, you are halfway to having a solar power system. A couple of good solar panels and a charge controller will now give you renewable energy in the case of a long term outage from terrorism or other unforeseen factors. The solar panels connect to the charging regulator which charges your deep cycle battery. You can then connect the same inverter that you were using on the car battery to the deep cycle battery, which is being charged from the solar panels. There is nothing difficult to it. The diagram below will give you a simple visual of how they connect to each other.

If you purchase a complete solar power system, you may qualify for the solar tax credit which will allow you to deduct up to 30% of the cost of your system from your total tax liability. $65 is a low price to pay to insure your food in your fridge and it is the foundation to a solar power system that you can piece together as you go.

Happy Prepping!