GoBe™ Power Hub Battery and Solar Briefcase

[KF7EEC]

Anyone tried or know much about the GoBe Battery/Solar Briefcase? BePrepared.com has it onsale for $130. Sounds interesting.


http://beprepared.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_CM%20P600_A_name_E_GoBe%20Power %20Hub%20Battery%20&%20Solar%20Briefcase_A_quick_order_E_true

[Pitcher]

Yes I recently purchased one. I spent part of today plaing with it. It seems to bwe be well worth the money.

[Pitcher]

Sorry about the poor typing I do know how to read and write.

[Baconator]

I'm getting one for Christmas (I didn't peek. It was the only thing on my list). I'll try it out and let you know what I think.

[kts532]

I have one and works very well for small things. Emergancy Essentials price is better than I could find anywhere. It takes awhile to charge with solar but is a very nice setup.

[Baconator]

Seems best for charging things that already have internal batteries or small appliances using less than 80 watts. (inverter max). Looks like it took about 6 hours from out-of-the-box to full charge using the solar panels. Haven't let it run down completely (and no desire to do so). Good for my applications (small LCD TV, portable DVD player, radio, etc)

[mgriffith]

These sort of systems are good for very small charging applications, like your cell phone or DVD player, etc. It's what I would call a little expensive, given that you could buy a 15 watt solar panel and an small 12 volt battery and get better capability for less money. Of course this item comes in a new container and a nifty foldable panel.

Many people like the thought of solar until they start to really look into it and discover how really expensive it gets for so little power. I'm just now looking into some large batteries like the Rolls-Surrette which are one of the top-of-the-line batteries for solar power. Their current 12 volt model weight over 250 pounds and costs over $1,100.00. That's a lot of money for one battery, but it is designed for a very large number of cycles, and is said to last for 15 years, and is warrantied for 10 years.

A good solar power system would need at least a couple of these, maybe more depending on the requirements. And then, even with a 150 watt solar panel, it would take around 40 hours of sunlight to charge one, so that would be several days of charging. If you wanted to power your house on these, you would need a lot of panels and a lot of batteries (and a lot of money).

For emergency power, you might want to think about getting a few solar panels, some decent batteries and a good inverter. That way if the power goes out for any long period of time, you can have a small light or two for a few hours at night, play some music, have a fan, recharge some small batteries or appliances, etc, and still be able to restore the power used from the batteries the next day (if there is enough sunlight).

Mark

[Baconator]

I've looked at those, too. I'd like a bigger system for home and it's still on my list, but 'every needful thing' is a long list. Personally, at this point I was willing to sacrifice capacity for portability.

[mgriffith]

I've looked at those, too. I'd like a bigger system for home and it's still on my list, but 'every needful thing' is a long list. Personally, at this point I was willing to sacrifice capacity for portability.

You and I are thinking the same. I got the smaller house system now because I thought it was a more important investment. The portable solution is still on my list, so we are just thinking in reverse. Now which one of us is the backwards one is the real question? :001_tt2: :l0 (20):

Mark

[Baconator]

Now which one of us is the backwards one is the real question?

Yeah, that would be me. For example, I have a bunch of .22 ammo but I have no .22 caliber firearms.....yet.

[LEVE]

The better half's buying a Prius tomorrow... and hopefully in a week I'll have the modifications done to it in order power some circuits of the house... Gotta love a mulit-purpose vehicle!

Now I just gotta figure out a way to make alcohol and modify the Prius to run on it without spending a fortune on kits.

[mgriffith]

The better half's buying a Prius tomorrow... and hopefully in a week I'll have the modifications done to it in order power some circuits of the house... Gotta love a mulit-purpose vehicle!

Now I just gotta figure out a way to make alcohol and modify the Prius to run on it without spending a fortune on kits.

You're going to power parts of your house off the Prius' batteries? Interesting. I'd like to see how that is done. And then recharge them from the car motor?

Mark

[LEVE]

You're going to power parts of your house off the Prius' batteries? Interesting. I'd like to see how that is done. And then recharge them from the car motor?

Here's a good chart to start the process:

http://www.priups.com/images/engy-mon-sml.jpg (http://www.priups.com/riddle/answer-1.htm)

Here's one plan that will work for a 2nd generation Prius:

http://home.hiwaay.net/~bzwilson/prius/priups_00.jpg (http://home.hiwaay.net/~bzwilson/prius/priups.html)