[Elecraft] LED bulbs

[Dave Olean]

Hi Gerald
That battery bank must weigh a lot!  Mine is probably 340 lbs. I'll bet a 900 amp bank is over 600 lbs.  Well, I wanted 12 volts so I could run all the hamster type 12 volt gear off the batteries. (K3, P3, etc)  My charge controller will do 12, 24 or 48 volts if I tell it to.  I also have 24 volts available at the shack for relays and whatever else might show up on 24 VDC, but I just have two 12 volt systems that I bridge together. My eventual plan is to have a 48 volt battery buss and run some homebrew LDMOS or straight FET amplifiers directly off the 48 volts. My hamshack is quite extensive with all sorts of gear for all the VHF bands, and I am working on solid state amps for most of the bands. Right now I have 1200 watts on 50, 1000 watts on 222 MHz, 600 watts on 144, 300 watts on 432, and 175 watts on 1296. The bands above 1.2 GHz are all solid state too. My 2.3 GHz amp is a 500 watt output beast that runs on 24 VDC. I am scared to hook it up!
    I have a few years under my belt on the battery bank. So far it is working great, but I am careful to not discharge it down too much. Deep discharges kill batteries. The worst it ever got was to 72% of full charge. I also re charge the battery bank quickly. I never leave it uncharged ever. I use a Bogart Engineering battery monitor to evaluate battery status.   With the 12 vs 24 volts, are you referring to the lifetime of the batteries, or the amount of discharge power you can extract from the system? 
    I am saving my pennies to get a 48 volt solar buss running here. I have had such great results with the 12 volt system and want to expand it to run more bands in the future. Runnings amps directly off those batteries will be quite efficient too. The whole reason for the solar power is that my shack is quite remote from my house with no AC  power hookup there. I need to make my own juice.

Dave K1WHS
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Gerald Manthey 
  To: Dave Olean 
  Cc: Marc Veeneman ; Wayne Burdick ; Elecraft List 
  Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2015 10:54 PM
  Subject: Re: [Elecraft] LED bulbs


  Dave
  I have a question for you. 
  I too run off of solar when I am in my RV. I have a 900 amp hour battery bank. Using a 12v pure sine wave inverter. I took the battery bank and divided it to a 450 amp hour 24 volt system and it seems to last longer. Have you concidered this or even going to a 48 volt system? 
  Just curious.  
  Thanks
  Gerald. 


  On May 12, 2015 1:44 PM, "Dave Olean" <k1whs at metrocast.net> wrote:

    I am using my KPA500 while running on batteries. Sounds weird but true. The KPA500 is quite efficient although it is always drawing some current even when turned off. I can see that slight drain on my DC ammeters. In receive, there is little current drain. Of course, when I start sending CW I see the ammeter go up to about 70 amps. (Not a peak reading ammeter either!). My battery bank is a pair of 275 AH solar AGM type 12 volt batteries. The charging circuit is a couple of 220 watt solar panels. I use a pure sine wave inverter that is pretty noiseless.  (Xantrex Pro Sine 1800 W) During the day when the Sun is out, the batteries charge up during the receive cycle, so I don't deplete the batteries at all. At night I can go for many hours and have never gotten close to even a 50% discharge. In short, the K3/KPA500 combo is very efficient. I could not do that with my big tube amps! The filaments and blowers would kill the batteries before I even got the HV turned on!

    Dave K1WHS

    ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marc Veeneman" <mhvnmn at gmail.com>
    To: "Wayne Burdick" <n6kr at elecraft.com>
    Cc: "Elecraft List" <elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
    Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2015 3:25 PM
    Subject: Re: [Elecraft] LED bulbs



      Not everyone can turn a QRP LED discussion into a KPA500 pitch with power plants as the bridge.
      -- 
      Marc


        On May 12, 2015, at 10:33 AM, Wayne Burdick <n6kr at elecraft.com> wrote:

        LED bulbs are optical QRP, so not O.T. :)

         If everyone swapped in LEDs over the next few years, we'd probably eliminate the need for any new power plants.

        Even if we all started using KPA500s.

        73,
        Wayne
        N6KR



          On May 12, 2015, at 6:18 AM, Marc Veeneman <mhvnmn at gmail.com> wrote:
          I don't think I've saved much money, though.  The reduced electrical demand won't justify the high cost of the modern day wonder -- LED lighting.
          -- 
          Marc W8SDG

          _

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