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lizby
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Joined: 17/05/2016
Location: United States
Posts: 3367

Posted: 03:31pm 16 Jul 2025

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Aside from pure play with the PicoMite, etc., my focus has been on what I might be able to run in case of a grid power outage with my 10kWh of LiFePO4 batteries--8 100Ah 12V batteries, plus a 50Ah one. I have 2 of the batteries wired as 24V 100Ah and 4 as 24V 200Ah. I may rewire the 4 as 48V 100Ah.

So my question is, what is my usage if I want to be able to run fridge, boiler, freezer, water pump (and various 12V/24V lights and fans which will have nominal current draw)?

I haven't had a current monitor on the fridge (hard to get to the plug), but have had on boiler, freezer, and water pump. My current monitors are Sonoff Pow R2 16A switch/current sensors flashed with Tasmoto firmware and reporting to my data accumulator devices. Here is the graph using the program above for October, 2023:

Boiler usage obviously changes with winter temperature, but well pump and freezer usage are fairly consistent. And we are not in the house in the wintertime, so end-of-October boiler usage is probably good. So these three are generally going to use between 1 and 2 kilowatts per day.

I wanted to know the total daily running time for each appliance, so I asked Gemini to produce a python program to run on a pi to generate an html file. Successful the first time:

OK. Well pump generally has a daily run time of less than an hour. Boiler has a maximum of over 2 hours. Freezer has a lot more--mostly between 3 and 5 hours a day. But how much power do they use per cycle? I asked Gemini to produce a distribution chart cycle times over the course of an entire year (2023). That ran the first time, but it turned out that most freezer cycles ran for longer than the range I had anticipated, so I asked for an extended range for it.

For the well pump, the vast majority of times it runs between 50 and 99 seconds:

For the boiler, there are a lot of cycles between 100 and 120 seconds, and then some dozens in the range from 400 to 600 seconds.

And the freezer: 396 cycles under 20 minutes, but over 1,000 between 20 and 45.

The other important factor that can be derived from my data set is average power for each cycle (exclusive of the inrush current). I asked it to chart that for any specified day by taking the milliwatt hours of each cycle, multiplying it by 60, and dividing it by the duration of the cycle. This gives the wattage at which it is running to have used the watt-hours it reports.

Here it is for the boiler on October 31, 2023 (the day of most usage for that month); maximum of a little over 180 watts:

And the freezer, with maximum of 111 watts:

And then, the hard lift--short duration, but power hungry--the water pump, using between 800 and 900 watts:

So my conclusion: with the batteries I have, I may be able in a power outage to get a few days of running with this $499 Canadian BLUETTI AC70 Generator Power Station which can be charged from solar, batteries, and grid. I intend to test this. The hard task will be the water pump inrush current. Supposedly the Bluetti can go up to 2kW for short periods (1kW continuous). I have designed an electrical manifold which can activate one appliance at a time (using Tasmotized Sonoff Pow R3 switch/current sensors). The freezer (in the basement) would be ok only running at night.

I have never experienced a power outage of more than 10 hours, though my wife once went through one which lasted nearly a week.

The process: for the first three programs, Gemini produced code that ran and gave the wished-for results except for one syntax error. Then it lost its mind and regressed to the flags program on the PicoMite and the LINE and BOX commands, producing programs I hadn't asked for. It took me maybe 6 iterations and 20 minutes to get it back on track.

Overall, it released valuable information from my data set which confirms to my satisfaction that I have a testable path forward for powering needed appliances during a grid outage.

PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed

lizby
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Joined: 17/05/2016
Location: United States
Posts: 3367

Posted: 12:06am 17 Jul 2025

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Looks like this will be a better option for me:

https://www.amazon.ca/BLUETTI-Elite-100-V2-Generator/dp/B0F42TNLVH

4 1800W sockets with 3600W surge and ability to charge from grid, solar, and batteries.

PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed

lizby
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Joined: 17/05/2016
Location: United States
Posts: 3367

Posted: 12:04pm 18 Jul 2025

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If it works, "ChatGPT Agent ... drops the marginal cost of a knowledge-worker task to little more than the price of electricity and an API call."

Exponential View

PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed

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