25 POOR MAN’S Off-Grid Power Tricks That Make $3,000 Portable Power Stations Look Like a Scam

Comments · 149

• NI

  @NickH-u5o · 3 weeks ago

  A trick I learned from a long-haul sailor. A guy who would spend months off shore. <br>Wide mouth thermos bottles: In the morning, take two. Fill one with meat &amp; veggies. One half full of rice. Fill with boiling water and close em up. By evening, after cooking themselves all day. dinner was already cooked and ready to eat!

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• KI

  @Kingstonkelley2030 · 3 weeks ago

  One thing i have to say is that when you buy a inverter you need to buy a pure sine wave inverter this will protect your devices because the frequency is cleaner when inverting the power from 12v-120v

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• RA

  @randyrussell6246 · 3 weeks ago

  I built my first power station station 15 years ago and I have changed it up several times since.....some have been small with few components and others larger and strapped to a hand truck of Dollys ... I have enough now for several set ups &nbsp;, the lightest one is powered with a lawn mower &nbsp;battery and is a real workhorse ! &nbsp;I have used many of these in the video since the 70s.....black barrels and pipes and hand or foot pedal power In our1974 science class &nbsp;.....the first thing we did was build our batteries to power our upcoming projects throughout the scho9l year !

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• AN

  @AnarSchism. · 3 weeks ago

  build a man a fire, he is warm for one night. IF YOU SET HIM ON FIRE HE IS WARM FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE

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• OU

  @OutsideTheTargetDemographic · 3 weeks ago

  The three times we have lost power for days, luckily, happened during the winter. Emtpy the fridge contents into bins, press them into the snow on the deck/yard. Nothing lost.

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• GE

  @geraldallenmatney3252 · 2 weeks ago

  Right now I&apos;m taking my old 48v 3 phase ebike motor and trying to make a wind generator, I already have 2 1100wh 12v truck batteries I&apos;m looking to attach 4 to 6 more to run a 24 or 36v bank. I already have a roll of LED strip lights and I completely forgot about I think tomorrow I&apos;m going to research the length and power consumption of the light strip that I can make .

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• LI

  @LisaHolland-sf2px · 3 weeks ago

  Correction, tea light candles for a clay heater only last 4 hours. I use this as a space heater by the bed before sleep

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• 6Y

  @6YJI9 · 3 weeks ago

  Before I took my house and went off grid, when I was still 100% reliant on the local grid power, what I did for my fridge and food plan-wise since I live in the south and simply taking my food outside to bury it in the snow isn&apos;t really a thing down here, was to reserve some space in my freezer for 1 to 2 1-gallon Crystal Geyser bottles of water and have them get frozen into solid bricks. So if/when my power goes out, I could leave one of those bottles in the freezer, and put the other at the top shelf of the fridge. You want them placed as high as possible, as heat naturally rises especially since the fridge won&apos;t produce any ventilation, so as the heat rises, you want it to meet the ice block, ice absorbs the heat and that cool-er air lowers back down to the bottom providing a natural convection.<br><br>For better or worse, this thermal battery in and for the freezer (mostly just kept one, as I typically didn&apos;t really have/keep lots of stuff in the fridge worth the trouble of saving) also seemed to help out the compressor a lot by stabilizing the temperature especially on the times when I come back from grocery shopping since I have one of those slightly smaller sized fridges (I bought the kind commonly used in apartment units) and by skyrocketing the temperature from all the new groceries added because there&apos;s only so much thermal mass in the freezer given the space constraints vs having the thermal battery be able to absorb some of that heat and provide a tremendous amount of thermal mass in a small volume, and then it could later be recharged (cooled back down to the baseline freezer temp) once the compressor has caught up with the workload of bringing the temp down of all the groceries first.<br><br>Also, get creative with managing when the compressor kicks on/off by adjusting the temp just like you would with the HVAC and thermostat. So if for instance you have a power outage in your region like in CA with PG&amp;E, but know that they will be conducting rolling blackouts, set the fridge to max cold so for that entire time you do have power, the compressor is going to be going until it needs a break, and then it will continue going. But the lower temp will help keep/preserve your food for a bit longer.<br><br>If you have and end up using a generator, even if it&apos;s an inverter generator, don&apos;t let it run practically on idle. Stack up and schedule all of your loads so that when you turn on the generator, it&apos;ll power up everything (charge up all of your power stations, power bricks, phones, batteries, fridge set on max cool) literally have everything you could think of and need hooked up to the generator, so instead of having the generator needing to run for 4-6, or 8 hours, you could have it run for much shorter, like maybe 2 hours and saving yourself money in fuel. Look up what your generator&apos;s <b>running watts</b> are, and it&apos;s *starting watts*, what you want to pay attention to is the <i>running watts</i> and aim for about 50-60% load on the generator as a very basic rule of thumb. So if you got an electric blanket, throw that thing on your bed, and let it pre-warm up your bed, etc. Like I said, make a list writing down everything you could think of that you could power and would be beneficial, then run the numbers to see how that would pan out load-wise and if the generator could support it, and then from there if say you have more things that you want to power than the generator can power at the same time, make a game plan with a schedule on what higher priority loads you&apos;ll charge/power on first, then as those loads clear up, what will you connect next to the generator, and so on. This is the kind of thing that you could also do and prep for now, long before a disaster happens, and just file it under your SOP on power outages, so all of the thinking, brainpower, time, energy, etc would&apos;ve already been pre-emptively alleviated by you just having to follow/go down the SOP checklist rather than trying to figure this stuff out and scramble around the house with the flashlight looking for things to charge up/power (cue the irony).

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• JO

  @johnzawicki5032 · 2 weeks ago

  I built a magnet motor that produces usable torque and rpm and can easily drive a generator. It has minimal moving parts and can be made in any size \ hp needed.

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• TH

  @theteamgroundworksoriginal2332 · 2 weeks ago

  Boil egg for 1 minute in sufficient water to hold the heat, then leave covered in the hot water for 20 more minutes. The heating curve cooks the eggs just right.

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• BA

  @BackroadKnowHow · 11 days ago

  ❤Thank you!❤Big blessings ❤

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• AL

  @alannahssolutions2723 · 2 weeks ago

  This is one of the best prepping videos I have heard because it gives options and more than a few practical and doable solutions that have not been talked about in any of the other numerous videos that I have watched. ❤❤❤ thank you thank you thank you. I’m going to be implementing more than one of them. 👏👏👏