After I have been using a Jackery Explorer 290 solar generator with a pure sine wave inverter to power my 2024 Halloween costume that consists of using a 40W T9 circline fluorescent lamp as a necklace that runs off a single lamp F40T12 preheat fluorescent ballast along with using it to run a few low wattage HID lamps such as 100W H38 mercury vapor lamps, 75W H43 mercury vapor lamps, and 35W S76 high pressure sodium lamps; I am beginning to wonder if anybody else has ever tried using portable solar generators to power any of their lighting collection off grid before. If so, what are your experiences of running your lighting collection off grid using solar generators?

Here are some examples of solar generators currently on the market:

Anker C300X solar power station:

https://www.anker.com/products/a17221z1?variant=44204711280790

Jackery Explorer 300 Plus:

https://www.jackery.com/products/jackery-explorer-300-plus-portable-power-station?srsltid=AfmBOopliuIDtraOHG1hFoNKxH8ZclBesRt5PiaL-L2ZZuXzDedUf6JI

Used circa 1 square meter foldable solar mat with some reasonably modern cells to charge small LiPo batteries in the field. Generally, you get useful power only in a full sun. Totally useless in overcast unfortunately.

Cost wise, it's ineffective if you don't have varying cost of energy and winter power may cost €0,50 per kWh.

In gloomy winter weather, you need a significant area of panels to get usable power. They do work in gloomy weather, but you can only expect 10-20% of their nominal output. So if you're using the typical one panel mobile setup, you might be able to save up enough power to run the 35w lamp for a night, but nothing more than that.

Go say hi to your neighbors with PV setups and ask about their experience in winter with their PV setups. Solar irradiance levels vary wildly between geographic areas. If you're in the Netherlands you won't be seeing the sun most autumn or winter days, and with rain, your yield will drop dramatically.

In other places where winters mean bright blue skies and especially if you're farther towards the equator, you'll have a perfectly usable yield.

Finally, the grey china import stuff from aliexpress/amazon always has severely inflated ratings. Do not trust them. Take time to figure out the experiences of other people.

In many cases, the portable power stations that come with so-called “solar generators” typically run without being connected directly to the solar panels. The solar panels mostly act as a charger for the battery that is located inside. These portable power stations can also be charged using AC mains or by using a car charger.

From my experience of using these portable power stations, I find that they are a great solution for running AC powered lighting including magnetically ballasted fluorescent and HID lighting off grid as long as the power station can handle the inrush current of the ballast during lamp startup.

But these things (include gasoline generators) are generally intended for just an intermittent use, as a temporary or emergency solution, not a long term power system, they are not designed to operate continuously for long period of time. In a "permanent" use (like a remote off grid building power system) they wear off pretty quickly (about a year or so), their designed (rated) lifetime is in 10k hours ballpark (or even below; running/under load).

For some permanent installation (like a completely off-grid system; where the grid connection would be unfeasible or even more expensive) the rated life uses to be in the 100k+ hours (to last at least 10 years or so), but those tend to be a bit more expensive. But also a lot more reliable.

A good application that I dan see with these portable power stations is that they could be useful for powering mercury vapor light traps that entomologists use for insect collection or portable power stations might also be able to find use in powering foreign lighting equipment that specifically requires a different frequency than the user’s mains power grid is set to, but would involve the importation of a portable power station intended for use in a country where the foreign piece of lighting equipment is normally sold in. For example, a US collector might be able to import a UK market portable power station if they want to run a UK market fluorescent or HID fixture at the proper frequency although import costs would be rather high.

Another good use that I can find for these portable power stations is to use high lumen lighting in off grid applications like camping assuming you can build a custom fixture setup such as a high pressure sodium, metal halide, or mercury vapor floor lamp in order to provide adequate illumination when doing a number of nighttime activities such as reading or setting up the campsite in general. The small power stations like the Anker C300X or Jackery Explorer 290 also seem to be good for using low wattage HID lamps that can be good for night hikes to help improve nighttime visibility. For night hiking applications, you will probably need to attack some form of strap to a low wattage omnidirectional HID fixture to make it easy to carry. So far, I have not tried making a homemade portable HID fixture that would be good for night hiking applications, but would try to come up with a reasonable solution someday.

For using these power stations, you often need much higher wattage power stations in order to run some HID fixtures due to the high inrush current associated with their startup.

My application was to charge small (4s 1300mAh) acrobatic multicopter batteries in the field. In the sun, panel generated circa 20W (close to Chinese manufacturer promise, specs were not inflated) so was able to recharge battery in less than a hour giving unlimited flying fun even away from stationary power. But as I said not in overcast.

There is also the alternative of charging some of them using wind turbines instead of solar panels, which can help charge them more efficiently in cloudy weather or during the night as long as there is sufficient wind speed.

I am partly off grid and I have a mod sine wave inverter that is switchable from 50 to 60Hz.   Only thing my inverter dont like is any HID with a Ignitor

So far, my pure sine wave portable power stations seem to handle pulse start metal halide and high pressure sodium fixtures pretty well.

I am partly off grid and I have a mod sine wave inverter that is switchable from 50 to 60Hz.   Only thing my inverter dont like is any HID with a Ignitor

What adverse behavior do you observe? I've ran HIDs off modified sine wave without issue.

Running electronically ballasted lamps off a mod sinewave inverter (read: mod squarewave) usually will be OK. Some cheapo old ballasts with passive PFC circuits at the input may behave bad.

One can expect multitude of problems doing this with classic magnetic ballasts.

- large capacitors at ballast input will overload inverter output, because of high current spikes on square wave edges. HX transformers primaries may overheat due to this.

- lamp RMS current will generally be unpredictable and may end up being seriously off spec.

- resonant circuits like CWA may behave totally funky

- mod sinewave waveform may promote long lamp current pauses, causing lamp cycling/not igniting properly.

- superimposed ignitors will not operate properly

Hello,

To be honest, it seems senseless to me to use a power generator to run HID lamps. If your hiking or doing similar outdoor activities I can't see any use to use a heavy battery with an "inefficient" lamp technology with a heavy ballast as well. There a simply mich cheaper and lighter and more practical LED solution. Especially as those need less power, which allows the battery to run longer and need less light/solar panels to be charged to get useful light of it.
Even tour Portable, this devices are bulky heavy, especially in conjunction with a magnetic ballast.

Regarding your thought of using them to light foreign ballasts with lamps, there is a much simpler and cheaper solution. Again you don't do that in some random trips in the desert... You can buy a powerful 12V or 24V With mode power supply and a pure sine wave inviter for much less money, then these portable power stations.

I agree that these solar generators only work good in summer. I personally have a 1kW unit in my garden that is fed by 2kW of solar modules. In summer i use the power for my greenhouse grow lights, ventilation and power tools I use in the garden. In winter in only get a solar input of about 60-80W and standard day (If there is no snow). That is only enough to run the diesel heater in the greenhouse.

Regarding the ballast and non sine wave ignitors. Ballast are made to be run on sine form voltage from the grid with an fixed frequency of for example 60Hz.

If you kook at a rectangular waveform at 60Hz you can describe at as a sum of cos and sin terms of multiples of 60Hz.  Therefrom you have now instead of a 120V 60Hz sine form voltage (the house grid) a voltage at 60Hz another at 120Hz another at 180Hz... See Fourrier series. 

However the impedance of an inductor are given by X_L=j2πfL and for a capacitor are X_c=1/(j2πfC)
furthermore the internal iron losses of a transformer go up approximately proportionally with f squared leading to the inductor running hotter and likely destroying it...

best regards,

Alex

 I have a mod sine wave Vector 1200 watt inverter with 2400 watt surge.   And a 3.6 KW lead acid battery bank.  I ran every thing normaly including a 5,000 BTU window unit fine.  I lost
 Lot few ignitors in my  cooper MH bucket light.  I got tired of replacing ignitors in them.  And times it would trip out my inverter for no good reasons.  Plunging my work shed into total darkness.  I have to go into my breaker panel and to shut down the inverter wait a few mins.  And turn it back on  to regain power.    The  inverter usually see about 300 to 700 watt load
Average.   

Sometimes, a pure sine wave portable power station might be useful for running certain types of HID lighting equipment if you worry about the unwieldy setup involving a separate power supply and inverter and want to run your lighting equipment on the go.

I think one good application for pure sine wave portable power stations would include the need for insect collection using mercury vapor lamps if you are an entomologist.