Solar power is hacking

So recently i bought a used lithium battery from a flea market, and for the past few years ive been slowly collecting things to build a small solar setup.
The battery i got at the flea market is some motorcycle branded very Chinese battery, that sounds like theres is a loose piece of metal inside. I only really noticed the piece of metal AFTER i bought it from the guy.
But it was enough for my to test my solar setup, i had 3 solar chargers and made sure each one worked. I got a weird metal case large one that does 2 battery interdependently, and is 30amps
and a small renogy 10a.

I decided to go with the renogy for my "go battery", because the folding solar panel i got the previous year was only 65watts but i really get 30watts reliably which is well under the 10amp threshold. Ever since i went to Canada on a remote island in the middle of knowwhere, i bought a "power station" it was a $100 knockoff anker power station. It basically is in the category of WELL ITS TECHNICALLY A POWER STATION. It has a smaller capacity and at best can charge a laptop, or run a QRP radio at 5watts.
And ever since the Canada trip the battery has been really odd, it reads 0% but has power, and is merely a graphical bug as it still charges and holds the capacity.

This outlined something to me, yeah a power station is very convenient. But if the screen or solar charging circuit takes a crap. It instantly e-waste for 99% of people!

So those astute know i own a ft891, which takes JUST a few watts to run HAR HAR.
and i plan when i go back to Canada to bring the 891. Power is quite the task out in the middle of nowhere, especially the 891 taking around 140watts on transmitting 100watts, if i lower ssb to 50watts i still get about the same signal reports give or take as a s1.
And i feel running 50watts where there is no electrical noise will make for some good contacts!

So this week a bought a Eco-worthy Bluetooth battery thingy, and chose this one because. I can monitor the charge and input via a mobile app. I am not really one to buy things with Companion apps, but i gotta give the app some credit. You dont need an account and on graphene i restricted the app to not have network access. So all it can do is use Bluetooth which is only for monitoring the battery.

I have a really neat idea, that i do not know how well in practice it is going to work.
But i want to design a "hat" for the battery chassis and have everything a "power station" has.

So i can have usb PD to charge my phone and laptop, and Anderson poles for my radio!
And i will not be limited to 15v 3amps like the "power station" i bought.
20amps should do it!

So today i hooked up the solar panel and the charge controller and i got 40% of the battery charged in about 4-6 hours, granted it was 30watts most times and had lots of clouds which would slow down the charging process.

I then hooked up some Anderson poles and warmed up the 891!
made 3 contacts, farist being flordia, worst i got was 5-7 on 50watt transmit power.
Which is still super good, at peak on SSB i would draw 10 amps at 113 watts but only for less than a second or two, then it would level out at about 7-amps and 60-80watts.
I really wanted to see how far i can push the battery, because SSB modulates and is actually just half of a AM signal.

So i had to dust of the keyer, and try CW! I mostly just keyed out my callsign and TESTING. And am nowhere good enough to actually talk to somebody on CW. But the main reason i tried CW was to see how much power it takes. I started at 100watts, and got 13-15amps when keying out my call sign and very close to 200watts power draw, and this is the first time i realized my radio has fans in it. Evidently CW makes your radio a little toasty :|.

Im now recharging the battery using the solar panels currently and through charging my phone from 20% to 100% and playing with my radio for about 2 hours i got it to 80% on the battery. I did not have the solar panel hooked up when playing radio because i was in the shack and the window has poor solar panel conditions. So odds are sometime soon i will be doing a POTA, and we can see if the battery can keep up!

Its just so amazing to me, that you can power stuff off the sun. For a long time solar panels have been going down in price. I dont think currently i would like having my house 100% running off of solar, because winter would SUUUUUUUCK. Because we rarely get not cloudy days, so i see why people have a semi backup of solar.

And a while ago i remember watching a YouTube Video that described solar compared to gasoline in the best way possible.

Solar at its current state is not a 100% replacement for gasoline, but its buying the somewhat pricey equipment and using it for 10 years. When people spread the common slander, "gasoline is cheaper, or out grid cant support all electric" but in reality its getting closer to replacing gasoline. The gasoline is cheaper myth, it is a Faust you buy gasoline by the gallon and then burn it 1:1 usage. You buy a solar panel, you get closer to a 1:100 usage you spend alot more but reap the benefits and in the long term it pays for its self.

I originally started to look at battery's when a local ham was talking on the local repeater during ARES saying he lost power, and had to use a HT because he didnt have a battery setup.
And this really got me thinking, i should get a battery so if such a thing were to happen to me, i can have a semi self reliant self sustaining power source.

Im very happy with my purchases!
and i plan to release the hat file once i feel it something well enough built.