Solar Electricity for the Off Grid Log Cabin with Goal Zero Yeti Power Station

Description

#solar #offgrid #logcabin

Finally, I add solar electricity to the off grid log cabin so that I can power my filming and editing equipment at the cabin.

Thank you to Goal Zero for providing the complete portable solar electricity generating system, including 200 watts of solar panels, a portable power station with a lithium battery, low voltage lights and several portable charging and battery options for backcountry trips and camping. This is exciting for me as it means I don't need to leave the cabin as often since I can charge and power my equipment on site and I can look at options for getting permanent satellite based wifi at the cabin to replace the cellular service I'm using now.

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Links to gear used at the cabin:

Fjallraven Vidda Pro Pants - https://amzn.to/2rhEiMn

Tilley Endurables Airflo Hat - https://amzn.to/2Ia4xy1

Apeman Trail Camera - https://amzn.to/2HRZSNT

Mora Knife - http://amzn.to/2BOiv35

Agawa Canyon Boreal 21 Saw - http://amzn.to/2BPV6OF

Axe - http://www.torontoblacksmith.com/

Moka Pot - http://amzn.to/2DEomvO Canada http://amzn.to/2ndmtw6 USA

Virtus Knife- http://www.virtusknives.com/

Canon 6D - http://amzn.to/2EdaZjs

DJI Mavic Pro - http://amzn.to/2DHuJib

Solar LED light bulb 15W - http://amzn.to/2BQvSQ2

Copper Fairy lights - http://amzn.to/2BCmF0X

Solar String Lights - http://amzn.to/2DvgU2n

Lodge Dutch Oven - http://amzn.to/2kHuxDQ

Bragg’s Sprinkle - http://amzn.to/2EdouzK

#offgrid #logcabin #solarpower

Tags: Self Reliance,off grid,log cabin,homestead,diy,wilderness,forest,cabin,tiny home,My Self Reliance,Shawn James wilderness living,solar,goalzero,goal zero,yeti,solar power,solar electricity,power,off grid power,solar panels,battery charger,yeti power station,power station,portable power,portable power bank,charging station,power anything anywhere

Video Transcription

- Hi everybody, welcome back to the cabin. I really never wanted to have a source of electricity. I wanted everything to be totally off grid, or just things that I can get from nature, but the reality is in this day and age, especially because I have videos that I need to film and upload, I need power.

I need power to recharge my batteries, power for lighting for inside the cabin, especially when I'm filming, and just a number of things like that, cell phone, laptop, so finally after a year or more of talking about it, trying to decide what to do about it, we finally came up with a solution. You've probably seen me power up some of my equipment with a backup power source. Things like my cell phone that I use as a GPS and as a map, I have my light that I have on my camera, I have the camera itself. I have, what, my spot, the emergency beacon, things like that, I just carry and need power in the back country, so to solve that, to deal with that issue, I've been using Goal Zero products for maybe five years now I guess. I'm gonna show you something. I'm gonna unbox it actually, it's the first time I've seen this product in person, and it's the first time I'm going to get my hands on it and open it up in front of you, so let's take a look at this Goal Zero full system that I'm going to use to power the cabin and also power the other things that I need around the wilderness homestead here. So the interesting thing is you're going to have to tune in to another video where I set this thing up, but my challenge here of course is that I have a lot of trees, so finding an open spot with good sunlight that's long enough to charge something is gonna be a challenge, I'm gonna have to work sort of around the area and move the panels around. This is the heart of the system. This is what's going to power everything. So this the Yeti 3000 lithium. I think it's their biggest inverter system. And as you can see, it's not that much bigger. It's probably the size I would say two car batteries. Two good-sized car batteries. So I think what might end up happening is as, like I said, the sun is moving around, I'll be able to move this along with the solar panels, so I'll have to run a longer cable, a longer cable run you have between the solar panels and the inverter and from the inverter to the things you're powering. The more voltage loss you have, so have to end up either not powering enough devices or you run out of power quicker. So that is it, that is the meat and potatoes of the system, this is what I've been waiting for for a year, I've got my solar panels, I have my portable inverter and charge controller, which allows me to move it anywhere on the property and use it. So I can take this up to down the path where I'm building the next building. I can power equipment from there. I'm really excited to be able to move the whole system around and take advantage of not only sunlight to charge it, but also portability for actual power usage. So the other thing that I really like about this is the ease of use and the ease of set up. So these things are designed to basically full proof and not require technical knowledge, so what I love about easy to use plug and play systems like this is a guy like me can just literally plug and play, so I can charge the inverter directly off the solar panels, I can plug my devices right into the converter, and that's it, away it goes, right into the power station is what I should be calling this. This inverter is part of it, but it's awful power station. And here's what I really like about it as well, can't always count on the sun, especially here in Canada, and especially in the winter. I'll probably end up for the simple reason that I need to continue to power things like my camera and my computers and stuff like that in order to be able to continue making YouTube videos. I need that power, so I'll probably end up adding a small generator that I can also plug into this to power it quickly, get it up to full charge, and then shut down the generator and not have to listen to that thing running very often at all. So this is the solar panels. I've had these, like I said, for five years. I always just carry them in a Ziploc bag like this to keep it water tight if it falls overboard, which it never has, so inside the bag is this Nomad seven solar panel. It's just two small solar panels. The reason I like this one is that I can attach it to a backpack, just carabiner it on or to my canoe, or if I'm paddling, I'll usually put this on my canoe pack in front of me, facing whatever way the sun's shining, so that charges fairly quickly like that, and I can just plug this in. So the way that works, is literally take blue, plug it into blue, flip that open, put it in the sun, and that charges it. So what I have been using from my back country trips is this solar panel, the Nomad seven, combined with the Guide 10 plus. What that is a solar charger for double A and triple A batteries, so these batteries are pretty old now, but Goal Zero was good enough to send me four packs of four, so, one, two, three, four, yeah four packs of four double A's, and two packs of four triple A's. So these are used for a lot of my trail cameras around the property, and these work well in my lights. So that's awesome, really looking forward to using that system, so that's my mobile system. So when my wife and I go on back country trips, or we go on long hiking trips to photograph, especially sunrise and sunsets, stuff like that, we go through a lot of batteries, so we'll take the solar panel and we can use that to charge our batteries but also to run lights and stuff like that, so really, really looking forward to that, I used that actually on my woodland caribou canoe trip last year. Was a loner from the outfitter, and it worked really well for us, in fact, it kinda saved our lives, because we actually changed our route dramatically because of the wind and some fires that were in the area, but we were getting picked up by plane in the middle of the park, so we had to have a way to contact the airline, or the outfitter, to pick us up, tell them where we're gonna be at the end of the week. Well what happened is I left the satellite phone on by accident and the battery died, so we literally needed that to charge not only the last batteries that we had in our camera, but there was little bit of charge left in this and I plugged it into the sat phone, got it running, called the outfitter and got our pickup arranged, so that's why these things are important. And a couple other nice, little bonus things. So the thing about the cabin is that it's dark even right now because I only installed three windows, mostly for heat retention, I don't want a lot of window area that lets out heat or lets in cold in the winter, so it gets kinda dark in there, which I don't mind, but what happens is that even at this time of year, nice to have a little bit of extra task lighting. I don't need to light up the whole cabin all the time, but ask lighting is really important. So it's 50 lumens, so 4000 LED, course it weights next to nothing, but that's pretty cool. So as you know, I'm not a big fan of doing sponsored posts or paid sponsorships on my videos, I've only done one ever, but when there's companies that would like to send me stuff or I'd like to work with because it makes sense for what I'm using here, and I like the products that they offer and I like the company, then I accept trial things like this, I've really, really, appreciated that Goal Zero, I've thought it valuable for both of us to send me this system to try out, and I'm really looking forward to giving it a try. I really think this is gonna work for me, and I'm happy to share that with you guys, and keep you up to date on the progress and how it goes. So what I'll do is film another video of me installing the system and then I'll continue to just show you how I'm using it, and how it's performing, and if it's living up to my expectations, so Goal Zero, thanks very much for this opportunity, and thanks everybody else for watching this video, I really appreciate it, and I look forward to seeing you up at the cabin again next time, take care.