Featured NOCO battery booster- is it time to come in for a charge?

I'm just saying that I don't think extended cranking is in the capacitor rig's wheelhouse.
I'm carrying it around for redundancy-things always seem to let you down when you need 'em, and I might really need to start the car, lol,
The other thing, a few years ago, I wheeled out the 7550 Generac and discovered totally corroded connections, so there's that too. I haven't looked lately, lol. I also have a can or two of ether. I think that 7550 would be impossible for me to pull more than a couple times if I needed to.

 

You will still have to charge up the capacitor before it can be used for starting an engine. To do it, you have to connect to almost dead 12V battery to draw small amount of power still left in the battery. If the battery is completely dead then it won't work. You can charge up the capacitor with USB lithium battery pack. I think it may even work with 120v AC line or using phone??? But I don't remember. When I used it, I used with the weak 12v battery in the car that was too weak to crank the engine but still had some power left. It takes about a minute to 100% charge up the capacitor. And you can only use it once to crank the engine then you have to repeat again, but each time, the 12V battery will get weaker, and eventually will not have sufficient power left to charge up the capacitor. It is a great addition to lithium starter as a backup because it is completely maintenance free. I tend to keep lithium jump starter and super cap starter in the car and forget about them until the day I need them. The lithium battery pack can degrade and self discharge over time. It could be dead by the time I need it, if not regularly maintained. But super cap is maintenance free. As long as there is a weak 12v battery to connect to, it will work to get out of the emergency situation.

 

Exactly.


Essentially a capacitor bank is using electronics to extract low voltage capacity out of a weak battery (maybe 10vdc) over a period of time, making your battery weaker and then the capacitor bank electronics outputs its charge as a higher voltage short duration jump.

A charged lithium jump starter is my choice and its good for several jumps on high load engines. Which is where my jump pack gets used; other's conventional cars with 12v starters.

 

Can of starting fluid is always a good thing to have in a garage. I had to start a generator for preparation of the last storm. But the tiny 12v lead acid battery was dead albeit it was connected to the trickle charger all the time. It was probably over charged, and died. It was one of cheap dumb trickle charger. The one sells for $5 at HF. I went out to HomeDepot to get the least expensive lawnmower battery, It was still too large to fit in the portable generator housing. But just sitting on the side connected, it cranked the engine fine. However, that did not start the engine. I needed a new spark plug. Luckily I had a new spare spark plug. With new spark plug, larger lawn mower battery, and a can of starter fluid, I had no problem starting this portable generator. But we never lost the power on the storm. lol

I was going to install Franklin Whole Home backup battery with solar panel integrated. Had an installer lined up, but our utility could not put the act together. They dragged feet on my application for the new interconnection agreement that would supersede the one I already have with the 15kW solar panels on the roof just last year. Our solar is load side tapped and dies when the grid is off. Well, since I planned to install total 20kWh of battery backup that has its own inverters, the utility told us that transformer which was just upgraded from the old 10kw to new 25kw is no longer large enough. 15kw solar + 20kw battery = 35kw potential output to the grid. They said it needs to be upgraded to 50kW transformer. Although this is not how the backup battery works, they would not budge. In the end, they could not upgrade the transformer before the end of this year, thus defeating the idea of taking advantage of the 30% tax credit. I cancelled the project, and lost my deposit to the installer.

I am now thinking of ordering the ECOFLOW 12288Wh Power Station: DELTA Pro Ultra X before the end of year. $7,999 price tag is hefty, but much cheaper than the Franklin Whole Home backup batteries. It will have 12.3kWh of battery backup (expandable to 180kWh) at max 12kW output (expandable to 36kW). The previous version DELTA PRO Ultra (without X) is $5,999 and has the same capacity of battery, but the inverter is rated for 7200 watt peak output. That is too small now for our home with heat pumps. Our gas generator with 7500 watt peak is barely enough to keep up with the load before the heat pump. I think I will need at least 10kW output, but preferably 12kW output to keep the whole house running. 12.3kWh is not going to last very long, but I think I am going to install more solar panels this time completely off-grid to bypass the Utility red tape to use with the battery directly connected.