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Does anyone have experience of powering portable equipment using the newer lithium-ion power banks rather than traditional batteries (lead acid, nicad, nimh).
Being somewhat ‘antiquated’ I’m still using 12 volts rather than 5 volt (USB) to power my equipment. 12 volt lithium-ion seems rather hard to find.
My experience is limited to the one I have been using for a couple of years https://uk.jackery.com/products/explorer-240-portable-power-station: goes all night even in bitter cold, recharges in a couple of hours from my off-grid solar inverter. I chose this one because a saw a comparison review of half a dozen or so, and this had the most consistent output voltage. A quick search suggests similar battery packs are widely available. Where have you been looking?
Hi Bill,
I use an off-the-shelf Celestron Powertank (LiFePO4), which provides both 12V telescope output and 5V USB outputs.
It seems to work fine to power a 12V telescope. My only serious issue is that it automatically switches itself off if you don’t draw some minimum amount of current. My small Star Adventurer mount seemingly doesn’t draw enough power by itself, unless I plug something else into the other USB port.
Best wishes,
Dominic
Hello Bill,
I use LiFePO4 batteries from Tracer: https://tracerpower.com/products/product-category/batteries/
It all depends on how much power and for how long you want to use. I have 8 and 16Ah Tracers.
I also have a Tracer Li-polymer battery but it is not really up for my AZEQ-6. Hence why I switched to LiFePO4.
Jeremy
Bill there are countless options out there. As Jeremy says, you need to work out how much power you need between recharges and go from there. Much more expensive than lead acid though, and still needs to be looked after and recharged appropraitely and regularly. There is nothing wrong with lead acid batteries, though twice the weight of lithium, as long as you take care of them.
I’m looking for a ‘complete solution’ rather than ‘just a battery’ and the only one I’ve seen so far was at Screwfix
As far as Ah rating is concerned the sort of observing I do is limited to public outreach work where my equipment draws about 1A and the events generally don’t last longer than six hours. So a 10Ah battery should be more than sufficient.
My ulterior motive for this is that I’m already thinking about our 2025 Autumn Weekend Meeting in Orkney and was looking at a lower weight battery than my current (17Ah, I think) lead acid jump starter/leisure battery. On the evening of Sunday September 7 there is a lunar eclipse with the Moon rising in eclipse and coming out as the evening goes on which might be worth taking a telescope for.
Bill if this meets your requirements in terms of capacity and connections, then it looks good; it seems to be £20 cheaper on Amazon. The others out there seem to be significantly bigger and heavier.
I use this 100Wh Li-ion battery pack to power my portable setup:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06Y5G3C8Z
It only weighs 0.5 kg and it has 5V USB and 9V regulated DC outputs and a 12V unregulated output direct from the internal cells (which I think are LG 18650s). 100Wh is small enough to take on a plane as cabin luggage but it is large enough to power an AM-3 and an ASI camera with cooler for > 5hrs.
Since the 12V is unregulated it drops below 11V at around 50% capacity so I use an in-line DC buck converter to boost the raw voltage to 13.8V. With that, the AM-3 and camera are happy through to around 90% discharge. You wouldn’t need that if you are using the 5V or 9V outputs.
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