The Hiking Astronomer

Solar energy on the go

This post is the second in my “Every picture, every story” series detailing my 5 weeks of road trips in the summer of 2024. Some dates will be skipped, grouped, or abbreviated due to unrelated events happening on those days, such as conferences or extensive road travel.

Read last week’s entry | Watch alternative video for this post

My 2016 Kia Soul carried me on the first of three road trips in the summer of 2024. The previous year, my other Soul gave out on me – twice – after 12 years and three moves.

Breakdown #1 was January 28, 2023 on my way to an Astronomy event with Girl Scouts in Fort Myers. Quite literally, my car started dying about 3 miles before I arrived, and I ended up stranded in a gas station parking lot. One of the dads came to pick me up, we held the event, and then took me back to the car. A phone call to a friend to take me home, and then the next day I managed to get it towed to a shop, where they got it working….temporarily.
Breakdown #2 occurred March 10, 2023. Guess where I was driving? Fort Myers again. This time, my car made it there and mostly back. However, on my way to drop off an employee, my car gave out about 4 miles away and ended up stranded in a Wawa parking lot. A tow to my house, its final resting place before I sold it off and got the car I have today, a Kia Sould with just one extra cubic foot of space in the trunk.

Don’t worry. These two breakdowns are not foreshadowing. My new car has held up just fine.

On my Arizona road trip, I relied almost exclusively on solar power. I kept my electric cooler, phone, watch, earbuds, and laptop all charged using Jackery solar panels and battery storage. 500 watts of generation power and 2100Wh of storage meant I had plenty of electricity keeping me going. For measure, my electric cooler ran for 19 days straight all thanks to the micro-charges I would take at gas stations, during hikes, and even in parking lots at different places I visited.

Charging with solar while visiting Meteor Crater

I had of course tested this prior to leaving on this road trip, going so far as to run the electric cooler for five straight days in Florida using nothing but solar, to push the limit of what the 1000Wh generator could do.

June 1st, 2024, I stopped at Love’s somewhere in eastern Texas, filled up, laid out the solar panels, and ate lunch. 15 minutes of sunlight recharged about 25% of my total 24-hour usage, (I had used about 15% since leaving Florida the previous afternoon, and regained about 4% during this charge).

Charging while eating breakfast & shopping at Grand Canyon, prior to driving to Sedona on June 15, 2024

Solar became my lifeblood on this road trip. From keeping the electric cooler nice and frigid the entire three weeks, to boiling water and cooking with an electric griddle, to powering fans and charging flashlights, to keeping my phone at 100% nearly all times of day (*Jaws theme song comes on, looming ahead of June 14th*), I learned a lot about the endurance of my solar panels and generators.

That knowledge will come in handy with the upcoming trip around the United States, and this time, I have a DSLR and drone to power…and a brand new Jackery 2000 v2 power station that will take my energy storage and adaptability to a whole new level.

Alex