Anybody using a Solar Generator (battery + inverter that you hook up to solar panels to charge) with their electric roaster? Cautionary tales and experience welcome.

I'm considering using my Geneverse HomePower TWO PRO Solar Generator Bundle from Costco with my Bullet.

[moderator note: originally posted in the Water forum, moved to the Coffee Roasting forum.]

Sorta, got 8kW of panels that came online about 6 weeks ago. So the last 8 - 10 batches have been solar. Going to be over 2000 kWhr off the panels by early tomorrow.

While I don't exclusively use solar for my roaster (SR800), I've run it off a self-made solar generator (2.7 kWh, 3000 W) several times.

Looks like the Bullet power requirement is 1550W, and your generator can provide 2200W continuous. Since a heater is pure resistive, and since your power requirements are under the inverter rating, you should be okay. There may be slight inductive surge from the drum motor and fan, but I imagine it's fairly small and will surge under the limits of the inverter.

The other consideration will be battery size. 2.4 kWh will give you 1.5 h runtime (2.4 kWh / 1.55 kW). This includes warmup time, so you might get 2-3 roasts out of a charge. Depending on your solar array, you might find yourself charging all week before you have the power banked to roast. And many folks try to keep their batteries under full capacity (usually around 80%) to maximize its usable life, so that would also impact your runtime.

One weird thing that might be unique to my setup. I've noticed that my inverter seems to start in a lower power mode when I first turn it on, making for some weak roasting power in the low to middle range. I can force it into a higher power state by making sure to run the roaster on max for a few moments (or attaching another load like a heat gun on max) and then settling on my roast power, where it acts as expected. Not necessarily something you'll see, but that's the fix if you think you're being power limited.

btreichel wrote:Sorta, got 8kW of panels that came online about 6 weeks ago. So the last 8 - 10 batches have been solar. Going to be over 2000 kWhr off the panels by early tomorrow.

2000 kWhr (i.e two thousand kilowatthours)?

That's a lot of power for a rooftop system...

That makes much more sense. I thought you were talking about 2000kWh per day! My roof panels are putting out about 45kWh per day right now and will produce more as we move into summer...

In the few days (45+) I've seen between 45 & 60 . On a 90 degree day it covers about 90% of the energy consumption. On a non AC day the house uses about 20kWhr.