Off the Grid Listening-HELP!


In the next year, I am going to have to move my dedicated listening room to being off-the-grid. I would love to hear from anybody with experience in this area.I am just in the beginnings of doing research, but if anyone can accelerate this process I would appreciate it. I would need to power my turntable, a phono pre, tube pre amp, tube mono blocks and a couple of class D sub amps. I know that I need a pure sine wave inverter (how big, what brand?) and a couple of deep cycle batteries. Is there any easy way to calculate the size of the inverter and batteries needed? 12 or 24 volt system? Would something like a PS Audio regenerator be helpful too? This would only best used about 8 hours per week in four hour sessions. Thank you!

mterle

I would hate to give up any of the gear I have right now. I know class D amps have come along ways, and I am not anti-state, (hey I ditched the A/B sub amps) and even have a SS phono stage. But it sounds incredible now so I don't want to change things up with gear. The tube pre-amps and monoblocks draw about 600 watts. Throw in the sub amp and the turntable phono-pre. I'm guessing 1,000 tops, but I will take some real time measurements listening loud and will see where I am at.

mterle, This is tricky. Here are some rough numbers from :

A 12 volt 100Ah deep-cycle battery with regular depth of discharge 50% would run a fully-loaded 1000 watt inverter for 34 minutes. This calculation takes into account average pure sine wave inverter efficiency of 95%.

The easiest way to calculate 100Ah 12 volt deep-cycle run-time is to convert the amp-hours to watt-hours. Simply multiply available Ah by the battery voltage to find its watt-hours capacity:

Battery watt-hours = amp-hour capacity x battery volts

Battery watt-hours = 100Ah x 12V = 1200 watt-hours

If you are using 1000W you'll really need a full on system of some sort with likely at least 4 12V deep cycle batteries just to run things for a couple hours. Then you'll have to charge them with panels or a generator.   

I'd opt for the low power route and make that tradeoff but that's just me. Big loads are expensive and get complicated to build in that capacity unless money and space don't matter. 

 

 

 

jbs, thanks for the link and the formulas. I think I will need 400Ah worth of battery in a 24 volt system to start. Charging may be rough. I will need to see what solar can accomplish with the light I have, but it may be that I need to use solar and a generator. Much appreciate your input. I feel like I have some direction. Now, after buying a new Lyra phono cartridge, new phono pre (PS Audio), Audioquest Niagra and a few other items in the last year I need to save up some pennies for this!

jbs, wouild you please clarify what you meant by, "I'd opt for the low power route and make that tradeoff but that's just me. Big loads are expensive and get complicated to build in that capacity unless money and space don't matter."

Thanks in advance. Also, any reason not to go with lead acid batteries here since weight and space aren't issues?

You have a great idea going. You have isolated the listening room entirely, and have been very good at planning this whole idea. Having had some experience with batteries and converters, I would say that as long as you have what you need in battery power to begin with, the only other concern would be a decent sine wave converter. Most of what I have heard is that these devices usually provide an inferior (spikey) sine wave compared to commercial power. It might be a thought (and yes, more power needed) to run a PS Audio regenerator to make right that which will be imperfect from your AC power source.