- Hi everybody, welcome back to the cabin.
I really never wanted to
have a source of electricity.
I wanted everything to
be totally off grid,
or just things that I can get from nature,
but the reality is in this day and age,
especially because I have videos
that I need to film and upload,
I need power.
I need power to recharge my batteries,
power for lighting for inside the cabin,
especially when I'm filming,
and just a number of things like that,
cell phone, laptop, so
finally after a year or more
of talking about it, trying to decide what
to do about it, we finally
came up with a solution.
You've probably seen me power up some
of my equipment with
a backup power source.
Things like my cell phone that I use
as a GPS and as a map, I have my light
that I have on my camera,
I have the camera itself.
I have, what, my spot,
the emergency beacon,
things like that, I just
carry and need power
in the back country, so to solve that,
to deal with that issue,
I've been using Goal Zero
products for maybe five years now I guess.
I'm gonna show you something.
I'm gonna unbox it actually,
it's the first time I've
seen this product in person,
and it's the first time I'm
going to get my hands on it and open it up
in front of you, so let's
take a look at this Goal Zero
full system that I'm going to use
to power the cabin and
also power the other things
that I need around the
wilderness homestead here.
So the interesting thing is you're going
to have to tune in to another video
where I set this thing
up, but my challenge here
of course is that I have a lot of trees,
so finding an open spot with good sunlight
that's long enough to
charge something is gonna
be a challenge, I'm gonna
have to work sort of
around the area and
move the panels around.
This is the heart of the system.
This is what's going to power everything.
So this the Yeti 3000 lithium.
I think it's their
biggest inverter system.
And as you can see, it's
not that much bigger.
It's probably the size I
would say two car batteries.
Two good-sized car batteries.
So I think what might end up happening is
as, like I said, the sun is moving around,
I'll be able to move this along
with the solar panels, so I'll have
to run a longer cable, a
longer cable run you have
between the solar panels and the inverter
and from the inverter to
the things you're powering.
The more voltage loss you have,
so have to end up either
not powering enough devices
or you run out of power quicker.
So that is it, that is
the meat and potatoes
of the system, this is
what I've been waiting
for for a year, I've got my solar panels,
I have my portable inverter
and charge controller,
which allows me to move it anywhere
on the property and use it.
So I can take this up to
down the path where I'm
building the next building.
I can power equipment from there.
I'm really excited to be able
to move the whole system around
and take advantage of not
only sunlight to charge it,
but also portability
for actual power usage.
So the other thing that I really like
about this is the ease of
use and the ease of set up.
So these things are designed
to basically full proof
and not require technical knowledge,
so what I love about easy
to use plug and play systems
like this is a guy like
me can just literally plug
and play, so I can charge
the inverter directly
off the solar panels, I
can plug my devices right
into the converter, and
that's it, away it goes,
right into the power station is what
I should be calling this.
This inverter is part of it,
but it's awful power station.
And here's what I really
like about it as well,
can't always count on the sun,
especially here in Canada,
and especially in the winter.
I'll probably end up for the simple reason
that I need to continue to
power things like my camera
and my computers and stuff like that
in order to be able to
continue making YouTube videos.
I need that power, so I'll probably end up
adding a small generator that I can
also plug into this to power it quickly,
get it up to full charge, and
then shut down the generator
and not have to listen to that thing
running very often at all.
So this is the solar panels.
I've had these, like I
said, for five years.
I always just carry them
in a Ziploc bag like this
to keep it water tight
if it falls overboard,
which it never has, so inside the bag
is this Nomad seven solar panel.
It's just two small solar panels.
The reason I like this one is
that I can attach it to a backpack,
just carabiner it on or to my canoe,
or if I'm paddling, I'll usually put this
on my canoe pack in front of me,
facing whatever way the sun's shining,
so that charges fairly quickly like that,
and I can just plug this in.
So the way that works,
is literally take blue,
plug it into blue,
flip that open, put it in the sun,
and that charges it.
So what I have been using
from my back country trips
is this solar panel, the
Nomad seven, combined
with the Guide 10 plus.
What that is a solar charger for double A
and triple A batteries, so these batteries
are pretty old now, but
Goal Zero was good enough
to send me four packs of four, so,
one, two, three, four, yeah four packs
of four double A's, and two
packs of four triple A's.
So these are used for a
lot of my trail cameras
around the property, and
these work well in my lights.
So that's awesome, really looking forward
to using that system, so
that's my mobile system.
So when my wife and I go
on back country trips,
or we go on long hiking
trips to photograph,
especially sunrise and
sunsets, stuff like that,
we go through a lot of batteries,
so we'll take the solar
panel and we can use that
to charge our batteries
but also to run lights
and stuff like that, so
really, really looking
forward to that, I used that actually
on my woodland caribou
canoe trip last year.
Was a loner from the outfitter,
and it worked really well
for us, in fact, it kinda saved our lives,
because we actually changed
our route dramatically
because of the wind and some fires
that were in the area,
but we were getting picked
up by plane in the middle of the park,
so we had to have a way
to contact the airline,
or the outfitter, to pick
us up, tell them where we're
gonna be at the end of the week.
Well what happened is I
left the satellite phone
on by accident and the battery died,
so we literally needed
that to charge not only
the last batteries that
we had in our camera,
but there was little bit of charge left
in this and I plugged
it into the sat phone,
got it running, called the outfitter
and got our pickup arranged,
so that's why these things are important.
And a couple other nice,
little bonus things.
So the thing about the
cabin is that it's dark
even right now because I
only installed three windows,
mostly for heat retention,
I don't want a lot
of window area that lets out heat
or lets in cold in the winter,
so it gets kinda dark in there,
which I don't mind, but what happens is
that even at this time of year,
nice to have a little bit
of extra task lighting.
I don't need to light up the whole cabin
all the time, but ask
lighting is really important.
So it's 50 lumens, so 4000
LED, course it weights
next to nothing, but that's pretty cool.
So as you know, I'm not a big fan
of doing sponsored posts
or paid sponsorships
on my videos, I've only done one ever,
but when there's companies that would like
to send me stuff or I'd like to work
with because it makes sense
for what I'm using here,
and I like the products that they offer
and I like the company,
then I accept trial things
like this, I've really,
really, appreciated
that Goal Zero, I've thought it valuable
for both of us to send me
this system to try out,
and I'm really looking
forward to giving it a try.
I really think this is gonna work for me,
and I'm happy to share that with you guys,
and keep you up to date on
the progress and how it goes.
So what I'll do is film another video
of me installing the system
and then I'll continue
to just show you how I'm using it,
and how it's performing,
and if it's living up
to my expectations, so
Goal Zero, thanks very much
for this opportunity,
and thanks everybody else
for watching this video,
I really appreciate it,
and I look forward to seeing you
up at the cabin again
next time, take care.
