You would be surprised the amount of amateur radio operators who do not have offgrid power solution for their home stations. The idea of amateur radio is for use during an emergency but if you can only run your station while the electricity is on it doesn’t do you much good in a real emergency does it?
Obviously you need your radio, tuner, antenna, coax, soundcard, and computer if you run digital
What I am going to give is a cheap solution. Not a portable solution. You should be able to run your radio and computer all night and be able to recharge the battery during the day. This is just MY idea and is not THE way only ONE way of dealing with this problem.
This is a solution for running a 100w radio at 100w whenever you are transmitting. If running QRP(low power) you definitely don’t need this big of battery or solar panel and that will cut the price down some.
The first thing you will need is a battery. A deep cycle marine 120ah battery from Walmart is about $90. That should EASILY keep your radio going all night. My Icom 718 draws 20a on 100w so that means with this 120ah battery it will run 6hr straight. I would not be running it straight so it should easily get me through the night at 100w.
The next thing you will need is a solar panel. A 50w solar panel on Amazon runs $75 as of today. The prices of things are definitely rising.
After that you will need a charge controller. These are pretty cheap. Right now there are some as low as $16 on Amazon. I’ve used the one I’m linking to for multiple years with no problems but I’m saying to buy this one or not. You just make sure you have one!
To run your computer you will need some sort of small inverter to plug your laptop into. The inverter will wire to the battery. It’s good to have this inverter so you could run other small things if need be. You can charge your phone, HT, and so on.
Other than the wire and connectors that is all you need to setup an self-sufficient radio station that will run all night. You can probably do it a bit cheaper but may not have enough juice to run a 100w radio all through the night if need be.
This is just my thoughts for a home offgrid station. You could go cheaper or more expensive. The choice is up to you. Get to building!
Wyoming Survival 