Have seen a lot of power station deals lately and wondering if it's worth the effort and savings to charge them in shopping centre food courts, office etc to save on electricity costs at home.
Is this something people already do?
Bluetti EB3A - https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/719898
Itech - https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/723385
100Ah battery - https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/723192
ozbargainer of the century
Nah can’t top the public bbq guy
wot…who? I think I missed an ozbargaining technique somewhere!
im sure its in at least the top 100 of most memorable threads for many ozbargainers
@Jimothy Wongingtons: Thank you Mr Wongington! I hadn't seen that before. Looks like the all time winner of the Roy and HG Frugality Award, at the same time as being disqualified for actions contrary to a utopian community ozbargainer!
definition of Ozbargains
not as much savings as i was hoping for 😆
well… an EV battery capacity is typically about 200 times greater… So if you have one of them and can sneak it into the food court or library, I reckon you'll be on a winner!
Yeah, even a small-ish 60kWh EV battery would take $12 of electricity fully charged!
Keeping the car hidden for >25 hours whilst it charges from a regular wall socket though would be a challenge…
You might get charged with stealing electricity.
I see a lot of charging points availablen cafe, library, etc.
Woosh
Erm. Are humans really being pushed to their limits that people have to do this? Those access points are provided for free and unless they are locked would most likely be available for open access. Although, if we look into the future, there is a possibility that future charging points may be adapted to provide much faster charging, so you could literally save dollars at a time if your device supports those higher charge rates.
It really is the equivalent of whether the following should be encouraged: Running down a laptop just to charge it at your workplace or local library is not something to be encouraged. It may also cause unnecessary wear on the batteries themselves. A machine looking to maximise their efficiency and lifespan would certainly not be doing this, but a human may have different intentions.
that was shocking big Rick
Polarising post.
Summary: Your battery would be dead by the time you break even on the cost of buying it
The largest battery you have listed costs $289 is 12V 100Ah = 1.2kWh
A kWh costs 20.58c where I live - using this as a base, fully charging the above battery would cost $0.24696
To make up for the cost of the battery, you would need to recharge it outside of your home 1,170 times. Not including:
You can avoid the costs of the first two by buying a total power station solution instead of a bare battery… but the iTech one has quarter of the capacity and a quarter of charging cycles of that bare battery for the same price. So you can guess how that will work out.
Now you've got my ozbargainer juices flowing! I'm thinking of riding my pushy over to your place with a few batteries on the carrier, given your killerwattours price is about 57% of the price of mine! I've just got to work out the price of bike tyres per km…. err…which state are you in? (I'm in the state of confusion, but sometimes cross the border to exasperation)
Hah, I'm over in Sydney so I hope you have some killer quadriceps muscles!
I renewed my electricity contract for another 12mo just before the prices got jacked up in July, so that's also why my rate is a bit more favourable than the norm right now.
I save more money by peeing in the bush!
Even if you are diabolically poor, this doesn't make sense. Better off doing return and earn and swapping them and refilling a gas bottle, and getting a bbq off curbside cleanup. Huge investment, it could also be stolen easily, and lots of time monitoring it charging, and you will no doubt start to be noticed. Charging cheap powerbanks at work etc isn't going to be noticed
Sure! Why not…. I reckon it would earn you the ozbargainer of the century award!
Those power pack things that I am extremely disdainful of have about .25KWh capacity… so what's a KWh of electricity worth where you are? Mine are worth about 40 cents, so why not lug one of those THINGs to the foodcourt and be a pain hunting power sockets so you can trip people up to save about 10 cents!!