This is somewhat day dreaming on my part but ...
This spring/summer I plan to get a decent sized shed for the garden. Primarily it will be for gardening "stuff" but I am wondering/ day dreaming if it could also be used for a static bike set up.
I wasn't planning power for the shed as it would not be cost effective to get an armoured cable back to either the garage or house DB.
The ability to have a light/charge the occasional battery would be useful static bike set up aside.
So I was wondering about a power bank and solar set up.
Several companies, like Anker, seem to offer a solution but it looks like the set ups that come with a solar panel are geared to being portable.
With the exception of the occasional charge from the mains I was looking at fit and forget. Any issues with keeping out a portable/folding panel?
Being a shed it would likely see extremes of temperatures but not hugely different(?) to those that use them in campers/vans etc - Does anyone have any real world use of using one a similar setting?
I'm looking at Anker, Bluetti as they appear to have a good rep. Any others I should be looking at?
It would work - you might need an all weather solar panel, rather than a folding one. I have an Anker 800 Plus power bank, and a 100w folding solar panel for camping. The solar panel will give about 85w, which is more than enough to power the electric cool box and charge the power bank. You still get an charge on cloudy days, but significantly less, but set up permanently, you should have ample power for a LED light and running/charging a few items. I'd avoid anything that heats as that will gobble the power. We have run a coffee machine and a camping kettle off our power bank.
Many power banks come with a built in light - mine has two torches also that double up as a camping light.
What you want sounds plausible, low power LED lighting and charging some electronic devices (I'm assuming you want to charge a GPS and elec shifting batteries ... not a e-bike battery) should not take much power and staying off grid should be sustainable using a power bank that is slowly topped up over time with a solar panel.
But do some quick calculations to double check you are in the right ball park first. Figure out roughly how much power you think you'll use up in a week vs what a solar panel can reliably provide on a cloudy day. I think you have to bias your calculations towards winter to make sure worst case scenario its sustainable for you.
eg (random numbers picked) if it turns out you need about 700W worth of electricity a week and the panel can only provide 100W a week throughout winter then you are going to need a much larger power bank to last through the grim days until you get to a sunny day that can provide enough juice to top the power bank up again.
I looked at this for our summer house and, whilst I was trying to work out best option, I ran an extension lead from outside socket along the fence as a temporary solution. Five years later its still in place, working fine and I see no reason to change it. Certainly not looking at any armoured cable solution and its a hell of a lot cheaper than solar and power banks.
How far is the shed from the garage ? I've used armoured cable to take power out to our shed - the cable is actually connected to a plug, then an RCD and then run out to the shed surface mounted along the garage then the back of concrete gravel boards at the back of our property (no property behind). Did it myself so not to regs, but it's effectively an extension lead on it's own RCD.
As above....ran an armoured cable to our summer house, connected via a plug in RCD at the house end. Ran a few LED lights and a TV for cycling stuff when on the TT in their. Worked fine. <£100 all in.
https://www.wickes.co.uk/3-Core-6943X-Black-SWA-Single-Phase-Armoured-Cable---2-5mm2---25m/p/214676
I have an Anker C1000 gen 2 I got on black friday with the 200w solar panel. Seems good, haven't really used in anger yet. My main usecases are power tool use at the bottom of the garden (our garden is 200m long, and my custom extension cable is only 100m long!) and camping. If I were using it mainly in the same spot i'd get normal solar panels from somewhere like bimble solar rather than the anker ones as i'd not need the portability and it'd be cheaper.