Power supply advice please

[DancingStar (Tony)]

Hello, I’m in Perth, Australia. I just ordered new ZWO equipment [see list below].
The company that I ordered it from said I should get two mains power adaptors because one may not be sufficient to cope with the cooling in the camera plus the mount plus the dew heater plus the guide camera.
I know basically nothing about electricity, so I took their word for it and ordered them.
Now I need to know what kind of portable power supply I need to buy, for when I take it out into a field away from mains power.
The company that I ordered it from suggested a 12.8v lithium battery, 50-60 amp hours, in a ‘battery box’. I started Googling [in Australia]. These seem very expensive and very heavy.
I’m wondering if I can get something that I can just plug my 2 mains adaptors into.
I would appreciate any advice from the wise people on this forum.
Thanks
Tony
Here is all the new gear which uses electricity:
ZWO AM 5 mount
ASIAIR pro
Prima luce 80mm dew heater strip for redcat 51
ASI290mm mini guidecam
ASI533MM Pro
ZWO EFW 8 x 1.25" Electronic filter wheel
ZWO EAF autofocuser with hand controller

[Drac0 (Mark)]

Hi Tony,

First, what I run:

SW EQ6-R Pro
MeLE 3Q mini pc
Pegasus Astro PPBAG2 (this distributes the power to everything else & controls the dew heater output)
2 x dew heater straps, not sure of lengths, one for 102mm & other on a 90mm
ASI 120MM-S for guiding
ASI 294MM Pro @ -10°C
ZWO EFW 8 x 1.25" Electronic filter wheel
ZWO EAF autofocuser

With this I rarely pull over 3 amps, but it depends on the weather which will determine if the heaters or camera cooling works harder drawing more power. So a single 7.5 amp or better power adapter would have worked. I actually blew the 14 amp fuse in the powerbox lead the other night and not having a handy replacement it ran no problems for the whole night on the 5 amp fuse I stuck in it.

As for in the field power, any way you go you will be looking at some expense and varying weight. What you will need is not only based on your gear, but how long you will be running the rig. The 50AH plus lithium battery is actually one of the lighter options, and would be the MINIMUM I would consider, I drew almost 40AH on an all night session the other day. I'm currently using a 120AH AGM battery setup & that weighs in at ~35KG. Looking at getting a 100AH lithium to cut the weight by two-thirds.

Or you can go something like a Bluetti but again, expensive & can weigh around the same or more as a stand alone lithium battery. It does give you more options for powering items & more versatile for use away from astro.

I hope that helps, but any way you go for field power it's not going to be cheap or very light.

Cheers,
Mark

[ronson]

Hi Tony,

I would make a guess/recommendation, but you could do it this way or another - the portable power supply will power the mount and Asiair directly. Then, Asiair (and the camera via the integrated USB hub) will power the rest of the equipment including the main camera, guide cam, dew heater, EFW and EAF.

I would recommend to also use the 12V DC outputs rather than the AC outputs to maximise on power efficiency. Asiair requires 12V DC. Pretty sure AM5 also runs on 12V DC.

Consumption wise this is hard to predict. From experience, it does fluctuate through out the night as guiding runs, cooling adapts to the changing ambient temperature, dew heaters kick in, mount dithers, autofocus runs etc.

In terms of capacity, go as big as you can as these are not easy/cheap to upgrade. I would recommend a minimum of 500Wh capacity which should easily last you a night with your equipment.

You can go the path of getting an AGM battery and a box. But if you know nothing about electricity I would recommend go for one of the ready made power stations.

Not knowing your budget, an example of a reputable brand and decent capacity is this one: https://www.bluettipower.com.au/prod...-power-station. Has 2x 12V DC ports to power your mount and Asiair.

Another reputable brand is this one: https://au.ecoflow.com/. I use one of their River power stations and I am pretty happy.

Hope above helps.

[DancingStar (Tony)]

Thank you all very much for taking the time to answer my questions

[Wilso]

Lithium batteries are a game changer!
You can use 90% of the rated capacity compared to just 50-60% of agm gel batteries. So they were right in suggesting 50-60 amp Hr lithium battery, which is so light compared to your agm. Go a little bigger if it won’t break the budget.
You just need a compatible charger for lithium also.

Hope this helps, heaps of info on YouTube!

[AstroViking (Steve)]

If it helps, have a look at the caravan / 4wd online stores as they usually carry a big range of power supplies.