Mini Battery bank

[Vorg]

After watching vids and streams, I see the station battery is a fairly advanced part that requires a lot of things in place before it can be made. So what about a battery bank that is like the battery charger, but gives priority to sending power on and allows power to be pulled from any plugged in batteries? May not hold a lot of power, but could provide a little buffer for incoming power.

After thinking about it, you could just use the current charger. Add an output port to it with a couple of switches. When the output port is on, it would give power priority to the output port. Else it would give priority to the batteries like normal. A second switch would allow it to use power from any plugged in batteries when there was a power shortage.

I guess you really wouldn't even need an output port since power could flow both ways on the same port. But there may be cases where you would want a seperate output if isolating the buffered power.

[Hardly]

This sounds very similar to the what the Area Power Controller does (you start with one in the supplies boxes) - among other things, it effectively acts as a UPS, buffering demand with capacity based on the battery cell you put in it.

[Vorg]

I thought that battery was only to keep the APC powered

[Hardly]

No, it definitely continues to supply power from the battery, that's what makes it so useful for moderating the output of the solar panel, let's you keep working after dark for a bit even if you don't have the solid fuel generator going.

[Vorg]

So kind of what I was thinking. But with a battery bank, you would have several which should be cheaper to make starting out then a station station battery.