One of my favorite small appliances to use in a home is a blender. Blenders are awesome. They can help you make smoothies and milkshakes with ice cream made right in your own kitchen. A Blender’s power consumption depends on the motor’s power output. The higher this number is, the more powerful your blender is and more efficient at crushing and blending ingredients.
To make smoothies, you need a blender that can handle frozen fruit, ice, and other solid ingredients. But if you’re blending liquids, then a lower-wattage model will do the trick. Most blenders are between 300 and 600 watts. But how much solar power will you need to run a blender? We take you through the numbers in this article.
Solar Power for a 400-Watt Blender
A blender will require different power outputs depending on its capabilities and tasks at hand. Blending frozen fruit will require as much power as running a microwave in your kitchen. But if you just making a smoothie from fruit you just need 400 Watts of power.
To run a blender for an hour using solar power you’ll need a 200-Watt solar panel paired with a 200Ah LiFePO4 battery and an inverter that is at least 500 watts. To run the same blender for around 8 minutes you will need a 100-watt solar panel a 50Ah Battery and an inverter rated at least 500 watts.
We take you through the numbers.
Blender Watt-hour Requirement
Electricity is typically measured in watt-hours (Wh). To calculate the watt-hours used by an appliance, you need to multiply the wattage of the appliance by the number of hours it is used.
For example, if you want to use a blender for 8 minutes, you will need 53.3 watt-hours of electricity. We take a look at this later in the article.
You can use the same calculations to determine for a high wattage 1000-watt blender you’ll need 1000 watt-hours or 1 Kwh. Almost the same as a small air conditioner.
First, let’s take a look at how much solar power you’ll need to run the blender for a full hour. You’ll need 400Wh of energy.
What Size Solar Panel for a Blender?
To determine the number of solar panels needed for a blender, we divide the watt-hours required by the number of sun-hours we get in a day. To make this calculation, use an average of 4 hours which could be high peak hours in the afternoon between 12 and 4. If you get more than 4 hours of sun per day, then use that number.
400Wh/4= 100 Watts
A 100 Watt solar panel will be enough to provide 400Wh in the course of the day. You can then double this number to 200 watts as solar panels are not that efficient and you’ll be using a battery to store the excess power. You also won’t be plugging your blender directly into your solar panel and you’ll need a battery.
What Size Battery do you need for the Blender?
To find the size of the battery, you divide the watt-hours by the voltage. In the case, you have a 12-volt system, so you divide 400Wh by 12V and for the 24V system, you divide by 24V.
400/12 = 33.33 Ah
400/24 = 16.66 Ah
This does not tell you how much power your battery needs, but how much power the blender will pull through your inverter. A 12-volt system, for example, should have a battery that can safely provide up to 33 amps of current. A 24-volt system should have a battery capable of providing up to 16 amps of current per hour.
A 200Ah LiFePO4 battery can safely provide 40 amps per hour for a 12v system and 24v 100Ah LiFePO4 battery can provide 20 amps per hour safely for the blender.
So in that’s why a 200Ah battery and a 200 Watt solar panel are enough to run a blender for an hour. But we don’t need a full hour to make a smoothie; a few minutes will be enough. Again you may already have a system in place. So can it run your blender for a few minutes?
Inverter
An inverter will convert the DC power from the battery to AC power that is used by the blender. Note that you need an inverter that’s rated higher than your blender. So you need an inverter that is at least 500 watts.
Solar Power to Run a Blender for 8 minutes
As stated earlier you need around 53.3 Watt-hours of energy to run a blender for 8 minutes. Since we are using this in the course of an hour we can equate this with a solar panel. So in this case a 50-watt solar panel will do the job. We always encourage oversizing solar panels because of conversion losses and changing weather conditions so we can take this to 100-watt.
To determine the size of the battery needed to run a blender for 8 minutes per day, you can calculate the required watt-hours (Wh) and convert it to amp-hours (Ah). To calculate Ah, divide the watt-hours by the voltage of the battery bank. For example, if the watt-hours needed are 53.3 and the battery bank voltage is 12v, the required Amp-hours needed through the inverter is around 4.44 amp-hours.
(53.3 Wh / 12v = 4.4444 Ah).
Again because of conversion losses as you run the power through an inverter and wires you should oversize this again to around 10 amp-hours. This is not to say that this is the battery size required but as the battery capacity reserve needed to run your blender.
Can you run a blender directly off a battery?
Off-grid blenders are also an option if you looking for a battery-powered option. They work on batteries and don’t need to be plugged into a power outlet. Because they’re portable, you can take them with you wherever you go.
There are also some types of blenders that don’t require any electricity. The most common type is a hand blender. This is usually a small, handheld device that comes with two or three blades and a manual crank. You can use it to quickly chop up food for cooking or for mixing drinks, as well as for blending soups and sauces.
If you’re an avid camper or hiker, an off-grid blender is a perfect addition to your gear.
Conclusion
Blenders are a must-have for people who enjoy blending smoothies, shakes, and other drinks. If you are off-grid and using solar power or looking to use solar power a blender does not require that much power to run. If you are not ready to hook up your blender to your solar system you can also get alternatives that work on batteries and don’t need to be plugged into a power outlet. There are also other types of blenders that don’t need electricity.