Charging from mains is purely convenience… a ful charge from eksom of my 640Wh battery will cost just over R1 in power costs
I am doing this build for myself. Part of me wants to learn about electronics (and I find solar very interesting) but the whole solar thing is turning out to be rather expensive (to be independent of eskom).
Another reason I am building this is for a friend that needs backup power for a small one man business that would not want to spend extra on a solar panels, but in the end it would seem like the ratel would be the better option. I though I might be able to build a solar powered version of the ratel with way more battery storage and maybe even a small inverter that could power the TV for netflix.