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Wow! Just read the whole thread and watched most of the videos. I had thought about doing this before. Nice to see that I can pick these puppies up for cheaper than I had thought.
Here's a couple of thoughts I don't think have been discussed yet on this thread.
For starters, (is that a pun?), where I life it gets super cold. Like -40° F (-40° C) cold. There are several problems with running batteries. The lead acid ones of course have a hard time putting out amperage at those temperatures. I'd bet LiFePo4s probably do to. Not only that, but if the lead acid batteries drain completely out then they turn to water on the inside, freeze, and can even bust open the battery! Lithium batteries normally aren't rated for that cold of weather either. So the idea of ultra capacitors that can put out full amperage even at those kinds of temperatures is really appealing to me.
But what about the self discharge rate. Solar panels with a foot of snow on top probably won't work. One idea I had was to install some sort of permanent magnet alternator that I could hand crank to charge up the caps. Another idea would be to have a battery connected by a diode to the charging system so that it only charges. I could have an emergency switch (probably with a resistor in series) to connect it to the caps if my caps drain too much.
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