Glossary
Glossary
One line per term, then a link to where it matters. New to all this? Start with the power basics guide.
- AWG (wire gauge)
- American Wire Gauge. Smaller numbers are thicker wire: 10 AWG is much thicker than 18 AWG. More
- Derate (solar)
- The factor for real-world losses: heat, dirt, angle, wiring and charging. We use 0.75 of nameplate × sun hours. More
- Duty cycle
- The share of the day something is on. A Mini on 10 hours a day has a duty cycle of about 42%. More
- E-marked cable
- A USB-C cable with a chip that tells the charger it can carry 5 A. Without one, sources limit current to 3 A (60 W at 20 V). More
- Inverter
- Turns battery DC into 120 V AC for things that plug into a wall outlet. Costs energy, and draws some power even with nothing plugged in. More
- Inverter efficiency
- The share of battery power that comes out as AC. The rest becomes heat. It is lower at light loads. More
- LiFePO4
- Lithium iron phosphate: a battery chemistry common in 12 V and power-station batteries. Long cycle life, but it must not be charged below freezing. More
- mAh
- Milliamp-hours at the battery's cell voltage. Convert to Wh: mAh × 3.6 ÷ 1,000 for most lithium power banks. More
- PD profile
- One voltage/current combination a USB-C source offers (for example 20 V at 5 A). A 65 W bank tops out at a lower profile. More
- Peak sun hours
- A day's sunlight expressed as hours of full-strength sun (1 kWh per square meter). December has far fewer than July in most of the US. More
- Power station
- A battery box with a built-in inverter, USB-C, 12 V outlets and a charger. Sometimes sold as a 'solar generator'. More
- Provenance badge
- The tag on every number on this site saying where it came from: owner test, official spec, community report, vendor claim or planning assumption. More
- Pure sine wave
- An inverter output shaped like utility AC. Electronics' power supplies run best on it; 'modified sine' inverters can make them run hot or misbehave. More
- Sleep schedule
- A Starlink app setting that turns the dish off on a timer to save power. No internet or snow melt while asleep. More
- Snow melt
- The dish heating itself to clear snow. It raises power use; the app has Off, Automatic and Pre-heat modes. More
- UPS
- Uninterruptible power supply: keeps devices running with no gap when the mains fails, usually for minutes to an hour. More
- Usable Wh
- The share of a battery's label Wh you can actually draw out, after conversion losses and the low-voltage cutoff. Always less than the label. More
- USB-C PD (Power Delivery)
- The USB-C standard where charger and device agree on a voltage and current. The Mini needs a source that can supply 100 W at 20 V and 5 A. More
- Voltage drop
- Volts lost along a wire because of its resistance. Longer and thinner wire, and more current, mean more drop. It matters most at 12 V. More
- Watt (W)
- How fast power is used right now. Volts × amps. More
- Watt-hour (Wh)
- How much energy a battery holds or a device uses over time: watts × hours. 40 W for 3 hours = 120 Wh. More