Full Review of the Pecron Q3000S Solar Generator Power Station

There are many different companies and brands that have started to push out different solar generators and power stations. Solar generators are simply becoming more popular and as well more powerful. Pecron has been around for many years and has had many different products that they’ve launched over that time.

The Pecron Q3000S solar generator power station is their biggest unit they’ve released so far and has quite an impressive battery capacity. In fact, it has one of the largest battery capacities of any solar generator in terms of base-sized batteries, or in other words, the standard battery size that comes in the unit.

In this full review of the Pecron Q3000S we will go through all the specs and find out if this is a unit worth looking into.

Battery

Featuring a 3,024wh Lithium NMC (lithium-ion) battery the Pecron Q3000S can run quite a bit of equipment for a long time. For example, a typical home fridge will use about 80-100wh per hour of normal use. That means the Pecron Q3000S can run a standard home fridge for approximately 30 to 40 hours without stop and not needing any solar power. That’s incredible.

And because it is a 24v system, not a typical 12v system it will be a bit more efficient than normal solar generators that use 12v battery configurations. This is one of the big features that everyone has loved in their Titan solar generator since the Titan was the first unit to use 24v instead of 12v in the market.

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For some reason though, the battery inside the Pecron Q3000s is truly only capable of pushing out about 1,700w off of it continuously before it begins to have issues. That’s not very good since the inverter is rated to 2,000w continuous output. Although many people have not had any issues with it only being able to push out 1,700w continuously because most people aren’t using 1,700w continuously.

The Pecron Q3000S battery will last longer than most solar generator batteries since it’s rated to last up to 1,000 lifecycles before it reaches 80% efficiency. That just means that after it’s been fully drained and recharged 1,000 times the battery will have about 80% capacity left in it. At that point, it will no longer be a 3,024wh battery but basically a 2,420wh battery. Either way, most people don’t use these to live off of full time and so it will take years if not decades to reach that point.

The battery will stay charged for up to 6 months but after that, it needs to be plugged in and recharged. There is no way to add more batteries to the Pecron Q3000S.

Inverter

As mentioned before the Pecron Q3000S has a 2,000w inverter that is rated to surge up to 4,000w if necessary. It is a pure sine wave which means it is capable of running any type of electronic or device just like you can at home off of the power grid.

Even though it has a 2,000w pure sine wave inverter, the battery doesn’t seem to be strong enough to keep up with the 2,000w demand as previously mentioned. It should be considered a 1,700w output unit since that’s all the battery can muster up when needed.

It’s not as bad as the Inergy Apex which has a 1,500w inverter but can only push out 800w non-stop until the battery is depleted. That’s basically a 50% reduction in power usage from what is advertised. But Inergy is releasing their new solar generator called the “Flex” and they now say that the 1,500w inverter will push out 1,500w continuously until the battery reaches 20%. Needless to say, Pecron has done a better job than Inergy in that regard of matching the right battery to the inverter.

Still, nothing beats the long-proven Titan with its 3,000w inverter that can truly push out 3,000 until the batteries are empty. Not to mention that the Titan has 2,000 cycles per battery which are twice as many as the Pecron Q3000S.

Charging

One of the most important features of a solar generator is the ability to recharge quickly. Most often, solar generators are compared to gas generators. During an emergency, a gas generator uses a lot of fuel and there are often fuel shortages during emergencies. But if you have fuel on hand then refueling the gas generator only takes a minute or two to fill up the gas tank. This is why a solar generator needs to be able to recharge quickly since people are depending on it every day that the power is out during an emergency. That or they’re using it for power while camping, RVing, or doing some large activity.

The Pecron Q3000S sadly does not have a fast solar rechargeability. It doesn’t even have an MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracking) charge controller which is pretty basic these days. It has a PWM (older tech) charge controller and has a charge parameter of 30-40v & 10a. The voltage rating is quite slim which makes it really hard to find solar panels that fit within that charge parameter.

Either way, once you find a solar panel configuration that will fit that charge parameter you will still be maxed out to 300w of solar input. Sadly, since PWM charge controllers are not very efficient it’s next to impossible to get the full 300w of solar power to go in. Either way, it’s rated to 300w solar input.

Since the battery is just over 3,000wh and the solar input is 300w, the best charge time possible is 10 hours. That is a minimum of two days to recharge by solar panels while not running anything off of the Pecron Q3000S. It’ll take two days because there are 5 solar peak hours per day on average in the USA. That means the Pecron Q3000S is capable of making up to 1,500wh of battery capacity per day.

This is the biggest shortcoming of the Pecron Q3000S since it cannot recharge quickly. That means that because it has a large battery it is a good option to have a battery pack that can run essentials for a day or more, but beyond that, it’ll be hard.

If the power is out for 3 days, the Pecron Q3000S will have run out of power long before then. The only saving grace is that most people won’t drain a 3,024wh battery down every single day if they’re just running a fridge at home. This means if they can get 300w of solar input then they can stretch the battery to last a few days which may be enough to get them through the blackout.

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This is why so many people prefer the Titan solar generator because it has 2,000w of solar input. It can be fully recharged within a few hours tops while still running lots of equipment. Meaning that it can last for months on end if necessary which is great for people preparing for long-term camping, RV life, or long-term power outage like an EMP.

Since the Pecron Q3000S uses a not-so-common aviation connector, it’ll be a little trick to replace the solar charging adapter if it’s ever lost.

Outlets

The Pecron Q3000S is a simple system in terms of outlets in that it has three 110v AC outlets like what people use at home. You can run a fridge, freezer, microwave, toaster, coffee machine, CPAP machine, small A/C unit, hairdryer, or whatever you want on those plugs since they can push out 1,700w nonstop. Of course, you can only do that as long as the battery lasts.

With one cigarette lighter, 12v DC plug and two USB A plugs it’s easy to run basic electronics as well and recharge tablets, phones, and small electronics. There are no fast charging USB C plugs for newer electronics that have the extra fast charging capability.

No 30a RV plug is included either since this system is not designed for RVs nor would I recommend it be used for RVs since it can’t recharge quickly from solar panels. Weighing in at 62lbs it’ll be quite the beast to take inside the RV and put somewhere easily too.

Pricing

To compare all solar generators to each other fairly I came up with a special way to break down the total watts, watt-hours, and cost of the three most important parts of a solar generator. The three parts are battery capacity, inverter output, and solar input. All three of those specs divided by the total cost of the unit gives us a “unit wattage” price.

The Pecron Q3000S costs about $2,199 typically but sometimes there are coupons but not too often. When we take the $2,199 price tag and divide that into those important specs we get a total price of $3.05/unit wattage. That may not sound like a lot at first but when you compare it to the #1 rated the best price per unit wattage solar generator, it sounds bad.

The Titan is the #1 unit for its capability as well as its price. The Titan breaks down to be only $1.33/unit wattage. That’s 57% cheaper for what you get than the Pecron Q3000S! Needless to say, I don’t think the Pecron Q3000S is truly a highly recommended unit because you’ll end up paying A LOT more than you would for something like a Titan which is far stronger.

At minimum that second-best solar generator currently is the Bluetti AC200P and that breaks down to $1.58/unit wattage and is very comparable to the Pecron Q3000S. The AC200P has a 2,000wh battery, 2,000w inverter, and 700w solar input. It has a smaller battery, to begin with, but works much better than the Pecron Q3000S.

Conclusion

There are definitely better options than the Pecron Q3000S. Just by this review and looking at many other reviews, it’s easy to see that it is a decent unit, but nothing amazing. The only great thing about the Pecron Q3000S is that is has a very large battery, to begin with so it will last quite sometime before needing a charge, depending on what is being run off of it.

I would definitely spend just a little bit more and have far more options and capabilities with the Titan solar generator over the Pecron Q3000S.

Since Pecron has been around for such a long time I am sure they will release new units over the years and maybe they will eventually catch on to what people really want and need. But for now, they’re still a bit behind.