Hysolis MPS3K Solar Generator Review

Nearly no one has heard about the Hysolis MPS3K solar generator that has been on the market for quite a while. And even more, hardly anyone has had a solid review on the MPS3K. It is a direct competitor to what has been considered the reigning champion, the Titan. The other main competitors are the Bluetti AC300 and the EcoFlow Delta Pro solar generators.

How does the MPS3K compare to these other strong solar power stations? Does the Hysolis MPS3K have enough power and expandability to be able to run all essential equipment during a blackout or emergency? It definitely looks like it can, but let’s find out for sure.

It should be said upfront that this is definitely a very good unit and is extremely powerful. In many cases much more powerful than other solar generators. But that comes at a cost, and not a financial cost. It comes at a cost of convenience. Not only is it a heavy unit, but it is less user-friendly than other solar generators. For some people that is a good thing because they don’t like the bells and whistles of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, wireless apps, and firmware updates.

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Comparison

So how does it compare directly to the other units on the market? It’s definitely top of the list. The MPS3K is up there with the Titan, Delta Pro, and AC300. Here is how they stack up against each other:

Inverter: MPS3K 3,000w | Titan 3,000w | Delta Pro 3,600w | AC300 3,000w

Base Battery Capacity: MPS3K 4,500wh | Titan 2,000wh | Delta Pro 3,600wh | AC300 3,072wh

Max Battery Expansion Capacity: MPS3K 27,000wh | Titan 270,000wh | Delta Pro 10,800wh | AC300 12,288wh

Base Solar Input: MPS3K 1,500w | Titan 2,000w | Delta Pro 1,600w | AC300 2,400w

Expanded Max Solar Input: MPS3K 3,900w | Titan 2,000w | Delta Pro 1,600w | AC300 3,000w

Customer Service: MPS3K, Very Good | Titan, Good | Delta Pro, Good | AC300, Very Poor

Base Price (Varies): MPS3K $3,595 | Titan $3,395 | Delta Pro $3,599 | AC300 $3,699

Price Per Unit Wattage: MPS3K $0.97 | Titan $1.51 | Delta Pro $1.42 | AC300 $1.84

The price of the MPS3K alone is amazing since you get nearly all the same main benefits of the other solar generators, but the MPS3K is below one dollar for the price per unit wattage. The price per unit wattage is a combination of comparing the inverter, battery, and solar input. Too often units are only measured against the battery, but that’s only one key feature of a solar generator which is why I compare them against those three features. For the features you get, it’s literally twice as good as the AC300.

In terms of how it compares to all of these other Heavycap units, it’s pretty much a winner in nearly every way. The 3,000w inverter is plenty strong. It doesn’t have the best maximum battery expandability but it’s extremely rare anyone ever has more than 10,000wh of battery. And it is unparalleled in solar input when expanded with extra batteries. And for that price, it’s basically unbeatable.

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Power Output

The Hysolis MPS3K has a powerful 3,000 pure sine wave inverter. It has been found by nearly all solar generator users that 3,000 watts of output power is plenty for most people’s needs. It will only do 120v power, it cannot connect to another MPS3K in order to make 240v power. That will be a feature of the Hysolis Apollo which will be the big brother to the MPS3K.

3,000w of output capacity is plenty to run fridges, freezers, portable/window A/C units, lights, fans, microwaves, toasters, coffee makers, TV, Wi-Fi, and much more. It has the same size inverter as the Titan solar generator which has proven to be a very powerful solar generator for years. The Bluetti AC300 also has the same inverter capacity. The only solar generator of the same class that has a larger inverter is the EcoFlow Delta Pro with an inverter output capacity of 3,600w. In my many years of using solar generators, 3,000w has always been enough for everything I need it to do, so it’s not a problem that it’s not the largest inverter in the industry for Heavycap power stations.

It can surge up to 6,000w for those large inductive loads that are often found with heavy-duty power tools such as chop saws, air compressors, and electric drills.

The Hysolis MPS3K has four 120v (Nema 5-15R) house-style outlets. It also has one RV plug (TT-30R) that is rated to output up to 25a continuously. It includes a 12v DC cigarette lighter plug as well as multiple USB charging ports.

Battery

The Hysolis MPS3K uses an extremely large battery pack made out of Lithium NMC batteries. It has a total internal battery capacity of 4,500wh which is the largest of any solar generator’s internal battery capacity currently on the market. Because it has a 4,500wh battery and the inverter is 3,000w it is literally impossible to drain this battery faster than a .67 C rate.

A .67 C rate means that even if the max output was being used on the Hysolis MPS3K it wouldn’t hurt the battery. It means the battery can never be drained really hard which greatly increases the life cycles to help it last longer. It easily has 2,000 life cycles even though it’s a Lithium NMC battery.

Typically, Lithium NMC batteries do not have great life cycles and that is one of their biggest drawbacks. But they are much lighter than LiFePo4 batteries which makes them more portable. LiFePo4 batteries are heavier than Lithium NMC but have many more life cycles. Since the MPS3Ks battery is so large, it can easily handle many years of non-stop use and not degrade as fast.

It is a 44v system which is basically the same as a 48v battery system which is considered to be the most efficient way to use batteries when converting to AC 120v power. It’s much easier to convert 44v power to 120v power than 12v power to 120v power. Most batteries on the market are made in 12v which means it takes a lot thicker cabling and much more work for the inverter to get 120v. Having a higher battery voltage means you have a higher inverter efficiency which leads to getting more power out of the battery than a lower voltage battery.

But that’s not even the best part! The MPS3K can easily add five more batteries of 4,500wh each. That means it can easily get up to 27,000wh of total battery capacity! That’s massive! In my experience, that is easily enough power to run emergency essential items such as a fridge, freezer, lights, fans, and other appliances/devices for 4+ days even without any solar panels connected.

To add the extra Hysolis MPS3K expansion batteries is as simple as making sure the batteries are within 3v of each other, turning off the breaker for the batteries, connecting the new batteries, connecting the communication wire, changing the connection toggles on each unit (as shown in the user manual), hold the reset buttons on each unit and then turn on the breakers. And just like that it’s easy to go from 4,500wh to 9,000wh or up to 27,000wh depending on how many batteries are added.

To put that into perspective, having 27,000wh of total battery capacity is nearly the same as having 13 additional Titan expansion batteries attached to a Titan ($18,135 in batteries). The Delta Pro can only expand up to 10,800wh of battery capacity ($5,398 in batteries) at its maximum for a single Delta Pro unit. Not even the Bluetti AC300 can expand as high as the Hysolis MPS3K. The AC300 can expand up to 12,288wh of maxed-out battery capacity ($6,297 in batteries) for a single AC300 unit. The MPS3K maxes out at 27,000wh whereas the Titan can expand to as many batteries as are needed. But from my experience, it is rare for most people to go above 10,000wh.

A Hysolis MPS3K expansion battery is only $2,860 per battery. For a total of $14,300 for five extra batteries, the system will have more storage capacity than any other competitor. This is incredible, less cost per watt-hour, and more capacity, that’s a true win/win.

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Charging

But it still gets better. The Hysolis MPS3k reviews as one of the very top-recommended units for 120v power because of how fast it can recharge from solar and wall charging. The standard wall charging speed is 1,000w which is quite fast. The only unit that has a faster wall charger is the Delta Pro at a max of 1,800w. All of the other solar generators have slow-wall chargers.

The big benefit to having a really fast wall charger is being able to fully recharge the system quickly off of a gas generator. I personally use a propane/gasoline generator as a backup to my solar generators. In the event of really bad weather or other issues where I cannot get a good charge from solar panels, I can recharge the system in under 5 hours from 0% to 100% using the wall charger. And because the battery is 4,500wh it won’t charge it too fast which would reduce the life cycle.

When it comes to solar charging it has an impressive 1,500w solar input through an MPPT charge controller. The charge parameter is 60-150v and 30a. Very similar to the Titan’s solar input of 35-145v and 30a. That means it’s extremely easy to over-panel the Hysolis MPS3K solar generator. It’s easy to connect as much as 2,000w or more in solar panels to the unit so that it is making full power earlier in the morning and later into the afternoon. That is the power over-paneling, it increases the number of solar peak hours in a day to more than 5 hours. This makes it much easier to get a full charge even when weather conditions are not very good.

But wait, there is more! Not only does the MPS3K have a 1,500w MPPT charge controller which is great on its own. But it’s possible to add up to 2,400w of solar panels to each expansion battery! This is unheard of at this level. The Bluetti AC300 batteries are able to add 200w of solar to each battery, but that doesn’t even come close to the 2,400w that can go into the MPS3K Expansion batteries.

That means that with one expansion battery the MPS3K can have a total of 3,900w going into it from solar. You can only add one additional MPPT charge controller because when you add multiple batteries you use those ports to expand. So once more batteries are added there’s only one extra port for another charge controller. The only requirement is to get the Hysolis MPPT charge controller for each battery. The Titan has had the largest solar input of any system for many years at 2,000w of solar input. That has now been very excessively beaten with the MPS3K’s capability to add more solar to each battery.

The Hysolis MPS3K has a great solar input on its own, not to mention adding more power to each expansion battery is incredible.

It also does have the ability to charge from a 12v DC outlet such as a cigarette lighter port but since those can only put out up to 120w maximum it is unlikely that anyone would want to recharge their MPS3K using a 12v DC outlet.

 

Pros

The Hysolis MPS3K inverter is plenty strong for everything it needs to do. The battery capacity is good on its own, but then still has the ability to add quite a bit of battery capacity. The solar input is incredible. 1,500w of solar input is plenty for this system cause then it can be charged in just 3 hours but adding even more solar with the extra batteries is a massive advantage that no other system on the market has.

Click Here for the Best Price on the Hysolis MPS3K

Cons

The setup and user experience are definitely the hardest parts of the MPS3K. It looks very basic, doesn’t have a ton of info to give out, and putting it together with extra batteries takes a close look at the user manual. When it’s been done once it all makes sense. But doing it the first time to set it up takes a little patience for sure.

It’s also very heavy, at 121lbs, this is a tough one to move around with just one person. It is 100% recommended to get the moving cart option with this unit because it will make life much easier to move it around.

Conclusion

The Hysolis MPS3K beats all of the other Heavycap-sized solar generators in most ways. It has a very strong inverter, massive battery expandability, a massive solar input capability, and an amazing price.

I don’t know that at this time it can be beaten. For so long the Titan was the king, is that still the case? It’s debatable, but pretty much yes it beats it! The MPS3K absolutely gives it a serious run for the money.

What I know for sure is that should be taken very seriously when looking at backup power. And before a blackout, hurricane, flood, fire, or any other major issue arises, you want this unit in the garage ready to go for all of your backup power needs. I would not wait until it’s too late to get this because we never know what the supply chain issues will bring next.

Continue ReadingHysolis MPS3K Solar Generator Review

Is the Bluetti AC300 a Worthless Amazing Solar Generator?

There is no question that most people who are looking into powerful solar generators are considering the Bluetti AC300. On paper, it looks absolutely incredible. Its expandability is great, it can make 240v power, it can be monitored wirelessly, and even has really long-lasting LiFePo4 battery cells.

Then why is it that I do not recommend this power station? That’s a great question and I will explain why here in this full review. But if you’re looking for a short answer, I’ll save you some time.

The main reasons I do not like the Bluetti AC300 solar generator are first the idle power consumption rate, the screen has multiple issues, and the efficiency varies greatly between units.

But is it all bad? Definitely not. There are many great features like a powerful inverter, expandable batteries, a true UPS setting, and really good solar input. But is that enough to make it a considerable option? Only you can make that decision. For me though, not so much. Let me explain.

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Output Power

The Bluetti AC300 has a 3,000w pure sine wave inverter that is capable of surging up to 6,000w. An inverter of that size is plenty powerful for nearly everyone’s needs for back up power supply. Even for a 30a service RV, van or small off-grid cabin 3,000w of continuous output is plenty to run all the essentials minus a 240v well pump.

The Bluetti AC300 solar generator can link two units together and make 240v power which then allows it to run things like well pumps and electric dryers. No solar generator can do central A/C so the AC300 is exempt from having that as a downside. But having 240v power and 6,000w of continuous output power is very good for small off-grid living or for emergency power.

Having the ability to make 240v power and using that in conjunction with a transfer/interlock switch means you don’t have to run extension cords to every room, fridge, freezer, and device you want to run which makes life less of a hassle when the power is out. You’ll need an electrician to install the transfer switch but that is a very simple task for nearly any electrician and isn’t overly expensive either.

Whether it’s running a fridge and a couple of freezers or powering up a shop to run a miter saw and a table saw, the Bluetti AC300 can absolutely do it. But is it still good enough?

The biggest issue that no one seems to be talking about with the Bluetti AC300 in any reviews is the idle power consumption rate. IPCR is how much power an inverter uses to simply be turned on. You can think of it as turning on your car on and being in park. The engine is running, which means it’s using gasoline, but you’re not going anywhere.

On the Bluetti AC300 it has an IPCR of about 64 watts. Other solar generators of similar size in this comparison chart have a much lower IPCR. For example, the Delta Pro, a main competitor to the AC300, only uses about 13 watts when turned on. That means the AC300 is using about 5x the amount of power just to have the inverter running but not even doing anything. Also keep in mind, if you turn on the Bluetooth receiver to use with the app, the IPCR goes up to nearly 100w! That’s a lot of draining.

In a 24 hour period, the Bluetti AC300 will consume about 1,536wh of battery capacity. That’s about 50% of the overall battery capacity on the AC300. It’s used up, for no good reason. Now on the plus side, the AC300 has an auto shut off function where if it’s not running anything for about 8 hours it will just shut off. In those 8 hours will use up 512wh of the battery, about 17% of it. But the bigger issue is, that many people need to run things like a sump pump, which only turns on when water fills a tank in the ground and then the pump pushes that water out to the city or septic system. They sometimes don’t run all day, or for long periods of time until they get filled up. This is just one example, but many items don’t constantly run which means the AC300 could turn off, and then there’s sewage back filling in the basement and there’s a much bigger mess to deal with. That would only happen if the tank got filled and the AC300 was off, not running that pump. But, if it’s happened once, it can happen again.

The second big issue with the inverter is the efficiency. All inverters do for the most part is convert battery energy to usable energy for your devices. Because there is a voltage change in doing that, there is an efficiency power loss. Meaning if you have 100wh of battery, you may only get to use 90wh of it, because the other 10wh were just burned up in the form of heat to convert from one voltage to another.

The Bluetti AC300’s inverter efficiency has varied greatly according to multiple reviews and posts on forums. One person will get 87% efficiency out of their unit, and another person will get 72% efficiency. That’s a massive spread. 87% is quite good for most systems, but 72% is quite bad. How do you know which one you’re going to get? Will Prowse in his own review got a higher number than the review done by Tom from HoboTech which was as low as 72%. This causes major concerns since you could be getting a poor-quality unit and not even know it. It’s basically a lottery system if you get a good unit. That’s quite the risk.

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Battery Power

The batteries that go with the AC300 are called B300 batteries. They are quite nice on the AC300 because they are high-grade LiFePo4 or Lithium Iron Phosphate. They last a very long time but are a bit heavier than Lithium NMC/Lithium Ion. But the LiFePo4 batteries for the AC300 are rated to 3,500 lifecycles which is very impressive. That means it can go from fully charged to empty and then fully charged again once a day for 10 years before the batteries have any noticeable degradation. After doing that for 10 years straight, which no one does, the batteries will be 80% efficient. Meaning they’ll have 80% of the original usable capacity from when they were new.

But there have been multiple reports now in reviews of people saying they found out one or more of the cells in their B300 have gone bad. How is the average Joe who isn’t an electrical engineer or who doesn’t play with solar stuff all of the time going to know that their battery is faulty? They probably will never know. And then sometime, maybe even years down the road when they need it the most that battery may just stop working all together. That’s a big concern for most people.

The Bluetti AC300 requires you to use proprietary Bluetti batteries. EcoFlow does the same thing with their Delta Pro and other systems. The Titan is the only solar generator where you can use any other battery with it as long as it’s a 24v battery which makes sense.

Each B300 battery is 3,074wh in capacity. There is no battery built into the inverter of the AC300. So if you get just an AC300, it will come with one battery that attaches to the inverter with a heavy duty cable. But each AC300 can have up to four B300 batteries connected to it for a total battery capacity of 12,296wh which is quite large. And even better yet, if two AC300 units are linked together for 240v power, you’re able to have 4 batteries on each system which maxes the total battery capacity to 24,592wh which is absolutely incredible. The expandability of the batteries is extremely impressive.

The Delta Pro can have two extra batteries per unit which makes its maxed our setup with two Delta Pros capable of having 21,600wh of batteries capacity all connected together. So the Bluetti AC300 definitely wins in that area, but we have to keep in mind that a lot of excess power from the batteries simply gets burned off just by using the AC300 so it may not actually have much more usable power than a Delta Pro.

Also, by comparison, the Titan can have up to 270,000wh of battery capacity connected. Not that anyone would ever do that, but it’s so much easier to add batteries to the Titan as far as having a large capacity than any other unit so far. And the Titan can use more Titan batteries, or other brands of batteries.

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Input Power

Out of all the other solar generators in the heavycap and ultracap size categories, the Bluetti AC300 has some of the best solar charging rates out there. Each AC300 can input up to 2,400w of solar into it. This part is a little confusing because there is only one solar input port. But the Bluetti AC300 has a nifty adapter than has two MC4 connections built into it. The single solar input plug in reality has two inputs built into it. This is a great way they saved space and kept things simple for users.

There are two MPPT charge controllers inside and each one is rated to work from 12-150v and up to 12a to get a total of 1,200w into each one. That is how it gets 2,400w of solar input. This is something that would’ve been incredible in the Delta Pro because it only has one solar input maxed at 1,600w but that’s still quite a bit of solar input for the Delta Pro.

It’s pretty easy to get 1,200w connected to the AC300 but because of it’s really low 12a parameter, it’s difficult to get a good over-paneled setup on it. It’s definitely possible, but just keep in mind over-paneling isn’t great. For example if you were using 100w panels, each solar panel is going to put out about 20v and 6a. That means I can connect seven 100w panels together to be at 140v and 5a with a total input of 700w. Then I can double that and connect that to the unit for 1,400w connected to a single charge controller. Then double that again for a total of 28, 100w solar panels for 2,800w of solar input. I am able to over-panel the system in that way but it’s only over-paneled by 400w which isn’t huge.

One of the extra cool features though is that it’s possible to add an additional 200w of solar going into each battery that’s added to the system in order to maximize the solar input and increase the charge speed. That’s a cool feature that only the Hysolis MPS3K has been able to do in the past.

By the way, make sure if you’re using the two solar inputs to change the settings on the screen to PV charging on both solar input ports, as well as turn off “PV Parallel Enable” so if one set of panels is a different voltage than the other, the unit will continue to charge from solar. Many people were not getting a good charge from their solar panels according to different reviews and that’s how you should be able to fix it.

The wall charging speed is programmable which is a really nice feature. If you need to charge it up really fast, you can change it to 15a for a normal house wall outlet. If you want to trickle charge the system, you can go as low as 1a charge speed. If you have a high-speed charging outlet like a 30a outlet you can go up to 30a charging speed for the AC300 which is incredible, but those plugs are extremely rare and nearly no one will ever get to use that feature.

If you’re really in a rush to charge, the AC300 can be charged with both AC (wall outlet) power and solar power at the exact same time. And of course, it has pass-through charging meaning you can charge the system and use it at the same time.

Things to Know About

The battery expansion cables are a big hassle for pretty much everyone. Nearly every review out there mentions that they don’t like the big bulky and unwieldy cables for the batteries.

There are a lot of outlets on the Bluetti AC300 which makes it very versatile. It has a 12v 20a cigarette lighter DC port as well as a 24v 10a cigarette lighter port. Six 120v 20a oultets (house outlets) and one 120v 25a TT-30 RV plug to run your RV off of. There are a number of USB ports as well for mobile devices and even two wireless charging pads on the top of the unit.

It does have a car charger that you can charge up the AC300 from a cigarette lighter port in your car, but it only charges around 120w at the most which means it’s a very slow trickle charge and no one uses those DC charging ports hardly anymore.

Pros

There are some really big wins for the Bluetti AC300. It has a powerful inverter:

Powerful 3,000w Pure Sine Wave inverter.

240v Capable for running nearly the whole house.

3,500 cycles on the LiFePo4 batteries.

UPS setting to supply immediate backup power for essential devices.

A large 2,400w solar input through two MPPT charge controllers.

Pass-through charging to run equipment while the unit is charging.

Dual charging from solar and wall power at the same time.

The batteries are separate from the inverter, so it makes the more portable

It has a Bluetooth and Wi-Fi app.

Cons

Extremely high idle power consumption rate, pretty much a deal breaker.

Any load under 100w will not show up on the screen.

The screen has a harsh viewing angle, you have to be right in front of it to be able to read it.

There are so many settings and options on the screen it can be confusing.

The inverter efficiency varies greatly, another deal breaker.

Most reviews dislike the dust covers on the outlets and the large battery cables.

The 240v power hub has had issues in the past and they are nearly never in stock.

The customer service is horrible. I have never received an email back for any question. I have never had my phone call answered. And their voicemail box is full. Basically, if you have the system, and something comes up, you’re on your own. Another deal breaker.

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Conclusion

Would I recommend this unit to anyone? Sadly, no. The issues that are built into this system are way too big. Not having reliable efficiency, the unit draining on its own really fast, and no one to help support me from customer service are major deal breakers. Just one of those items is enough to be a deal breaker and so the fact that there are three major issues like that means it’s definitely a no-go unit.

In essence, it’s a really good but worthless unit. It has many great features, but the bad features outweigh the good features.

What would I recommend? There are three units I’d recommend over the AC300:

The first would be the EcoFlow Delta Pro because it has a good price for what you get, can do 240v power, is expandable and has pretty decent solar input. Also, their customer service is great and the units are efficient and have a low idle power consumption rate.

If I don’t absolutely need 240v power to run something like a well or to run the outlets and light switches in my house, I’d for sure go with the Titan. The Titan has the same sized inverter at 3,000w, has a similar 2,000w solar input but has massive battery expandability and doesn’t even require proprietary batteries to expand the system. They are tried and true, I have two Titans, one of them has been running my off-grid cabin non-stop for over 2 and a half years without any issues. It’s hard to beat a track record like that. But the Titan will not do 240v power.

If not the Delta Pro or the Titan, then I would absolutely go with the MPS3K. It’s a very basic and not-so-user-friendly unit but it works extremely well. Once it’s set up, it’s very easy to run. It too has a 3,000w inverter but has a 4,500wh battery and 1,500w of solar input. But if you get the expansion battery for the MPS3K it adds another 4,500wh of battery and you can add another charge controller to that battery and add another 2,400w of solar input for a total of 3,900w of solar input which is ridiculously powerful. It is also a better bang for the buck than the Titan and Delta Pro, but the MPS3K will not do 240v power either.

In the end, the reviews speak for themselves about the Bluetti AC300. It’s great on paper, but not so great in person. And that’s really too bad. These other units will serve people very well as they have served me personally very well too.

Continue ReadingIs the Bluetti AC300 a Worthless Amazing Solar Generator?

Full Review of the Generark HomePower 2 Plus

Overview

The Generark HomePower 2 Plus has a sleek design, a strong inverter, and a convenient shape for transporting around the house. It is not ideal for camping, but is very useful around the house, particularly with its magnetic rolling base that can be removed or attached easily.

Battery

There are two different versions of the Generark HomePower 2, the base version and the plus version. They are nearly the same, however, the Plus version is rated for 2060 Wh whereas the starter version is rated for 1566 Wh. The difference between the two systems, 494 Wh is almost a third of the capacity of the base model and adds a significant amount of run time to the plus model.

The Generark HomePower 2 Plus has a Lithium NMC battery. This makes the power station lighter than it would have been if it had been made with LiFePo4 batteries, however, it also means that the battery will not last as long as it could have with the LiFePo4 batteries.

This power station is rated for 800 cycles to 80% capacity, which is a fairly medium amount of cycles when compared to some similar power stations of its kind. For example, the Bluetti AC200MAX is rated for 3,500 cycles, while on the other end of scale has the Jackery Explorer 2000 with only 500 cycles.

The 800 cycles to 80% capacity doesn’t mean that this power station will be dead after 800 runs. It means that after 800 runs the Generark loses the top 20% of the battery capacity. Generark says that if you only discharge the Generark HomePower 2 Plus to 20-25% each time, you can double the battery life, providing up to 5 years of daily use.

Sadly there is no expandable battery for the Generark HomePower 2 Plus, which means that you get the 2060 Wh it promises and no more.

Recharge

The Generark HomePower 2 Plus comes with both an AC and a DC charging cord for recharging, but no cords to charge via solar panels. It can be charged via solar, however, the user has to find their own cables. It seems that it uses an 8mm barrel connector so using a standard MC4 to 8mm adapter should work fine. 

This power station can charge from 0%-100% in 2.5 hours when plugged into an AC outlet and charging at the maximum capacity of 100 W, a fast charge time, though not uncommon among similar generators. The Bluetti AC200MAX can charge in 2.3 hours, the Jackery Explorer 2000 in 2.6 hours, and the Bluetti EP500 in 4.25 hours all from an AC power source, like a wall outlet.

In addition to its AC charging abilities, the Generark HomePower 2 Plus can also be plugged into a DC power source with the cord that comes with the system. There are two ports that the Generark HomePower 2 Plus can receive DC power from two cords at a time with up to 12-14 V or 240 W if it’s a 24v connection or 120w if it’s a 12v connection, which means that the power station can charge in about 9 hours of driving, though it cannot charge from both AC and DC at the same time.

The Generark HomePower 2 Plus can take 800 W max solar input. However, the power station can only take 400 W per input plug (the power station has 2 input plugs for solar). The connection to the solar panels requires an 8mm plug, which is inconvenient for the user. They can’t use just any solar panels, only those sold by Generark or Jackery, which use the same custom 8mm ports. Under ideal conditions and with full solar arrays plugged in, the Generark HomePower 2 Plus can charge in as little as 3-4 hours.

Here’s how it breaks down according to Generark:

2X DC Charging Port: DC, 12.5V-54V/ea.

Starter: 200W Max, 400W Max in total

Plus: 400W Max, 800W Max in total

The Generark HomePower 2 Plus can power other devices while also charging, but it doesn’t have a built-in UPS system, which means that while the power station can charge while charging, it charges devices with its own power rather than simply letting the power flow through the power station and straight to the device needing power. This is good for any devices that cannot have an interruption of power, however, it is not good for the battery long term. Short term it won’t do much, but after a few months up to a year or more, this will kill the battery. This is called an online UPS system.

This power station can be stored for up to a year before the battery starts to deplete, which makes it good for being prepared for emergency situations.

General Info

The Generark HomePower 2 Plus has a sleek design and a small footprint. It measures 10 x 10 x 24 in, weighs 47.6 lbs, and is made of smooth plastic. This isn’t terribly heavy, but it’s not the most convenient for camping and frequent transport. It is convenient for taking up minimal floor space in a small home and has a magnetic attachable and detachable base that has wheels, allowing the power station to be rolled around easily despite its weight. It also has a built-in handle its top. This, combined with its height, makes it convenient to pick up without having to hunch over. It also comes with a dust cover, which can be very useful for storage.

The general power button turns on the display with the first push. On the second push, it turns on the ambient lighting that’s a ring around the solar generator. This light is a white-blue color most of the time, but conveniently changes colors when the battery gets low, to yellow at 10% and red at 5%. The LCD display shows multiple things, including the charge time, discharge time, charge wattage, discharge wattage, battery percentage, low-temperature warnings, high-temperature warnings, and additional inverter information. The inverter can handle 2200 W with a surge up to 4400 W.

Ports

There are four 120 V outlets (wall plugs) that are controlled by a power button. The 2 USB A 18 W plugs, 2 USB C 100 W quick charge outlets, and the 1 12 V DC 10 A cigarette type plug are controlled by another separate power button. There are no outlets to allow an RV to be plugged in. This variety of ports allows quite a few devices to be plugged in at once.

Strengths

Generark offers a 5-year warranty on the Generak HomePower 2 Plus, which is incredibly rare for a retail power station and a definite perk. The sleek design, small footprint (tiny for the powerful inverter), and magnetic wheelbase are convenient, and the magnetic wheelbase is unique to this power station. In addition, the handle on this unit makes it convenient to pick up, as it doesn’t require much bending down.

Weaknesses

A downside of the Generak HomePower 2 Plus is the inability to attach another battery, which means what you see is what you get. If only 2060 Wh are needed, then this doesn’t matter much, but if more watt-hours are needed, there is no increasing the watt-hour capability of this power station. In addition, there is no way to increase the solar input capacity. This power station can’t be modified but is quite powerful on its own.

Because the USB and DC ports have the same power button, whenever the DC port is powered up and running, the USB ports are always running, which makes the power station drain significantly faster than it needs to and lots of power is wasted. When being run through AC, however, it runs just like it should.

This power station will cause feedback when powering a device such as a HAM radio or any other device that uses an amplifier. As long as it is being used for household use and other basic needs, this will never come into play.

The other annoyance with this unit is Generak’s imitation of Jackery with their 8mm pins, which means that the user must buy either Jackery or Generak’s solar panels. Unless you use the MC4 to 8mm adapter then you can use any panel you’d like that has the traditional MC4 connector.

Comparable Units

The most similar to the Generark HomePower 2 Plus is the Jackery Explorer 2000. They both run 2,060 Wh and cannot have battery expansions. They both also have custom 8mm input ports for solar charging and cost around the same amount, as well as they both have Lithium NMC batteries, though the Jackery Explorer 2000 only weighs 43 pounds. Other similar solar generators, such as the EcoFlow Delta Max, can run 2,016 Wh, has expandable battery capacity, and has significantly more ports. It weighs around the same amount at 48 pounds, but its footprint is significantly larger and its warranty is only 2 years, less than half of the Generark HomePower 2 Plus’s 5-year warranty.

Conclusion

The Generark HomePower 2 Plus is sleek, convenient to move, and has an incredible warranty that is unmatched by almost any other company when sold at retail. It can charge rapidly when using AC power. The ambient light is convenient for providing small amounts of light to a room and for showing when the battery gets low.

Overall, the Generark HomePower 2 Plus is a very convenient power station for home and workshop use as well as emergency energy storage, though not ideal for camping and bugging out.

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Is the Oukitel P2001 a Good Solar Power Station?

Overview

The Oukitel P2001 solar generator is a powerful tool that can run and charge multiple items at once, though it is not particularly convenient for on-the-go or outdoor use. If you’re looking for a moderately large amount of watt-hours, lots of cycles in the life of the generator, convenient cord storage, and good emergency preparedness, then this power station is a great option. However, if you’re looking for something light and simple just for camping or other light recreational use, this power station may not be for you.

Battery

The Oukitel P2001 power station has 48 LiFePo4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate) cells that contain enough energy to power most appliances, including a refrigerator for an entire day.

Recharge

When plugged into an AC power source (such as a typical wall outlet), the Oukitel P2001 can charge from 0% to 100% in 2 hours. This fast charge is impressive for a power station of this size. When plugged into solar panels, the Oukitel P2001 can charge in as little as 4 hours. Though when tested, we have found that it takes 4-5 hours minimum with full direct sunlight without running any equipment while charging.

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This is also true of the car charging speed of the Oukitel P2001, as both the car charger and the solar charging cords plug into the Anderson input outlet on the left side of the solar generator, which has a maximum input rate of 500 W. These are slower than AC charging because the AC input has a max of 110 V, allowing the power station to receive more energy faster.

General Info

The Oukitel P2001 solar generator weighs 49 pounds and measures 15.5” x 11” x 13”. With 2 metal handles, it is easier to carry than if there were only one, but it is pretty hefty, and therefore not good for frequent moving. This makes it not very convenient for camping, hiking, and on-the-go use, though it is very useful when frequent moving is not a concern.

When fully charged, the Oukitel P2001 is capable of storing 2,000-watt hours of energy and over its lifetime is rated for 2,000 full cycles, ensuring long life and lots of use. Another convenient feature of this power station is the shelf life – the Oukitel P2001 can sit charged for an entire year before the battery drains, making this solar generator a good choice for emergency preparedness.

The Oukitel P2001 has a 2-year warranty and sells for around $1,699 without solar panels. Though this is a good chunk of money, the warranty, life cycles, and watt-hours help offset the cost, ensuring that customers get the value of what they pay for.

The Oukitel P2001 comes with an AC charging cord, a solar charging cord, and a car charging cord that plugs into the ports in your car for charging while traveling. This solar generator is designed for use with all solar panels that aren’t specific to only one power station.

The LCD display panel of the Oukitel P2001 has a variety of information for the user’s convenience. The display panel shows the energy input into the power station, the energy output of the power station, the percentage of battery that is charged, the estimated time remaining based on the current load being run, which ports are currently running power, and the temperature warnings that appear when the power station is either too hot or too cold.

Ports

The Oukitel P2001 has one overall power button that turns on the display screen and four smaller power buttons that turn on different parts of the solar generator. Overall there are 16 outlet ports on the power station in a variety of different types. 

On the left side of the Oukitel P2001 is the input section. Here there is a rigid plastic flap that lifts up, revealing 2 ports for power input, one AC (to attach the cord that plugs into the wall) and one Anderson port (to charge from solar panels or from a vehicle). 

On the front left of the solar generator is a 12 V 10 A cigarette lighter plug that allows you to plug in any device that you would usually plug into a car, an XT60 12 V 10 A port, and two DC5521 12 V 3 A ports. Both the cigarette lighter port and the WXT60 port have covers, though none of the other ports on the front have covers.

The middle section on the front of the power station is the USB ports. There are 2 traditional USB A ports, 2 fast-charging USB A ports, and 2 USB C ports. The right section of the front of the power station holds the light. The light has three modes, solid, SOS, and flashing. To turn it on you have to hold the power button until the unit starts beeping, and the unit beeps every time the light is turned on or off.

On the right side of the unit are the AC output plugs. Just like their counterparts on the left side of the unit, the AC and Anderson input ports, the 6 AC output ports are covered by a large solid plastic flap that you lift to plug items into the power station. The AC output plugs have a continuous output capability of 2000 W (1,100 W in UPS mode) and a 4000 W peak. This is helpful because most appliances require more energy when they start up than when they’re running, so while the power station may only need to continuously run 2000 W, it may need up to 4000 W for a few seconds while any large energy-consuming appliance starts up.

The Oukitel P2001 is able to be plugged into a power source while running other devices, which is called UPS technology. This allows the Oukitel P2001 to constantly be charging and full of power, and then if the source of the power station’s energy stops feeding it, the power station will start powering the devices plugged into it within 10 milliseconds, an incredibly fast turnaround time that allows the user to keep using their devices without a hitch. Generally, this technology works best with appliances and devices that use 1800 W or less.

Strengths

The 2 metal handles of the Oukitel P2001 are a definite perk for transportation. Another useful feature is the storage compartment located between the two handles that is a convenient size for storing the AC charging cable, the Anderson solar charging cable, and the Anderson car charging cable, ensuring that your power station and its cables don’t get separated from each other.

Oukitel advertises the ability of the Oukitel P2001 by showing that you can charge or run anything from a microwave to an electric vehicle with the solar generator, and a refrigerator can be run off of it and last an entire day so long as the door isn’t opened with high frequency. This is good for emergency preparedness and being ready in case of disaster to help keep food cold and any essential items running.

The Oukitel P2001 has an extraordinary range of running temperatures. This power station can run in temperatures as low as 3° F and up to as high as 104° F and can be stored in even lower temperatures, even down to –4°  F.

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Weaknesses

A weakness of the Oukitel P2001 is that it has no option to attach expandable batteries, so the battery capacity is fixed at 2000 watt-hours. If there is ever a need for more energy storage, the Oukitel P2001 has no way to meet that demand. Instead, the user simply has to purchase a new power station. However, with the large amount of power that can be stored in the Oukitel P2001, most users will not find the need for more energy storage.

The time remaining feature on the LCD screen is not very accurate, though when there are larger energy-consuming loads running it is more accurate than when there are smaller energy-consuming loads. This, while slightly annoying, is more inconvenient than a deal-breaker. This can easily be worked around by seeing how much battery each device takes and calculating how long the rest of the battery lasts.

Another downfall of the Oukitel P2001 is the way that the solar generator is not really designed with outdoor use in mind. It is not waterproof or particularly water-resistant. Some ports are covered, some are left exposed, and even those that are covered are covered by rigid plastic flaps that have no place to retract when the station is in use, leaving them vulnerable to being bumped and broken off. In addition, the air intake grills on both sides of the Oukitel P2001 are not well protected from rain. 

This solar generator is powerful, but cannot be left outside unprotected from the elements. As an indoor unit, or protected from weather, this unit is quite powerful. The non-weatherproof aspect of the OUkitel P2001 makes it non-ideal for camping and outdoor living, as well as its weight.

Comparable Units

The Ouktiel P2001 has a very high voltage when compared to similar solar power stations. Whereas other comparable power stations such as the Jackery Explorer 1500 is rated at 24 V, the Oukitel P2001 is rated at 51 V, allowing the user to power more devices at once than most of the competition. While the Allpowers Monster X Pro and the Pecron T600 have a capacity of 51 V, they both have Lithium NMC batteries, which means that they aren’t designed to last as long as the Oukitel P2001’s LiPo4 batteries.

While the non-increasable battery seems annoying, for this size solar generator it’s not uncommon. Only a few other power stations have the ability for the user to add batteries, including the Inergy Flex 1500 and the Lion Energy Safari ME. The downside to both of those is that they both have a small individual capacity than the Oukitel P2001. The Oukitel P2001 may not be able to add battery capacity, however, it has far more battery capacity than the Inergy Flex 1500 or the Lion Energy Safari ME do without purchasing battery-extending capabilities.

The 4-5 hour minimum charge time of the Oukitel P2001 isn’t the fastest of all the competition, but it’s pretty mid-range, with other comparable solar generators taking anywhere from the Lion Safari Energy ME taking 1.6 hours to charge up to 922 watt-hours of capacity, to the Pecron T600 take a full 14.1 hours to charge 5,657-watt hours of energy. For the amount of energy it stores, the Oukitel P2001 charges at a decently fast rate.

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Conclusion

Overall the Oukitel P2001 is a useful power station with a lot of great features. It is convenient for emergency preparedness and indoor/covered use but is not designed for light use and frequent transportation. 

Continue ReadingIs the Oukitel P2001 a Good Solar Power Station?

EcoFlow River Pro Review

The third most powerful of four units in the EcoFlow River lineup, the EcoFlow River Pro is convenient for travel and charging your devices. It can charge up to ten devices at a time with its variety of ports.

Battery

The EcoFlow River Pro has 720 Wh of power on its own. An extra battery can be added to increase the capacity from 720 Wh to 1440 Wh, however, rather than stacking like many other solar power stations, the EcoFlow River Pro and its extra battery attach with a heavy gauge cable, sitting side by side. This, while a small inconvenience, is something that can be pretty annoying if you’re using your power bank with any regularity. Having the main unit and the extra battery plugin next to each other means you need enough ground or table space for not one power bank, but two.

With a rating of 800+ cycles, the EcoFlow River Pro has a pretty long life expectancy. The ability to adjust the maximum battery capacity in the EcoFlow app allows users to make their solar power station last even longer. 

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Recharge

With an output of 600 W, the EcoFlow River Pro can actually take in energy faster than it can discharge it. When taking in energy via the AC input (the ordinary wall charger), the EcoRiver Pro can take 660 W max. This ultra-fast charging, unique to EcoFlow, means that the EcoFlow River Pro can go from 0% to 80% in an hour when plugged into an AC power source, can fully charge in just over an hour and a half, thanks to EcoFlow’s X-Stream technology.

The EcoFlow River Pro can take 200 W of solar input, similar to other solar power stations of its size. This means it cannot charge as quickly as it can when plugged into the wall, but it still holds its own when compared to other similarly sized solar power stations. When exposed to full sunlight and hooked up to the full capacity of panels, the EcoFlow River Pro fully charges in four to eight hours depending on if you have the extra battery attached or not. The EcoFlow River Pro can also be charged from a DC outlet, such as those in a car. This allows for easy and convenient on-the-go power, as the solar generator can be charged while driving.

General Info

At 16.8 pounds the EcoFlow River Pro is pretty light considering the power it has. It measures 11.4” x 7.1” x 9.3”, or about the size of a 2.5-gallon gas can. It is made of aluminum and plastic and has a built-in solid handle for easy transportation. This, along with the ten ports, makes the EcoFlow River Pro convenient for on-the-go use. 

In addition to being a convenient size for traveling, the EcoFlow River Pro makes use of Uninterrupted Power Supply or UPS technology. This means that the station can be plugged into a wall outlet and have a device plugged into it simultaneously. If thex power goes off, the Ecoflow River Pro will take over within 30 milliseconds and begin powering the device with its stored energy. 30 milliseconds is a very fast turnaround time to switch between power inputs, which will keep everything running smoothly if whatever the EcoFlow River Pro is plugged into turns off.

The EcoFlow River Pro comes with an AC charging cable so that it can be charged from the wall, a car charging cable that allows you to charge the EcoFlow River Pro on the go, a DC to DC cord, MC4 to XT60 cords for solar charging, and a user manual. 

The EcoFlow River Pro can power some devices up to 1800 W with its special X-Boost mode on. X-Boost is a setting in the computer part of the inverter that allows the inverter to run much harder than designed to for a short period of time so it can run heavier equipment if necessary. This isn’t sustainable long term, but it can be useful in a pinch. This means that the EcoFlow River Pro can run up to 80% of kitchen appliances and DIY tools when necessary, though it is most effective when devices using under 12000 W are used.

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The EcoFlow River Pro’s LCD display screen is a convenient way to see everything that’s happening with your portable power station. The display screen shows the current percentage of the battery that’s charged, the current input and output of energy, and the estimated run time based on the current load. This allows you to monitor your energy use and adapt as needed. In the event that there is a problem with the EcoFlow River Pro, the power station will let you know with warning icons displayed on the LCD screen.

Ports

The EcoFlow River Pro has a large number of ports, allowing you to charge up to ten devices at once. It is equipped with three 600 W AC ports, one USB-C port, two USB-A ports, one fast-charge USB-A port, one DC port, and two DC 55-21 ports. This is a large number of ports for such a small unit, and it makes this unit incredibly useful for anyone who charges multiple devices at once. There is also a built in light that has a low setting, a high setting, and an SOS setting in case of emergencies.

The ports are grouped into sections so that not everything is controlled by the same power button, enabling you to turn on one or more sections at a time as needed. There are four sections.  The light is in a section of its own, the USB-C and USB-C ports are grouped together, the DC ports are together, and the AC ports are grouped together. This grouping allows you to control exactly what you need to be turned on and off rather than turning it all on and off at once.

Strengths

The EcoFlow River Pro has its own built-in wifi, something that not a lot of portable power stations can claim. Although the wifi doesn’t provide internet access it allows the user to connect to the power station and control everything from the EcoFlow app. From the app, users can control everything about the power station, including changing the standby time, controlling the maximum battery capacity to preserve the life of the battery, switching to quiet charging, turning on EcoFlow’s X-Boost, turning on and off ports, and updating firmware.

The X-Stream fast charge that the EcoFlow River Pro is equipped with is currently the fastest charging of any solar portable power generator. The extremely fast charging is convenient for those who want to get up and go rather than sit around waiting for their battery. Some users have complained about the amount of sound that the fan makes. There is a quiet charge option that can be enabled from the app, however, it does slow down the charging time. Relative to a gas or diesel-powered generator, however, the EcoFlow River Pro’s fan makes minimal sound.

There are a variety of safety features that can be found equipped on the EcoFlow River Pro, including short circuit protection, low-temperature protection, over-temperature protection, over-voltage protection, low voltage protection, and more. This makes many users feel safer about leaving the unit to charge or be used without having to be near it the entire time to monitor what is happening.

Another strength of the EcoFlow River Pro is its UPS technology. It can be plugged into a charging method and have devices plugged into it and be both receiving power and giving it at the same time. If the power stops coming from the device that was powering the EcoFlow River Pro, it powers on and begins powering the devices that are plugged into it.

Weaknesses

A weakness of the EcoFlow River Pro is that some devices, like microwaves, don’t like the auto-enabled X-Boost feature of the power station that is useful for powering other devices. Luckily, this feature can be turned off and on from the app, allowing the user to adapt the power station to their personal needs.

Another complaint that users have about this portable power station is that the fan is too loud. While it may be on the louder side compared to other solar power stations, compared to a diesel or gas generator, the EcoFlow River Pro is much quieter.

One of the few seeming “flaws” in the design of the EcoFlow River Pro is that of the charging port cover. The cover that is over the ports to charge the EcoFlow River Pro is one solid piece that flips up. This is both good and bad, as it is pretty sturdy, but seems like it could easily break off if accidentally bumped too hard, as there is nowhere for the cover to go. The cover, however, is extremely handy when the unit is not plugged into a power source, and if care is taken, should last for a long time.

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Conclusion

At only $599.00 found here, the EcoFlow River Pro isn’t the cheapest portable solar power station on the market, however, it does have a quick charge, app accessibility, and a large number of ports that seem to justify the slightly higher cost.

While it is highly convenient for charging many devices and for taking on the go, the EcoFlow River Pro isn’t the best for long-term use with lots of major appliances. While convenient for smaller devices and maybe one big appliance for a while, the EcoFlow River Pro can’t keep up with running a full household for an extended period of time.

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BigBlue CellPowa 2500 Early Review

The newest system to come to the solar generator and power station world is the BigBlue CellPowa 2500. It launched on April 19, 2022 on Kickstarter with some amazing deals. But is it worth getting the CellPowa 2500 or should you consider something else? Is it reliable, can it charge up quickly, will it run all the necessary equipment? All of that will be revealed here as you read on. Keep in mind that this review is based on a prototype unit that will have some minor flaws worked out by the time the units are shipping, according to the manufacturer.

 

Inverter

The BigBlue CellPowa 2500 comes with a large pure sine wave inverter that is rated to run continuously none stop at 2,500 watts of draw. That is a maximum draw of 20.8amps from a single outlet which is much more than you’d get anything to run off of a typical house outlet. This means that anything that you can run out of a house outlet will run off of the CellPowa 2500.

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It peaks at 5,000w of surge capacity which is always good to see the surge wattage be rated to at least double of what the continuous running wattage is rated to on a unit. Since it is a pure sine wave inverter you can safely run any type of equipment you’d normally use at home. Modified sine wave units are the ones you want to stay away from.

One of the major downsides of the CellPowa 2500 is the inverter efficiency. Doing a couple of different tests it was discovered that the average efficiency of the solar generator is only about 77%. That is not horrible but it’s also not great. Typically we like to see at least 80% efficiency. Ideally, we want around 85% to 90% efficiency out of a solar generator so we know we’re able to use the most amount of power from the battery.

What does this mean? Let’s say you’re running a 1,000w load off of an inverter and the inverter was 100% efficient. They never are but just to better understand this we’ll say it’s 100% efficient. That means that after one hour of running 1,000w off of the inverter you will have used 1,000wh off of the battery. But if the inverter is only 77% efficient, and you’re running a 1,000w load for one hour, you’ll have actually consumed 1,298wh off of the battery because the unit had to use more power from the battery to cover the lack of efficiency. If the inverter were 50% efficient it would use 2,000wh running a 1,000w load for one hour.

You really want a more efficient inverter because then you can use more of the actual capacity of the battery. This is not necessarily a deal-breaker but it’s definitely not great to have only 77% efficiency.

 

Battery

The BigBlue CellPowa 2500 has a 1,843wh LiFePo4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate) battery installed inside the unit. It is not a serviceable battery which is fine and it likely will never need to be serviced since it doesn’t off-gas and has over 3,500 cycles. This means you could drain and recharge the battery once per day for 3,500 days (nearly 10 years) and after that time the battery will still be 80% as efficient as it was on day one.

LiFePo4 batteries are extremely nice because of how long they last but it does increase the weight of the unit significantly. Weighing in at a whopping 56lbs, this power station is a bit hard to move around. Although not nearly as heavy as some solar generators, it’s portable but still quite heavy.

With the inverter being 77% efficient you’ll have a usable watt-hour capacity of 1,419wh. That means you could run a 140w load for 10 hours on just the battery. An average household fridge will use roughly 80 to 100wh per hour of use. That means the CellPowa 2500 will run an average household fridge for about 14-18 hours with no solar or wall charging help which is quite good. If you were to use this in an emergency, you could realistically run a fridge for many days if you added solar panels to this unit.

One of the neatest features that include the inverter and battery working well together is the UPS feature. The uninterruptable power supply feature means that you could have the CellPowa 2500 plugged into the wall at your home charging and staying at 100% capacity while having something like a refrigerator plugged into it. Then if the power cuts off to your house the CellPowa 2500 will immediately become the power source for the fridge without causing any fluctuation in the operation of the fridge. So if you’re away on a trip and the power goes out, your fridge won’t stop working and will keep your food cold for quite some time. This gives you the chance to save a lot of your food in the event of a major power outage.

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Charging

There are 3 ways to charge up the BigBlue CellPowa 2500 solar generator. It will charge at 1,200w from the wall charger, 1,200w from solar input, and 102w from the DC car charger.

The AC wall charger is wonderful because it is only a standard charging cable. The typical US house outlet is called a NEMA 15P, basically meaning it’s rated to 15a and it’s a Plug, hence 15P. The AC charging port on the CellPowa 2500 uses a typical C13 plug which is a very common power plug for household items. The unit comes with a NEMA 15P to C13 cable and if you wanted to get a longer cable or backup cable they are very inexpensive and very common to find at electronic stores.

To charge the CellPowa 2500 from a car outlet while driving around will take 18 hours. It’s nice that it comes with that option but I don’t see very many people using that option in real-world use. It charges at only about 9a or around 102 watts. It’s nice to have this feature but isn’t a big deal anymore.

Solar charging is what we feel is the most important because it is the equivalent of having more fuel for a gas generator. If the power is out, solar is the main way to get more power and get the battery charged back up again. Luckily the BigBlue CellPowa 2500 has a 1,200w MMPT charge controller that is rated to take power from 12-65v and 25a. The big downside is how you get to 1,200w input

There are three 8mm/DC7909 solar input ports. The idea is to connect two 200w panels into each port for a total of 1,200w. The big downside to this is cable management. This is probably one of the biggest flaws of the entire system. If you want your CellPowa 2500 to be indoors where you can use it, and you need your solar panels 100ft away in a clear area where they can get the best sunlight, you’ll need 3 sets of 100ft cables to make it work. Because of the 3 input ports, it makes it difficult to keep things tidy while charging with solar.

Outlets

The BigBlue CellPowa 2500 is capable of running a lot of equipment at the same time. It has six 120v NEMA 15 plugs just like you find on the wall outlets in houses. But it also has two 18w USB-A ports, two 45w USB-C ports, and two 100w PD USB-C ports for extra fast charging of USB-C devices. It also has one typical DC cigarette lighter port rated to 10a as well as two 5.5×2.1mm barrel ports.

Having all of these outlets and ports makes it very easy to be charging multiple phones, tablets, laptops, fridges, freezers, and so on all at the same time. And it can be charged from either the wall charger or the solar input at the same time that equipment running off of the unit.

Extra Features

A neat feature that is becoming much more common on solar generators and power stations is a Bluetooth App to control and monitor the BigBlue CellPowa 2500 with. It’s not fully functional at this stage of development but BigBlue ensures it will be very nice to use once the main units are shipping out from their Kickstarter campaign.

One very unique feature that we have never heard of before in a solar generator is a special SOS GPS feature. The CellPowa 2500 has a unique button for help. There is a GPS located inside of the unit and in case of an emergency you can activate the SOS beacon which will alert local authorities, search and rescue, forest rangers or whoever is the response team to come find your location. This is a very neat feature but is still unclear if the GPS option can be toggled off when you don’t want it to be activated. In a situation like that, it seems like it should be possible to turn the GPS on, then send out the SOS so that you’re not being tracked by BigBlue everywhere you go.

It does come with a color touch screen which helps give it a modern look similar to the Bluetti AC200P units. However, the majority of the screen is filled with the battery percentage. The input and output wattage readings are in the bottom right corner of the screen and are very small and hard to read. You must be right next to the unit to see what that info is. The AC and DC power options are turned on and off with the touch screen, so the downside is if the screen dies for any reason, the entire unit is inoperable.

It comes with an 18-month limited warranty but it’s unclear as to what’s included in the limited warranty. It’s typical for warranties to cover any manufacturing defects so it’s safe to assume that is what is included in the 18-month period.

One feature that some people will like and others will dislike is that cooling fans are always operating when the unit is turned on. This means if you’re not running a load and no heat is being generated, the fans are running. Also if you’re running a heavy load and the unit making lots of heat, it’s being cooled very well. The downside is that when the fans are always running unnecessarily, they are using up power for no reason. Units like the Titan solar generator have a heat sensor that tells the fans when to turn on, turn onto turbo speed, and turn off based on what’s happening inside the unit and how it needs to cool. We can only hope that BigBlue will update this feature as the finished units ship out.

Conclusion

The BigBlue CellPowa 2500 seems like a pretty decent unit. For average use to use during an emergency it has a large enough inverter to power essential items and a large enough battery to get through the night while running that essential equipment. The solar input is high enough to recharge the entire system in a little under 3 hours which means that it can easily be recharged and run essential equipment during the day.

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The inverter efficiency is a bit concerning and the fact that 3 sets of solar panels with dedicated cables have to be used to reach the 1,200w solar input is a bummer too. Once we get one of these units in hand we will be able to test if the CellPowa 2500 can be over-paneled and see how well it can run an RV, cabin, and home backup items.

If you feel this unit fits your needs then we highly recommend you go to their Kickstarter campaign and get this unit while it’s greatly discounted. If you’re unsure, then we recommend you wait and see how the finished unit turns out and see if it’ll work for you.

Continue ReadingBigBlue CellPowa 2500 Early Review

Is the Bluetti AC200Max the New King of Midweight Solar Generators?

The Bluetti AC200Max is one of the best medium-sized solar generators to come out to date. But is it enough to be the absolute best option? Does it offer the best efficiency, power, expandability, rechargeability, and all the other necessary components to be the best option?

The top competitors to the Bluetti AC200Max are the EcoFlow Delta Max and the Inergy Flex. There are many similarities between these systems including expandable battery packs, portability, and how many items can be run off of them at the same time.

Midweight Sized Solar Generators

What are midweight-sized solar generators? They are units that are too big for simple camping or day trips but not large enough to permanently run an off-grid cabin or have 240v power capability. They generally have inverter capacities from 1,500w to 2,500w and battery sizes from 1,500wh to 6,000wh.

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Inverter

The inverter on the AC200Max is a very efficient and powerful setup. It is a pure sine wave, which is to be expected from modern solar generators, and will run any AC-powered device that you can run at home very easily. With a continuous output rating of 2,200w, it is less than the EcoFlow Delta Max at 2,400w but much larger than the Inergy Flex at 1,500w. This means it will easily run any household device that you would normally plug into the wall outlet. And if there is any heavy load such as a hairdryer, chop saw, or even some air compressors, it can peak all the way up to 4,800w which is 220% higher than the continuous output capacity of the Bluetti AC200Max.

It may not have the highest continuous output of all the midweight solar generators currently available but 2,200w is still plenty of power for the standard backup power setup for most people. This means it’s easily capable of running a fridge, freezer, lights, fans, CPAP, toaster, coffee maker, hairdryer and so much more without any trouble.

But one thing that is very impressive about the Bluetti AC200Max is its inverter efficiency. It is typical for a good solar generator to have about 85% efficiency out of the inverter. Meaning for every 1 watt-hour of battery capacity you’ll get out .85 watt-hours of actual power through the inverter. This inefficiency is normal and happens because the inverter is converting battery power which is 51v DC power in the Bluetti AC200Max to 120v AC power for devices. But the Bluetti AC200Max pushes out a solid 88% efficiency which is much higher than a typical good system. This means you’ll get more power out of the battery than another system like the Inergy Flex which only has about an 80% efficient inverter. The Delta Max has an 89% efficient inverter so basically the same as the Bluetti AC200Max, both are very good.

The 2,200w inverter runs four 18amp house style outlets (NEMA 15) and one 30amp RV (TT-30) outlet. But you have to keep in mind that the 30amp RV plug can only push out 18 amps of continuous power because the inverter is rated to 2,220 watts (2,200 watts ÷ 120 volts = 18.34amps). Meaning it is not a true 30amp plug but can connect to 30amp service plugs on RVs which is a nice feature.

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Battery

The Bluetti AC200Max uses the heavy but very reliable LiFePo4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate) battery that is tried and true. With up to 3,500 cycles on the battery before it reaches 80% efficiency, this unit will last for many years without any noticeable decay in battery capacity. If the battery were used 3,500 times by doing a cycle once per day it would take nearly 10 years for the battery to get to 3,500 cycles. That’s incredible!

Although cycles are an important feature for solar generators it is very important to understand that it is not one of the most important features. You have to consider that unless you’re literally living off-grid with this unit and using a lot of power off of it daily that you’re not likely going to reach that 3,500 cycle mark. The reality is most people need these types of units during emergencies, or for RVing for a few weeks each summer. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But if you consider that you are using this fairly heavily then you’re looking closer to 100 cycles per year. This means you’re looking at over 30 years before you reach 3,500 cycles.

That is why it is important to have a good amount of cycles on the batteries but it is not a deal-breaker or a deal decider. It is more important to have a larger battery capacity, larger inverter, and fast solar recharge than to have a high number of cycles.

But one of the best features of the Bluetti AC200Max is its ability to use expandable batteries. Using the Bluetti B230 and B300 batteries you can expand the AC200Max to be up to 6,144wh with B230s and up to 8,194wh with the B300 batteries.

The B230 battery is the same battery that is in the Bluetti AC200Max of 2,048wh. It is just the battery packaged into another case and has external connectors to link up with the AC200Max. The B300 battery however is 3,072wh in capacity. And you can use either two B230s or two B300s attached to the AC300Max.

There doesn’t seem to be a way to use any other kind of battery with the AC200Max so you are limited to only using Bluetti batteries. But they are fairly priced and are LiFePo4 cells as well so they will last forever and are very high quality.

The downside though to using these LiFePo4 cells inside the AC200Max as well as in the B230 and B300 is that they are very heavy. The AC200Max alone without external batteries is 61lbs which is definitely quite heavy. Just by adding a single B230 battery, you’re looking right about 100lbs to handle. With a couple of B300 batteries, you’re well over 150lbs which makes it much more difficult to keep it portable, but they are expansion batteries that are externally mounted so it is easier to move them around than having a single system that is all linked together as one unit.

The batteries are not without their major flaws which I’ll talk about below in the weaknesses section.

Recharge

There are multiple ways to charge up the Bluetti AC200Max. The one that is most important is the solar recharge but it can also be charged with a wall charger, car charger, and even a lead-acid battery. It is unclear why Bluetti thought that it would be an important feature to be able to recharge the AC200Max from a lead-acid battery. But, it’s capable of doing that and that is a unique feature that is not common in other solar generators.

The AC200Max comes with a 500w AC power charging brick that is a bit heavy but does charge fairly quickly in just about 4 hours for just the base unit with no external batteries. The car charger puts in a little bit more than 100w into the battery at a time so it’s a very slow way to charge but nonetheless has that option. For midweight systems like this, car charging is very uncommon because it takes so long but is a nice feature for anyone using this system in a Van setup. At least while driving it can get a little extra charge.

The AC200Max has a high input of 900w input directly from solar. And with a special adapter that you can buy as an extra, you can get an extra 500w solar input into each expansion battery that is added. If you had two external batteries added you can have a total of 1,900w of solar input going into the whole system which is very impressive. That is only beat by the Titan solar generator which has a standard solar input of 2,000w, 3,000w inverter, and 10’s of thousands of watt-hours in battery capacity can be added to the Titan.

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The AC200Max’s standard solar input of 900 watts beats the EcoFlow Deltas 800w max solar input and the Inergy Flex’s 400w solar input. The Flex is capable of adding more charge controllers as well just like the AC200Max but the Flex’s extra charge controllers are two years behind production so don’t hold your breath on getting those.

The AC200Max with no extra batteries can be charged in as fast as 2hrs and 20mins with its 900w solar input. It can be easily over-paneled which is a very nice feature to have on solar generators. With a solar input of 10-145v and up to 15amps it’s easy to get upwards of 1,500 watts in solar panels connected to the AC200Max.

Why over-panel? If the sun comes up at 8 am, but isn’t near its peak height in the sky until 10 am, that means from 8 am until 10 am you won’t be making the full power of your solar panels. As an example, if you can only get 60% of your solar panel-rated power into the AC200Max then in the early morning you’re not charging at the highest capacity. So if you had 1,000 watts in panels connected at 8 am you’d get 600 watts to go into the AC200Max. But if you had 1,500 watts in panels connected at 8 am, at 60% power input, you’d actually be getting 900 watts of solar input at the very beginning of the day.

This allows you to get more charging hours of full capacity throughout the day and makes it much easier to fully recharge the system on cloudy days or in adverse weather.

Over-paneling is one of the best features any solar generator can have and between the AC200Max, Delta Max, and Flex, only the AC200Max is capable of doing it. The Titan beats the AC200Max with up to 4,000w of solar panels being able to connect to it in over-paneling capability. But the Titan is considered a heavyweight solar generator, a different caliber, and more capable so it’s not a fair comparison.

Extra Features

The Bluetti AC200Max has many great features such as a very interactive and informative touch screen. It shows plenty of information from the load output, the recharging input, battery percentage, battery cell balances, and much more. Some people have reported that their touch screens have frozen and were not usable for many hours at some times. It is likely a bug that is no longer an issue but was most likely just an issue in early models.

The AC200Max as well as all of Bluetti’s power stations come with a 24 months warranty which is the current industry standard.

It has a very sleek and interactive Bluetooth app that allows you to connect to the unit, monitor, control, and adjust settings all from your smartphone. This is becoming more and more popular with solar generators and power stations today and works very well. As long as you’re within the short range of about 30ft from the unit you can see everything from your phone through the Bluetti app.

Weaknesses

The biggest concern besides the touch screen locking up and not being used are the external batteries. The issue is that if for any reason the total battery capacity on the AC200Max drops all the way down to zero, only the onboard battery inside the AC200Max will recharge when the sun comes back up and hits the solar panels. For some reason, the external batteries do not get any charge at all after hitting 0%. They have to be jump-started using the AC wall charger. Once they’ve been jump-started they will then begin charging from the solar panels.

That means if this was to be used at an off-grid cabin, van, RV, home, or anywhere, and you drained the battery down to zero which can definitely happen, you have to manually reset the external batteries. That is nearly a deal-breaker if this is to be used for emergency backup power, off-griding, or boondocking. At our off-grid cabin, there are times we are not there for weeks, or there is bad weather for weeks. On the one good day there’s sun in the midst of bad weather I can’t afford to be wondering if my system was fully drained and not charging the extra batteries.

The cable management. This is a big issue if you have expendable batteries. Each battery has a very heavy-duty cable that connects it to the AC200Max. Then if each battery has an additional solar charger connected to it plus the solar cables themselves, it can become quite the rat’s nest of cables. It simply requires a lot of cable management which for many people is not a strong suit or is not wanted to be dealt with in the middle of an emergency.

Also, the weight of the entire system is necessary to address. With the base unit alone being 61lbs it’s not going to be easy for many people to move it around. Having a furniture dolly may help but in the end that will only work on flat surfaces. Even the Titan which is considered a heavyweight system can be broken down into smaller parts and have a max weight of 35lbs per piece making it very easy to transport and setup again. Especially since the Titan doesn’t use external cabling to connect to extra batteries, they simply stack on top of each other. And because the Titan already has 2,000w of solar input built into the unit itself there are no external charge controllers to have more of a mess of cables.

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Pricing

Factoring in the inverter size, battery capacity, and solar input which are the three most important features of any solar generator system, the Bluetti AC200Max is well priced. At about $2,099 for the average price you’ll only end up paying around $1.44 per “unit wattage.” That is very close to the Titan’s $1.42 per unit wattage which has been considered the “best bang for the buck” for years now.

Conclusion

The Bluetti AC200Max is a very good system. It’s efficient, expandable, quickly rechargeable can be over-paneled, and has a good price per unit wattage. It’s nearly tied in capability with the EcoFlow Delta Max. The AC200Max has a slightly smaller inverter at 2,200w whereas the Delta Max has a 2,400w inverter. But the AC200Max has a max battery capacity of over 8,000wh and the Delta Max can only go up to just over 6,000wh. And the Delta Max has 800w max solar input without the ability to over panel. And the AC200Max has 900w of max solar input and can be over paneled. The AC200Max has 3,500 cycles and the Delta Max 800 cycles. So nearly in every way that matters the AC200Max beats the Delta Max.

As far as midweight solar generators are concerned, it would appear that the Bluetti AC200Max is currently the very best option available. The Inergy Flex doesn’t hold a candle to the AC200Max.

If you find you want a little more inverter power, more than twice the solar input for the base unit, and more expandable battery capacity than any other unit currently in existence, then the Titan solar generator would be the next best option.

But the Bluetti AC200Max can absolutely stand on its own as the best midweight system.

Continue ReadingIs the Bluetti AC200Max the New King of Midweight Solar Generators?

Unbiased Review – Jackery Explorer 1500 Portable Solar Generator Power Station

To be upfront and 100% transparent, I have received zero benefits from Jackery in any way. I did not receive my Jackery Explorer 1500 for free or at special pricing, I have not received money from them, they haven’t even reached out to me to review this unit. With all of that said, should you even consider the Jackery Explorer 1500 solar generator a contender in the power station world?

The short answer is, maybe. But probably not. It doesn’t come close to the Titan. Are other smaller solar generators like the AC200P and Delta better suited for people than the Explorer 1500?

Overview

The Jackery 1500 is a decent unit. It’s not very heavy, has a pretty strong inverter for powering anything that uses 120v power. It has a decent-sized battery and supposedly can charge pretty quickly. Should it be used for emergency backup power, RVing, VanLife, camping, and so on? That’s what we’ll find out.

Click Here to Buy the Jackery Explorer 1500

Output Power

The Jackery Explorer 1500 is truly capable of pretty much running anything under 1,800w of power. Remember that watts are simply the result of volts and amps multiplied together. Common household voltage is 110v or 120v. They’re essentially the same thing but to keep the math simple I’ll just use 120v since that is what’s most commonly used today.

1,800w ÷ 120v = 15a. A typical outlet in the wall at home is rated up to 15amps of output. Meaning that if you can run the device out of an outlet at home, you can run it off of the Jackery 1500 as well. This is why reviewing this unit can be helpful to see if this is actually true. I have found in my testing that this is true.

Its peak or surge rating is 3,600w which is double the running wattage which is definitely adequate for most appliances.

Jackery has always put really good inverters into their systems. I have never had an issue with the Jackery 2000, Jackery 1000, or the Jackery 500 units which I have also reviewed. If it says it is capable of pushing out 1,800w then it really can. But not all things on paper for the Jackery systems have been accurate, as will be shown shortly.

All of the outlets on the Jackery 1500 are regulated which makes it very safe to use because it will keep the proper voltage and amperage going to whatever device is being run all the way down to the battery hits 0%.

It has a pure sine wave inverter which is very common in solar generators and power stations today but is not 100% guaranteed. Jackery makes sure to use top-notch quality in the inverter so they only go with pure sine wave which means you can safely run anything that would plug into a normal house outlet.

A modified sine wave is the other option and that has limitations as to what it can run and is often called “dirty electricity.” You won’t have to worry about any dirty electricity coming off of the Jackery 1500 or any of the Jackery units. That’s one thing that Jackery has always done very well.

Battery Size and Capability

The Jackery Explorer 1500 has a 1,534wh battery which is why it’s called the Jackery Explorer 1500. They rounded the number down from the battery capacity to 1,500 so they could give it that name. The 1,534wh battery is a 24v battery that is rated to 25.2v and 60.9a. It’s confusing but that’s just how solar and electronics are. The bottom line is it’s a 24v system that has 12v and 120v outlets on the front of the unit.

Using a Lithium NMC battery, or most commonly referred to as Lithium-ion, the Jackery 1500 will push power out constantly with no problem either at the max load of 1,800w or it can be trickling out power to your device at very low loads. The big advantage of using Lithium NMC is that it is much lighter than Lithium-Iron-Phosphate batteries or what is most commonly called LiFePo4.

The battery is the heaviest part of the Jackery 1500, and many other reviews have said that the weight is very manageable and easy to move around. I find in my testing and reviewing that it is indeed easy enough and portable enough to move around and use pretty easily. The total weight is 33lbs for the whole unit and I find that anything under 35lbs is not too bad for anyone to use.

The draw capacity of the Jackery 1500 is what is most impressive. Typically, it is difficult for batteries to push out more power than their own capacity and often times will not push that amount of power out until 0%. For example, the Inergy Apex solar generator has a battery capacity of 1,100wh and an inverter size of 1,500w but cannot push 1,500w out of the inverter for more than 5 minutes max. The Apex cannot draw more than 800w and run to 0%. If it’s running 900w it will quit working after a short while.

The Jackery 1500 on the other hand with its battery capacity at 1,534wh and the inverter at 1,800w is capable of running a 1,800w load all the way until the battery hits 0% which takes about 44mins. That is quite impressive that the battery has only 1,534wh but can run 1,800w continuously without interruption. The Titan solar generator is one of the only other units I have found that can do this as well. The Titan has a 2,000wh battery and a 3,000w inverter but it can run the higher loads until empty.

Many people dislike that Jackery hasn’t gotten into LiFePo4 batteries yet but it’s really a tossup between the two battery types and it all depends on what you need the system for. Lithium-Ion is good for portability since it’s lighter, but the Jackery batteries are only rated to 500 cycles which is considered low.

Keep in mind that a cycle means you have the solar generator at 100%, then discharge it to 0%, then recharge it back up to 100%. That is one full cycle. Once you’ve done that 500 times then the battery will only have 80% of its original capacity. That doesn’t mean it’s a dead unit. It just means that instead of a 1,534wh battery it would be the equivalent of a 1,227wh battery.

A LiFePo4 battery will commonly have 3,000 cycles or more, but it is much heavier. Therefore, it makes it much harder to be mobile and portable. Some other reviews like the lighter more portable option and other reviews prefer the heavier longer-lasting option. Again, it all depends on your own preference and needs.

That is one of the reasons why the Titan is so well-liked and has been the leader in solar generators for over 2 years. It uses Lithium NMC batteries which are lighter but have 2,000 cycles in them because of how they are designed. In that case, you get the best of both worlds where they’re lighter and have a lot of cycles.

Click Here to Buy the Jackery Explorer 1500

Charging

Charging the Jackery 1500 is where the most issues arise. It can be charged in many different ways including from a wall outlet at home, solar panels while camping, RVing, or during a blackout, or while on the road through the DC car charger.

The solar charging capability on the Jackery 1500 is where this whole unit begins to fall apart. It may have a good inverter and battery, but the MPPT solar charge controller is a problem. Jackery advertises that it can charge up to 500w of solar power at once which means it could recharge the battery in about 3 hours.

3 hours or less is the preferred amount of time for solar recharge. That is because there are only about 5 or 6 hours a day in the USA where you can get maximum output from solar panels.

To clarify, a 100-watt solar panel will generate 100 watt-hours of battery capacity in one hour of charging.  Watt-hours is the unit of measurement for showing stored energy in a battery.

If the Jackery 1500 could put in 500w that would be great, but it can’t. Its max input rating is actually only 400w according to the user manual. But wait, Jackery also says 500w is the max input? So how does that work? It doesn’t. This is where the advertised specs are a big problem. It is simply impossible to get 500w of power into the Jackery 1500.

But 400w of solar power is still pretty good, right? Well, sort of. A 1,534wh battery will take about 4 hours to charge up from 0% if you put 400w into it from the solar panels. The way Jackery likes to accomplish this is with their SolarSaga 100w solar panels. The SolarSaga 100w solar panels are portable folding panels that can be taken anywhere and used with ease.

But, I have yet to personally see a SolarSaga 100w solar panel generate more than 67 watts. I have that panel and have watched and read many other reviews of that solar panel and 67 watts seems to be the max that anyone can get out of it. I have heard rumors that Jackery has made some upgrades to their most recent generation of SolarSaga 100 panels and that some people have gotten upwards of 80w per panel, but I haven’t seen that repeatedly in any other reviews. Hopefully, it’s true though.

The Jackery SolarSaga 200 solar panels were made to work with the Jackery 1500 and Jackery 2000 units, but Jackery exclusively shows that the Jackery 1500 should only be used with the SolarSaga 100 panels. That is, again, very confusing.

One of the biggest difficulties of using the SolarSaga panels is that they need to be near the unit to charge because there is no long charging cable. Since they use proprietary 8mm connectors as well it’s basically impossible to get a longer cable to be between the panels and the Explorer 1500. That makes it really hard to charge the unit while using the unit at the same time without long extension cords to the fridge or whatever device.

In addition to that, they claim that in just four hours the Jackery can be charged from 0% all the way up to 80%. Let’s break down the math: 1,534wh is the total battery capacity. 80% of that would be 1,227wh. If we take 1,227wh and divide that by four hours (1,227wh ÷ 4hrs) we get 306 watts of solar charge coming in.

The claim was 500w solar input, but that wasn’t true so it got dropped to 400w absolute maximum input, but then at its very best, they’re saying 306 watts is what it will do with four SolarSaga 100 panels? That is beyond misleading. Reading the fine print is an absolute “must” for this solar generator power station.

The user manual also says that it is necessary to use at least two SolarSaga 100 panels to charge the Jackery 1500. But then why do they say the SolarSaga 200 panels are best for it if they also say only use the 100w version. Again, more confusion, that’s not okay.

The charge controller has an input rating from 12-30v and up to 10.5a. That means panels have to be connected in parallel, not series, in order for it to work. And there are two charge controllers so each one will have two panels connected to the 2 to 1 adapters that come with the system.

FYI, you cannot use your own solar panels. I’ll go over that in a minute down below.

Hopefully, you can see why this is such a problem. People will spend $1,600 on a solar power station thinking they will be able to recharge it in 3 hours, but in reality, it takes over 5 hours in ideal conditions to get it fully charged, that’s not good at all. In fact, that puts in the category of “not good enough” solar generators.

But don’t worry, the solar charging may be completely incorrect and hard to follow the but charging from AC power off of a wall outlet is all good, right? Wrong. Jackery clearly says that the Explorer 1500 will charge at 500w from a wall outlet using the AC power brick charger and I have yet to see it charge above 261 wats. That’s effectively half of what is advertised.

Either there is some serious miscommunication between the technical department and the sales department at Jackery or they’re intentionally trying to trick people into thinking they’re getting something that it’s not.

That is wrong. Period.

It has a car charger and that’s all great, but it is rare that anyone will use a car charger with any solar generator system. It simply takes too long because you can’t draw a lot of power from a cigarette lighter port in a vehicle. Jackery says it takes nearly 16 hours to charge it from a car charging port in a vehicle.

On a good note, the Explorer 1500 is capable of charging while it is running other equipment. Just as long as you have extension cords running to those devices since the Explorer 1500 has to be near the solar panels outside.

By the way, the Jackery 1500 is not waterproof. Not that you’d get much power from solar panels if it’s raining but, what if you left it outside charging and then forgot about it at night, and the sprinklers came on or it rained. That could be catastrophic to the system. Really the point isn’t it needs to be waterproof or resistant, the point is that it should be possible and easy to put a long distance between the panels and the unit like the Titan has so it can be kept safe.

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Outlets and Connectors

It has three 120v 15a rated outlets. Jackery calls it 110v at 16.4a but they’re essentially the same thing. It has two USB A type outlets for smartphones, tablets, and charging cables. Then a single USB C plug that is rated up to 60w output. It would’ve made sense and been preferable to have a 100w USB C outlet, but it’s not a deal-breaker.

No solar generator or power station is complete without at least one 12v DC cigarette lighter port. The Jackery 1500’s DC port is rated at 12v and up to 10a. Meaning that it can run up to 120w of power out of that single port.

Jackery has used the 8mm barrel connector for a very long time. But there’s an issue with it. There are two types of 8mm barrel connectors. One has a small inner pin and the other has a larger inner pin. The Jackery comes with a travel box for all of its accessories and includes two 8mm adapters that can be used with the SolarSaga solar panels.

But what this means, is you cannot use your own solar panels with a typical 8mm to PV Connector adapter. This is my number one complaint with any solar generator, compatibility. Many people already have their own solar panels.

For almost all of my solar generators, I use the Rigid 100 panels because they are the highest wattage producing 100w solar panels we have tested at Powered Portable Solar. If I am not using the Rigid 100 panels I am using the Flexx 100 panels. Why would I want to spend $300 for a single SolarSaga 100 solar panel that only makes about 67w when I can get a Rigid 100 solar panel that has multiple reports of getting 85-95w power output for about half of the price? I wouldn’t.

Jackery does have, in secret, an 8mm small pin to large pin adapter but you have to ask for it. They do not advertise or have it for sale anywhere. I also have been unsuccessful in finding that same connector anywhere else on the internet which makes me feel like Jackery knows what they’ve done and wants to require people to use their panels, or it won’t work. Not cool.

Warranty and Customer Service

Jackery provides a 2-year warranty for the Explorer 1500 which is great. 1-year warranties used to be the norm and then when the Titan came out a 2-year warranty was provided so now many other companies provide at least 2 years. This is great for us consumers and users so we have more coverage.

I have called and emailed Jackery many times and have always received a response to my emails and had my phone calls answered. When I would speak with someone, they were competent and knew how solar works, and were very helpful. In regard to their customer service, I personally have zero issues with it and have found it to be very good.

Expandability, X-Factor, and Weaknesses

The Explorer 1500 has zero expandability. You cannot add more batteries, charge controllers, link two systems together, or even connect to an RV with a 30amp RV plug since one isn’t built into the system. What you get is what you get, nothing more.

Expandability is important and oftentimes underappreciated because people often do not think about how their situations will change over the years. Some people will get a freezer and now need to run both their fridge and freeze during a blackout but cannot increase their solar input or battery capacity to be enough to fully do that. Or some will just want to use it for basic camping needs one weekend and then there’s a power outage the next and they have different needs.

That is why the Titan has been the reigning king of solar generators because it can expand up to any size of battery with the Titan batteries or other batteries. It also has 2,000w of solar input, the highest of any portable solar generator system, and can be “over-paneled” (connect more than 2,000w of solar panels) in order to get more power output longer each day.

As far as anything for the Explorer 1500 that makes it stand apart from the rest of the power stations and solar generators out there, I could only come up with one. It does have the ability to run a higher number of watts than what the battery capacity wattage is. That’s not specific only to the Jackery 1500 but it is not always common so it’s a good extra feature.

It does however do a very good job of not charging below freezing. A lot of systems will still charge below 32-degree Fahrenheit and that can damage lithium cells. Jackery put in a good level of protection there. So it’s not specific to the 1500 but is a very key feature in safety.

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Weaknesses, there are many. Obviously, solar charging and wall charging is completely misrepresented and make this system not a good choice because it cannot be charged in a single day. It takes longer than 5 hours to recharge with solar panels, and that’s if you’re not running anything off of it while charging. Most people need to run a fridge, lights, fans, chargers, or something off of the Explorer 1500 while it’s charging, which will increase the charge time. It cannot be charged in a day is indeed a deal-breaker.

Another weakness is being required to use the SolarSaga solar panels which are very expensive at $300 each, and not the highest output. The SolarSaga 200 is $600, very pricey. That’s not fair to us consumers and people who need to use this for emergency power, RVing, camping, or just portable power.

The screen will not stay on. After 10 to 15 seconds, it will turn off which is really annoying when I just want to see the state of charge from a distance or when I am walking by it. And the AC outlets are really close together making it hard to charge camera batteries, radio batteries, and other things at the same time because those have large plugs.

Those things along with only having 500 cycles make it hard to be a top choice, especially for $1,599.

The EcoFlow Delta is most similar to the Jackery 1500 in terms of specs. The Delta has a 1,800w pure sine wave inverter. It has a 1,260wh battery which is smaller than the Explorer 1500’s but not by much. But the Delta can input the full 400w that it’s rated to and can use any solar panels that you want. Plus, the Delta is quite a bit more affordable.

Price vs Value

I have come up with a way to calculate the true value of a solar generator. It includes comparing the total battery capacity, inverter output capacity, and solar input capacity vs how much it costs.

This unit of measurement I refer to as “Price per Unit Wattage” since it includes all watts and watt-hours compared to the price.

The Explorer 1500 has a Price per Unit Wattage of $1.71 which is definitely not bad at all. For comparison, the EcoFlow Delta has a price per unit wattage of $1.54. That means that you’ll get more value of the EcoFlow Delta than you would the Jackery 1500 for their current prices.

The Jackery Explorer 1500 is also very similar to the Goal Zero Yeti 1500x and the GZ 1500x has a price per unit wattage of $2.76 which is much higher than the Explorer 1500. The Titan once again has the best rating with a price per unit wattage lower than any other system on the market at $1.42!

What’s It Good For?

The Jackery 1500 I think will work well for car camping and VanLife. It’s not ideal to use Jackery solar panels but for what most power needs are for car camping and VanLife, it should get the job done.

I do not recommend it at all for emergency backup power or for RVing. It simply does not have enough battery capacity or solar recharge capability to run a fridge nonstop for days or run real RV power needs.

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The Bottom Line

In conclusion, I do not recommend the Jackery 1500. If I had to go with something of a similar size, keeping in mind that it would still be very limited, I would go with the EcoFlow Delta. But truly, I would rather save my pennies and get the Titan solar generator because it will allow me to run my house, power my RV, or run a full VanLife setup. Car camping will work too but is probably overkill for car camping unless you have lots of e-bikes that need to be charged up or something.

Jackery needs to step up their game and their honesty. Don’t tell people it can charge 500w but can only realistically do 306w, that’s just not right to do to people. Honestly, if Jackery had an MPPT charge controller that would do 500w of real-world input and could use any solar panel, this would be a pretty decent unit even with a $1,599 price tag. But it doesn’t, so I’ll pass on recommending this unit.

Continue ReadingUnbiased Review – Jackery Explorer 1500 Portable Solar Generator Power Station

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.

Continue ReadingFull Review of the Pecron Q3000S Solar Generator Power Station

Bluetti EP500 Powerful Home Power Station Review

MAXOAK has been working extremely hard to bring out some incredible power station/solar generators. They have been pushing the limits of what is capable of these units and have truly become one of the absolute top power station companies.

Their Bluetti EP500 power station has received a lot of attention ever since they launched on Kickstarter. There are a few Bluetti EP500 reviews out there that have done a good job of showing the specs off, but I want to truly dive into this power station and see how good it really is.

Is it better than the tried-and-true Titan solar generator? Will it truly run a whole house during an emergency? Can it be used to live permanently off-grid? Can I use it with my RV? All of these questions and more will be answered in this Bluetti EP500 review.

Battery

First things first we need to know exactly where it is pulling all its power from and that is the huge battery pack. Bluetti has transitioned most of its focus to using LiFePo4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate) batteries because of their long cycles and stable shelf life. But that comes at a cost of some serious weight.

The Bluetti EP500 has an incredible built-in battery capacity of 5,100wh. The only other unit currently on the market that has a larger built-in battery capacity is the Goal Zero Yeti 6000X. There are many other units that have expandable battery systems like the Titan solar generator but the Bluetti EP500 comes standard with 5,100wh.

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Not only that, but the EP500 has an incredible 6,000 cycle rating! That means if you did one cycle every day (drain from 100% down to 0% then back up to 100%) it would last over 16 years before it reached 80% efficiency. That alone is something they can seriously brag about. Basically, it means that you will never have to worry about replacing the batteries in the Bluetti EP500. They’re going to last longer than you need to worry about.

Besides having a huge built-in battery capacity, the Bluetti EP500 is capable of connecting to a second Bluetti EP500 unit and combing their overall battery capacity. I’ll go over more of this in detail in the “expandability” section below.

The downside to having such a large battery capacity is the weight. This is not a portable unit by any means. This is meant to be wheeled into place, left there, and used as needed. It is not going to be easy to move this into an RV, van, cabin, or anywhere for that matter. Weighing in at 167lbs this unit will take at least two people to move around. It comes with wheels that are removable once it’s in the permanent location you want it but it doesn’t roll easily unless it’s on a hard floor or a very thin carpet like commercial office carpet.

That is the biggest downside to having this big of a battery is you lose the ability to keep it portable. This means bringing it with you in a “bug-out” scenario is going to be difficult. That is why I love the modularity of the Titan solar generator. Since the Titan battery stack on each other and can be disconnected from each other at only 35lbs each, it still keeps it portable. I can easily keep three Titan batteries on my Titan solar generator, which is 6,000wh, and in a pinch or bug-out situation take all the pieces with me to wherever I’m bugging out to. That is one feature that is still unbeaten by the Titan is its ability to be expanded to any size and still be easily broken down and transportable.

Inverter

The inverter on the Bluetti EP500 left me wanting a bit more out of it. The EP500 has a very high-quality 2,000w continuous output pure sine wave inverter. 2,000w is plenty for most people for emergency situations because most people will be using things like their fridge, freezer, lights, fans, CPAPs, laundry machine, etc.

I did expect a larger inverter capacity for having such a large battery bank. 2,000w is plenty strong enough to run anything that can run out of a normal house outlet including heavy-duty 110v equipment. The Bluetti EP500 Pro has a 3,000w inverter which feels like a better fit for a 5,100wh battery.

The Bluetti EP500 has an amazingly high peak of 4,800w which means it’s truly capable of running heavy equipment. It is fully capable of running 2,000w continuously until it is completely depleted from the battery which some other units cannot run their full inverter continuous load until empty like the Inergy Flex. The Inergy Flex is only capable of running its full 1,500w load until the battery reaches 20%.

When two Bluetti EP500 units are paired together they combine their total inverter capacity and it increases to 4,000w output which is large enough to run some people’s houses. If a house uses a lot of natural gas or propane for all the heat sources included central heating, cooking, water heater, and so on then a 4,000w inverter is generally enough to run the house like normal. The next limit would be using central air. That may be possible with a 4,000w inverter but central A/C will very quickly drain the batteries and you would be able to run anything else at the same time most likely.

That all being said, 4,000w of inverter capacity is huge. It’s completely capable of running all emergency power necessities quite easily at the same time. Even a well pump. That is really the biggest benefit of the Bluetti EP500 double unit system is that it is truly capable of running a well pump up to about 2hp. Of course, you’ll still need a 220v transfer switch installed but that will be incredible to run a whole house with the Bluetti EP500.

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Charging

The charging capability on the MAXOAK Bluetti EP500 is quite good for the size. It can be charged in as little as 4 hours and 15 minutes. It uses a single MPPT charge controller that has a charge parameter of 55-145v and 20a.

Having a large charge parameter like this allows the Bluetti EP500 to be charged with panels that are set up in series, parallel, or series/parallel combo. As long as the charge parameters aren’t exceeded the Bluetti EP500 will allow up to 1,200w of solar power to come in. That’s twice as fast as MAXOAK’s previous model the Bluetti AC200P which had 700w of solar input.

With it being able to take in 1,200w of solar power it recharges fast enough to be charged in a single day. Since there are an average of five solar peak hours each day in the USA a solar generator must be able to charge in five hours or less to be any good. The only concern this brings up is if anything else is being run at the same time while recharging.

1,200w of solar input is truly incredible. The Titan solar generator can do 2,000w of solar input but 1,200w is definitely good. However, if you’re running a fridge, freezer, and a fan all day long that will consume about 250w per hour run. That means there would be a net of 950w going into the battery all day long while still running that necessary equipment. We get that by taking 1,200w solar input minus 250w output which equals 950w (1,200 – 250 = 950).

If the EP500 is at 0% and then you start recharging it at 1,200w while running that equipment you’ll be gaining 950wh/hr run. The total battery capacity is 5,100wh. That means 5,100wh ÷ 950w/hr = 5.36hrs to get fully charged. In reality, it would still get fully charged even though it’s slightly more than 5 hours. But if more than that needs to be run all day long, it will prolong the charge time and can lead to not getting a full charge.

That all being said, even if the EP500 is at a 50% state of charge when night comes, 50% battery capacity is enough to continue to run the fridge and freezer all night long without any issues. It is simply important to note that it doesn’t take much to keep the EP500 from reaching outside of that 5-hour charge window which can make it difficult to have a full battery by nightfall. This is true of any unit that doesn’t have a large enough charge controller to match the size of the battery. The EP500 doesn’t have that issue though, as long as not a ton of equipment is run during the day.

The Bluetti EP500 charges about 550w from the wall outlet and can be used simultaneously with the solar charger. That can get up to 1,750w of total charge going into the EP500 which is incredibly fast. If you need to charge this unit in a hurry, you can use the wall charger and solar charger at the same time. You can also use a gas generator and plug the EP500’s wall charger into that and recharge the system in a pinch.

There’s one neat trick that can be done to get upwards of 1,700w of solar input. You can get 600w in solar panels, an MPPT charge controller rated to at least 600w, and a pure sine wave inverter rated to at least 750w. Connect the solar panels to the charge controller, then the charge controller to the inverter, then the inverter to the wall charging cable of the EP500, then that cable to the EP500 wall charging port. You would be hijacking the AC input port but would be using solar panels to supply the power. That means during a grid down situation you could get about 1,700w of power going in without needing a wall outlet or gas generator. Then the EP500 could be charged in 3 hours flat. I don’t recommend that for anyone who isn’t familiar with electricity.

There is no 12v car charger option for the EP500. The Bluetti EP500 is not intended to be charged from a car alternator or DC cigarette lighter port. They do not plan on adding this option either. Because of its weight, they do not feel that is a good option for charging. Generally, car chargers for solar generators/power stations will put out about 120w. It would take over 42 hours to recharge the EP500 using a car charger that way. That’s longer than it takes to drive from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean in the USA.

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Expandability

The expandability of the Bluetti EP500 is really where it shines. What MAXOAK is truly bringing to market is the ability to make 220/240v power off of a solar and lithium-based power station. This gives people the option to run well pumps, dryer machines, whole houses through transfer switches, and more. This is an incredible feature that was supposed to be available with the Titan solar generator but didn’t make it to market in time for when the Titan launched. In this regard, the Bluetti EP500 is the absolute best. It’s the best solar generator capable of 220v power. Which for some people is a necessity, but for most, it’s not. There is no doubt that this is an absolute game-changer to the industry though and for that they deserve applause.

The Bluetti EP500 is capable of putting out 220v power using a special adapter cable that goes between two EP500 units and then it adds an additional power strip box that has a 220v 40a plug on it. This is where the inverter is just slightly too small since 4,000w truly is good but not enough to go permanently off-grid with for a normal family home. A 6,000w inverter would be enough to run a normal family home permanently.

When two EP500 units are put together you get 10,200wh of total battery capacity, 4,000w of inverter capacity, and 9,600 inverter peak capacity. This is a seriously strong power station.

X-Factor

The ability to tie two EP500 power stations together is the biggest x-factor for this unit. It will also have an app for smartphones so that it can be monitored and controlled from your handheld device easily.

Having 6,000 cycles is unheard of. Even the Battleborn LiFePo4 batteries don’t have 6,000 cycles on them and buying four of the Battleborn batteries is about the same cost as buying one EP500 and would have about the same battery capacity.

MAXOAK claims they have a special UPS feature but truly any solar generator or power station can be used as a UPS. All that is required is to plug your fridge, TV, or whatever device into the solar generator, then have the wall charger plugged in and always charging the solar generator. Then if the power goes out the solar generator will stop getting charged from the wall, but will still be supplying power to whatever device is being used.

Not all solar generators can do this because some have an auto-off feature that will happen if the unit doesn’t get charged or discharged for more than a few minutes. For example, say a fridge is plugged into a solar generator but isn’t running for 15 minutes because fridges turn on and off as needed to stay cool. During that 15 minute window when the fridge isn’t pulling any power, and the solar generator is 100% full-on battery, the system will think it doesn’t need to be turned on and so it will automatically turn off to conserve power.

The Titan is capable of being used as a UPS (uninterrupted power supply) as well since it doesn’t have the auto-off feature. The Bluetti EB240, EB150, and AC50s have the auto-off feature built into them.

The Bluetti EP500 does include a 100w USB C PD port that can charge devices at 100w output which very few other solar generators or power stations have.

Weakness

The only true weakness of this unit is its heavyweight. It’s nearly impossible to move unless there are at least two people moving it. Even still, it’s over 80lbs per person when lifting it with two people. 80lbs is seriously heavy for most people. That shouldn’t scare people away because most people will set this unit for wherever they need it to be during an emergency and leave it there.

The Titan is the only unit currently on the market that has a seriously large capacity in terms of batteries, inverter, and solar but can be broken down into small sections and transported easily. The Bluetti EP500 is more for permanent use.

Pricing

While the Bluetti EP500 is still available on Kickstarter it has an incredibly low price of only $2,799 which is unheard of for what you get. It is always important to do an apples-to-apples comparison of other power stations and solar generators so everyone knows what they are truly getting.

The best way to determine that is by comparing the top 3 features of any power station: battery capacity, inverter output, and solar input. Taking those features into account and comparing it to the price, the Bluetti EP500 comes down to a total “unit wattage” cost of only $1.43/unit wattage. That is a very good price for the Kickstarter early beard special price of $2,799. Once Kickstarter is no longer available it will be bumped up to $3,999 for the EP500 which will bring the total cost up to $2.04/unit wattage which is okay.

The Titan solar generator has a total of $1.33/unit wattage price. Currently, that is the lowest price for all the features included at only $2,995.

At least while the Kickstarter campaign is going the EP500 is at an extremely competitive price and should seriously be considered as one of the best solar generator/power stations out there. Delivery is expected to be in August of 2020 so there is a bit of a wait time. It’s not uncommon for Kickstarter campaigns to get pushed back either but MAXOAK has generally done a great job of getting units out pretty quick.

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Conclusion

After reviewing the MAXOAK Bluetti EP500 it is easy to see that it is a very good unit. Absolutely one of the best that have ever come to market. Its ability to make 220/240v power is incredible. It could use a slightly bigger inverter to match the large battery capacity better but 2,000w is still very good.

The solar input is double to the next best solar generator or power station and will recharge the Bluetti EP500 quickly each day. With such a large battery capacity, this will easily run essentials for at least two days in most people’s homes.

This is definitely an incredible unit and many people should consider getting it.

Continue ReadingBluetti EP500 Powerful Home Power Station Review