How to Pick the BEST Portable Power Station for YOU *Unsponsored*

Hello, thanks for joining me in today's video, this is not sponsored at all, we are going to talk about

portable

power

station

s, so having tested and reviewed over 30 different

portable

power

station

s, I am often asked to give advice on which of the many power plants I have worked with are the

best

, and while clearly some power plants are better than others in one or more aspects, the reality is that people often have different needs, priorities and budgets, and so I don't like them. It's handy to give kind of a one-size-fits-all answer to that question, so what I want to try to do in this video is share with you what I think are the most important considerations to make when purchasing a portable power station and hopefully , do it in a way that helps you determine what your particular priorities and needs are so that you can make the most informed purchasing decision based on your needs and priorities, not just mine, because if you're just starting to research these types of products and you're like me when I first started getting interested, there's a good chance you just already know, you still don't know what you don't know, I know, I certainly didn't know and despite doing what I thought was After a Pretty reasonable amount of due diligence product research, I somehow managed to spend about fourteen hundred dollars on a power plant that I can now look back on and understand was definitely not the

best

purchasing decision I've ever made.

That particular purchase happened. being the original jackery Explorer 1000 and a jackery solar Saga 100 solar panel and while those products are pretty decent quality and continue to work well, I now know that I paid a considerable amount more than I needed and got a considerable amount less for my money, so I hope that when we're done here I've at least helped some of you avoid making an equally costly mistake. Well, if you've been looking for portable power stations, you've probably seen some pretty ridiculous marketing. There is no shortage of photos in product listings showing power stations used in all sorts of, let's say unlikely, scenarios, like backpackers walking through the mountains carrying a solar panel in one hand and a 35-sound power station. in the other, or maybe tent campers, all set up in some wild, mountainous place with a couple hundred pounds of power station modules stacked up, presumably so they can power their electric irons, food processors, toaster ovens, and any other electrical appliance you can think of to put in a video or photo because you know who doesn't take their toaster ovens camping in the tent so let's get all the fuss out of the way, obviously you don't need a five power system thousand dollars that weighs 200 pounds to sit next to your tent and work on your laptop and I doubt that there has ever been a backpacker who has felt the need to hand carry a 35 pound power station through the mountains and have said that these devices actually provide excellent real-world utility and that's where we should probably start with the first question you need.

Ask yourself if you know what you want to be able to do with your power plant, what kinds of things you want to be able to run, and how long you need them to run. Do you just want to recharge your portable electronics or maybe you need to power an air conditioner all day long? For most of us, the answer is somewhere in between those two scenarios, but that still leaves a huge range of functionality in that term. half. Now the best way to know for sure how much power things you want to use is to get an inexpensive wattmeter like this one, these cost less than 20 bucks or so and are worth it if you want to be able to accurately estimate your off-grid power or Mobile power needs, but to try to help you out a little, I put a link in the video description below to a Google Spreadsheet that I add regularly and this will show you what the typical power consumption is for a variety of common devices , so in the absence of a wattmeter like this, you can at least have a solid idea of ​​how much inverter power and battery capacity you might want to look for in your power station and, by the way, if you're looking to run things that still I haven't included in this spreadsheet, let me know in the comments below what those things are and I'll try to add them as soon as I can, so let's say in my particular case that maybe I just want to be able to turn on, say, a 12 volt refrigerator for a two day weekend and maybe you know, brew a couple cups of coffee each morning, maybe charge a couple cell phones overnight and maybe run a small USB fan. overnight and I don't want to bother with solar recharging since I'll be trail hopping all day instead of lounging around camp all day, so as you can see here, a typical 12 volt DC refrigerator freezer will use about 20 watts. hours of battery capacity for every hour of use and that's with the refrigerator compressor turning off and on intermittently to maintain the set points you have set and it only needs about 45 watts when the compressor is running with a momentary peak when it starts . about 200 watts, so now that we know that our power station will have to be able to withstand a momentary 200 watt surge, which is usually no big deal and since we want to run this refrigerator-freezer all weekend, let's say it equates to 40 hours of run time, so I can multiply that 20 watt hours of consumption by 40 hours, which means I'll need a usable battery capacity of at least 800 watt hours.

Why did I use the term usable battery capacity? Every time I check a power plant. I will always tell you your rated capacity and then test to see what your usable capacity is on both the AC and DC outputs because very often the usable capacity is different for AC and DC outputs and the reason why. do. This is because almost all power plants on the market publish the theoretical total maximum capacity of their internal battery cells, but in reality we almost never have access to 100 of that capacity for reasons such as AC inverter conversion power losses. reserved for the BMS or battery management.

Systems that you know typically expect that they only have access to maybe 80 or 85 percent of that rated capacity. In the city, sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less, but that's why I always test it so you know what it is and keep that in mind over time. years that the usable capacity of the battery will actually degrade and the rate at which it degrades will depend on the number of factors which we will discuss in a little more detail in a moment, but keep in mind that constant fast charging or discharging or energy use A power station in extreme heat can be important factors that affect the long-term life of that power plant along with the battery chemistry that that power plant has, but as I said more about that in a minute, Well, back to our two-day camping scenario. look at the coffee maker, let's say it will be brewing four cups each of the two mornings during our weekend getaway, so you can see that our coffee maker will consume approximately 75 watt hours of capacity in a single four cup cycle and that it also consumes about of 900 watts while it is running, but it won't be running for long, so we now know that our power plant's AC inverter will need to support at least 900 watts of continuous power consumption and we will need another 150 watt hours of capacity from the power plant. battery to accommodate our two mornings now for the two cell phones that I mentioned, we can see here in the spreadsheet that they will typically consume about 48 watt hours of capacity each for a full charge, so two cell phones will be fully charged in two consecutive nights.

I'll need to factor in an additional 192 watt hours of capacity for my power station and finally run our little USB fan overnight to get some air circulating. We can see that it will consume approximately 12 watt hours of capacity for every hour I use. So over two nights, let's say eight hours per night, that's about 16 hours times that 12 watt hours and that comes out to another 192 watt hours that we'll need to add to that capacity calculation. Okay, so let's add up our capacity needs here, so that's it. 800 watt hours for the refrigerator 150 watt hours for the coffee maker 192 watt hours for the two cell phones and another 192 watt hours for our USB fan, which adds up to 1334 watt hours of battery capacity and, just in case, let's add more others 10 just to have an extra reserve for whatever and that's 1467 watt hours of usable capacity that we would want for this particular scenario now in terms of the capacity of the AC inverter, in other words the maximum power output that we need without a battery . capacity, we simply add up the continuous watt consumption of anything that may need to run at the same time as our highest load, so if this scenario represents my most common use case, I'll want to focus on an AC power plant. inverter capacity of at least a thousand watts and a nominal battery capacity of at least 1800 watt hours and that is because when you take into account that the typical usable capacity is about 80 percent of the nominal capacity when we apply it At 1800 watt hours, that should give us about 1467 watt hours of usable capacity and that's basically what we said we were going to need, so we've already narrowed down our options quite a bit based on what we want to use and how long we want to use it for.

Now let's talk about the next important consideration: battery chemistry, so there are several battery chemistries in play here with portable power stations, but at the time of making this video, at least the two most common chemistries by far are the lithium (nmc), sometimes called ternary lithium and lithium iron. phosphate also sometimes known as lfp now there are pros and cons for both but I think most people will agree that the pros column for lithium ion phosphate chemistry is much longer than the prose column for lithium and MC and by the way, when you look at the specs of a power plant, if it just says lithium for chemistry or lithium ion, that almost always means it's nmc lithium or ternary lithium, not lithium iron phosphate , lithium iron phosphate will almost always appear in the specifications as lfp or lifo4 and it is important to know this. because really the main benefit of lithium nmc is that it has a higher energy density than lipo4, making lithium nmc based power plants noticeably lighter and sometimes smaller with the same watt capacity hour than its lithium iron phosphate counterpart at times, although the difference in weight is Actually, it all depends on the components and materials used, as you can see here in this case, for example, this is a Jackery product which uses nmc lithium.

It actually has a little more capacity than this blue Eddy eb3a. That's using lithium iron phosphate and yet it's still somehow smaller and a little bit lighter, so that's really the main advantage of nmc over lithium iron phosphate. That said, there are some very compelling reasons why you might prefer lithium iron phosphate over nmc lithium now. Chief among them would be that, on average, the useful lifespan of a lithium iron phosphate battery cell is about Six times longer than NMC lithium and the lifespan is often expressed in terms of charge cycles, that is, how many times.

Can this thing be fully loaded and unloaded while still retaining 80 percent of its original capacity afterward? So for nmc based chemicals, that number is usually 500 to 800 complete charge or discharge cycles and for lithium iron phosphate chemicals, that number is usually closer to that. Three thousand to four thousand cycles, such a big difference, especially if you intend to use your power station on a daily basis, if you happen to be a much more casual user and only need to use your power station, you might know this several times a day. anus. nmc lithium The limited lifespan of nmc lithium probably isn't that important to you, but that's not the only advantage of lithium ion phosphate over nmc lithium iron phosphate battery chemistry and the unlikely event that any may fail catastrophically for some.

For this reason they are much less likely to cause a violent fire and the materials are much less toxic as they do not contain nickel, manganese or cobalt. That's not to say that lithium iron phosphate batteries can't catch fire, they can in exceptional circumstances, but it's much more likely that Just ProduceUse a large amount of smoke instead of a volatile explosive type of fire that can occur with a catastrophic failure in an NMC lithium chemistry. Now, for me personally, this is perhaps the most significant advantage of lithium iron phosphate. about nmc and this is why i am no longer reviewing nmc based power plants and also why i have been quite critical of jackery's product line as until very recently all of their products were nmc based, now jackery has a couple of levels higher. final options using lithium iron phosphate, but the majority of their product line is still nmc lithium.

Now you could make a case for when it might be advantageous to consider an nmc based power plant on a weight basis in a somewhat faster cold temperature charge. but I still think that overall the safety concerns significantly outweigh those rather minor advantages and for that reason I really prefer lithium iron phosphate chemicals for a power plant. Well, let's move on to the next possibly very significant differentiating feature, and that is the maximum solar input now. If you really never think you're going to bother recharging a power station using solar energy and a lot of people don't, then this isn't a problem, it's not a big deal, but almost all power stations will have some charging capability via solar. solar power now, on the other hand, if one of your priorities is the capacity to fully discharge your power station on a good weather day, then knowing the maximum solar input of a power station should be on par with selecting the capacity and the correct inverter size now.

A good rule of thumb I like to use for solar input is to multiply the Watts maximum solar input by five and then see if that number is greater than or equal to what the battery capacity should be if you intend to recharge it. completely in one day, because if not, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to fully charge it. power station with only one day of solar input alone, so for example, let's say we have a 2000 watt hour capacity power station with a maximum solar input of 300 watts now, if I multiply that 300 watts by five, I get 1500 watts and that means that on an average full day of decent solar conditions with maximum solar input at that power plant, I can reasonably expect to charge up to about 1500 watt hours of capacity at that power plant, which in this example I don't It is enough to fully charge that power station from zero to one hundred percent in a single day, since it is a two thousand watt hour power station.

Alternatively, let's say you have a 1000 watt hour power station that can take up to 600 watts of solar input, so again if we multiply 600 watts by five. That would give us the ability to produce about 3,000 watt hours of charge in a full day of sunshine and obviously that's three times the capacity of 1,000 watt hours, so you could charge that power station from zero to 100 in just a third of a day in full sun or I could afford to charge it in a full day while also powering other loads at the same time and that would be a good option, so generally speaking you want as much solar input as you want.

You can get it at a power station if you intend to charge it in a full day or less. By the way, if you find this information useful, consider hitting the like button. I would really appreciate it. Okay, now that we've talked about the three most important iterations, at least in my opinion, let's talk about some other things that may or may not be priorities for you, so the average warranty period in the power plant product space is about two years and there are Several brands that now offer a five year warranty are becoming a little more common and usually just keep in mind that you have to register those products with the company after purchase to get that warranty. five years.

In most cases, I also usually pay a little more for units with a five-year warranty, but depending on your personal warranty concerns, it may or may not be worth paying a little more for the long warranty. , but it can also be now. I will say that there are a lot of new brands that have come on the market in the last couple of years and if warranty coverage is something you would prefer to maximize then I would probably suggest sticking with one of the more established names like blue Eddie or Eco flow or maybe even jackery or anchor and you go green because there's a good chance those companies are still five years away from honoring that warranty because let's be honest, if a new brand just hit the market, there are times when those brands They do not do it.

It survives more than two or three years, and in that case, what good is a five-year warranty if that brand is no longer available to support it now? A couple more features you may want to look for are mobile app control UPS mode wireless phone charging now I generally find these are nice to have and not necessarily must have features and I voluntarily do without those features if the other main features are Solid and the price is extremely competitive. Pekron really comes to mind here, they don't make it yet. They offer mobile app support but their units are very rugged and offer great value for money so I don't care much that they don't offer mobile app support and the same would apply to UPS support now that could be something that's very important to you and not all power stations support UPS mode, but many do.

If that's important to you, you should have no problem finding a solid option in that particular capability class you're looking for at a fair price to do so. I have that UPS mode, so I'm close to done here. I also want to talk about battery capacity expansion options and maybe using a power station as an emergency backup power source at home, not all power stations have capacity expansion options so if you need that kind. of flexibility or you're thinking that an important use case for you might be home emergency backup power, then I think you'll definitely want to go with something that has battery expansion options, something like this bird here, but have Keep in mind that not all expansion options are created equal, so I personally prefer that the expansion battery can be charged independently of the main unit and does not necessarily require you to always have it connected to the main unit and even better Yes can also provide DC output from the expansion. battery while it is disconnected from the main unit.

I just like the extra flexibility and options those types of features give you. That being said, you typically pay a little more for expansion options that have those types of features and if those features don't really add value to how you want to use them, then maybe you don't want to have to pay more for them and there are definitely some options out there. solid budget that give you great capacity expansion without the extra DC ports. or the ability to charge independently of the head unit Now I will say that while it is not strictly necessary, if you are thinking that you want to use your power station as emergency backup power at home or perhaps power your RV with that station energy and if that is the key.

Giving you a power station that has an RV 30 connector is very useful as you can plug it directly into your RV Shore's electrical connection or you can plug it into a manual transfer switch connected to your home's main breaker panel now that it is not. . Is it strictly necessary or a deal breaker, as I mentioned, because if you don't have one, you can always buy a standard plug to RV30 connector adapter, but keep in mind that you are still limited by the actual AC output of that power station . inverter and that could be 15 amps or maybe 20 amps but anyway you should probably also note that not all rv30 outlets at the power plants that have them actually support the full 30 amps even though the connector could handle it, sometimes it actually only supports 20 amps because that is only the maximum supported by the inverter.

As a final benefit, I will also mention that there are several options that support connecting two power plants together via a special parallel interface to get 240 volts. Split phase AC output by combining those capabilities of AC inverters. Now this definitely won't be the least expensive option, it will be one of the higher priced options, but if you are looking for a portable or perhaps a semi-portable option that can handle 240 volts off the grid from several brands including blu- etti ecoflow mango power for example they give you that option if you need it so hopefully some of that information was useful to you, if so please consider pressing that as a button for me if you haven't already and I would really appreciate it and I would consider subscribing if you are not already a subscriber.

I have a lot of interesting content lined up, including some fun and hopefully useful DIY projects too. As some new products have just hit the market that I think would be worth considering, I try to mix them up a bit, so I hope you'll always find something interesting or useful in some way. Oh, and very soon we will be marketing our products. house here in the suburbs for a more rural property which will give me the opportunity to expand the types of topics I cover here on the channel, so I'm very excited to be able to bring you new content in the very near future.

Anyway, I sincerely thank you for taking the time to join me in this video and I hope you'll consider coming back for the next one until then, have fun.