Here’s a pet peeve of mine. I was up at CostCo and beheld this:
It is what is being marketed, wildly inaccurately in my opinion, as a ‘solar generator’. What is this thing, you ask? It’s a battery and some solar panels to recharge it. If anything here is a ‘generator’ it is the solar panels themselves. The battery part of this thing doesnt generate electricity…it stores it. The battery part is no more a ‘generator’ than a 55 gallon blue barrel of water is a ‘portable well’. Not sure why, but this misuse of terminology really grates my grapes.
Ignoring the inaccurate advertising, is this thing worth having? Maybe. Honestly, I’m more interested in the batter/inverter unit itself than I am the panels. In addition to being able to be charged by the panels at what I am guessing is a fairly slow rate, it has plug-ins to allow recharging from household (or generator) current.
Something like this probably has some merit for a very low-draw scenario…running LED lights or maybe powering a radio. While I’m sure the battery is up to more demanding tasks when fully charged, its the ability to recharge completely and in a timely manner off the kinda small panels that I’m curious about.
There are no shortage of ‘battery in a box’ products out there. While I love a turn-key solution as much as the next guy I think that I’d prefer to fab up my own with premium components for longevity and increased function. But…interesting to see this at CostCo. First freeze driers, now these. Someone at CostCo purchasing is wearing some of our brand of tinfoil, methinks.
Now, if CostCo would start selling ammo.
I have a similarly sized Jackery backup battery, but I don’t have the solar panels (yet). I use it when traveling as a backup charger for phones and laptops. When we lost power I once used it to power some LED lights.
Like you, I think calling it a generator is idiotic. But it has its uses. Mine was a Christmas gift and I like it.
My local Costco had 14 of the small Harvest Right freeze dryers, I didn’t pick one up immediately because I wanted to double check the prices. When I went back the next day they had already sold out. Oh well.
Unfortunately, my local CostCo doesn’t sell any kind of prepper/survival stuff. They don’t even carry Mountain House or similar long-term foods.
Costco / Jackery leaves much unsaid. What is the battery capacity and at what discharge rate? Is the AC output sinusoidal or square wave? It matters if you want to use your HF radio anywhere nearby.
The big three for fuel and energy is A/C, heating (house and water) and cooking. If the solar gizmo can’t do any of that what good is it? I can charge the phone and listen to the radio in my vehicles. Could probably, and I have, heat some food on the exhaust manifold. As long as I have gasoline most of my shelter issues are met although it’s going to get cramped and stinky pretty quick living in my truck but lots of people seem to be doing it. Solar seems like a solution looking for a problem. One would need a ginormous and expensive battery and solar array to do what a small generator does at a fraction of the price. Got my eye on an 1800 rpm diesel that will run the whole house.
I have a 1500 watt and a 1000 watt Jackery. The panels work well with appropriate sunlight. You can use a small generator like a Honda 1000 to top them off. 5 gallons of gas can make one of them run a long time. My 1500 watt one will keep a Dometic 45-liter fridge running for 120 hours. They are great for recharging tablets and battery’s. They are great for small stuff and big stuff in short duration.
I need well power generation… Am I stick with just a massive generator for it?
Many old windmill locations in AZ are now solar powered – looks to be about an 8 x 8 array on a post. Obviously varies with depth, flow rate, etc. But yeah – same issue here with a 700′ well so big generator on site.
I installed a dedicated gasoline/propane dual fuel generator in our pump house for backup. Got it from Costco and store 20 lb tanks for propane. It works great for power outages. Be sure to vent your pump house near the genset for air intake and a short piece of steel ducting to direct exhaust gases. I know the fuel won’t last in SHTF so I have made a few well buckets and added a 500 ft spool of rope. I plan to add a 500 ft spool of .1875 dia cable. Labelled “rescue pulley” for mountaineering, these small ‘snatch blocks’ coupled with carabiners, provide a very portable block and tackle system to lift those well buckets. I have made a few to have extras to trade with neighbors.
Up front – I use simple eletric calculations, I’m not a electrical engineer. The really professional calculations may give better numbers. I’m basing my statements on 25 years using a 100W solar panel to power standard marine batteries in an old house trailer. YMMV.
From the Jackery website — the 1000 has a rated power storage of 1002 Watt-hours. The solar panelsproduce 100 Watts (says so on the box). Full sunlight for 1 hour at 100 Watts gives your 100 Watt-hours. So a full charge (1002 Wh) requires 10 hours of full sun. That’s pertect conditions. (Point for discussion: most solar chargers have a low-voltage cut-off, so the 1000 may not be fully discharged when it shuts itself down. I can’t find any mention of this on their website, so my numbers may be overy cautious — it may not take a full 1002Wh to recharge from ’empty’. OTOH, it may turn itself off sooner than you expect). If you plug in one electic appliance of, say, 800 watts (typical electric kettle) the 1000 will power it for just over 70 minutes. Electric heaters typically draw 1,600 – 1,800 W , which means you get less than a hour of warmth. Even 1 standard 6W LED light bulb can only work for a bit more than 100 hours – call it just over 4 days in the cave.
Nothing saying that this isn’t a good system — but know what it can, and can’t do, before depending on it.
We’re seeing these here as well. Seems every catalogs I get in the mail lately has them. Wal-Mart is reportedly selling at a sale price at this time. The normal price is $300 and right now you can get them for $60. So far I haven’t any reports of anyone that has actually purchased one.
But I agree with you. The description is somewhat disingenuous.
t’s pure hype. I went to their website and their prices are much higher and offering huge discounts. The same unit on their website has 2 one-hundred Watt panels (and $200 more after the “$900 discount”) – probably because too many complained that it took days to recharge with one. I’ll bet if you go to their website you’ll quickly realize that it’s all gimmick. IMHO it’s way overpriced for what it will do.
If not being used when charging, a full charge will take 12 hours OF FULL SUN – AND this requires CONSTANTLY changing the position of the solar panels to be optimally pointed at the sun. Good luck with that outside of summer.
Save your money – read up on the subject and buy the things that you need to put together a system on your own based on your own needs.
Well, from the photo, the battery stores 1260(ish) W hr and the panel is rated at 100 W. Which realistically means it would take two days for the panels to recharge the battery, and the battery could run (say) 100 W worth of laptop, radio and cell charger for half a day.
Long term, of course, the average power you can get out of this is set by the panel, so would be around 50 W, under ideal conditions and depending on the time of year. So that’s maybe a laptop, small radio, and keeping some portable electronics charged. Or maybe a thermoelectric cooler. The battery is just providing load/source leveling.
Arguably useful, but I’d want to clearly understand the use case before buying it or building something similar.
I’ve seen enough disappointing solar setups of all kinds that I think the rule going in should be to reduce your expectations by two-thirds. Then you might be satisfied.
If I were to spend significant money on an install I would just go with a large bank of nickel-iron ‘forever’ batteries and live with what it gave me. The panels, at around a buck per watt, are affordably expendable every 5 to 10 years. The KISS principle. But that’s just me. I have enough other things requiring regular maintenance.
Ive been kinda curious about those Ni-fe batts as well. They have some advantages for our particular needs, but some drawbacks as well.
At that price point a regular petrol burning generator can be obtained. It is Costco after all, so yuppies can buy their gold there and get this contraption to feel good about their prepping measures. More landfill items when the battery degrades and is no longer useful, and it is eventually thrown out by our disposable society. How many are sold on credit, and buyers are making payments for it and adding interest fees to that cost? Jesus weeps.
Amen on the generator mislabeling. (I work in power plants – the big nuke sort.) Similar issue is ‘battery’ power storage sites (biggest are still little toy-like things) being referred to as power plants. Solar panels are not generators, they are converters (yeah, I know.)
Another similar pet peeve is use of ‘engine’ vs ‘motor.’ Gasoline and Diesel power units are engines. Electric powered unit is a motor.
The motors in your car drive the fuel pump (maybe) and the windshield wipers (if they work.) The engine pretty much drives them and pretty much everything else.
“they are converters”
Thats actually quite true, now that I think about it. The law of conservation of energy
I have a Wagan 1500w “solar cube”, basically three glass mat batteries, an inverter, 80watts of built in solar panels and charging options of Hydro, small genset or your vehicle 12 VDC power plug. I also have a Wind lily 12DC wind generator and a Water lily 12VDC submersible generator. For small outages at home that works well. For camping its great. I also use a Honda 2000 quiet generator as a backup. I can pretty much survive with out power for a long period. But I am in austere conditions powering big appliances one at a time. Winters would be challenging with the cold temps down to -40 to 45 deg C. Up here in the Great White North there are no California winters!!! TTFN
What was it Barnum said ? ” There’s a sucker born every minute”. And so it goes.
I agree! Calling them a solar generator is a misnomer.
A model with a 3 kWh battery will power your fridge and freeze for 24-hours. For longer outages, you need 600 watts in solar panels for sunny days and a gas generator to recharge on cloudy days.
I hate the “generator” language too. The ability to speak plainly and convey usable information is being lost when something like this usage gains popularity.
That said, I don’t get some of the responses to little pre-packaged systems like this in the ‘prep-o-sphere.’
Would anyone say buying a pistol and one box of ammo was “useless” and a waste of money?* No one sensible. They’d understand that it was just a start, and you could add more ammo later, maybe more guns, and accessories to make them more useful. Or you shoot it and learn something, and buy something else.
These little pre-packaged systems have their place, and are marketed to particular people.. If that’s not you, it doesn’t mean that the other guy is a fool or that the system is crap. It just means it doesn’t meet YOUR needs, wants, desires, or conscious and unconscious biases.
I believe these ‘solar in a box’ systems are like the “emergency food” buckets. They are aimed at people who want to buy something, just in case, for the one-every-10-years storm, that they can put in the closet or garage and ignore until needed. Is that a wise approach, I don’t think so, but isn’t it better than nothing? They may or may not understand the limitations but EVERYTHING has limitations and caveats.
Fueled generators are great. I own a half dozen of different capabilities. Add the three vehicles and inverters, and the number of ways I can turn fuel into electrons is even higher. Storing one in your bedroom closet is stupid though. Same with your apartment storage unit, or in the back of a vehicle, or under your bed.
And for anyone who hasn’t actually been thru a disaster yet, one thing that is hard to get, bordering on impossible, is fuel. Unless you can resupply, once your stored fuel is used up (or spoiled), you don’t get more electrons…
Solar, solar plus inverter, solar plus batteries and charger/inverter, or even just batteries, will provide electrons when you can’t get fuel. Solar panels will continue to work LONG after the batteries die, so even in most apocalypse scenarios outside global nuclear winter, they are useful.
I’ve got electric cook tops, chain saws, and electric/battery tools SPECIFICALLY because they can be used with solar, in the short or long term absence of fuel for the other gennies.
Serious preppers might consider these solar systems in a box as a niche product, or unfit for their needs, but considering them as a starting point, or a gateway to more thorough preparedness might be better than just dismissing them.
nick
* yeah, I’ve know. I’ve been on forums and in comment sections where some idiot will in fact say this… but again, not a sensible person.
I picked up a Jackery 240 on Black Friday two years ago, along with 60W of flexible solar panels in a compact package. It has worked out well for car camping. We use it for lighting and charging phones/devices, it can generally manage that. My son’s gaming laptop sucked it dry in less than an hour, but it could handle a Switch. If you have a hunting cabin with no amenities, a Jackery could provide lights, device recharging and power for music to go along with the card games and shooting the bull.
One thing we learned is to expect maybe half of that claimed solar output on a sunny day if just laying the panels on the ground, Mine aren’t so easy to put at an angle, so aside from some testing that’s where they stayed.