Here you can find Solar Panels and technological accessories related to Solar Energy: Click Here If you want to learn about Solar...
Here you can find Solar Panels and technological accessories related to Solar Energy: Click Here
If you want to learn about Solar Panels, to advise you before buying or to build your own Solar Panel: Click Here
in this video we're going to take a look at the new 2024 solar generator options on the market and see how they stack up against one another there are a lot of great options in 2024 but since these are large ticket purchases it's really important that you have all the information that we're about to detail before buying one of these if you're in the market now the three most common questions I get asked when I review these are which one should I buy what's the best option for a tight budget and will it power my refrigerator or whatever electrical device we're going to answer all those questions and a whole lot more you're definitely going to want to stick around to the end as we're going to be doing a giveaway on one of these units this video is one part educational one part review and one part analysis based on my years of experience testing these units out now I purposefully start the video by educating you so that you can make the best decision for your needs now once you understand the basics trust me you'll be an informed buyer I could have recommended a specific unit to make more money for myself but instead wanted you to be informed so that you know what's best for you so here's the outline of the video along with timestamps which are shown here on the side of the screen and in the description section below what is a solar generator the important factors you should understand before buying one how I test these units I'll do a run through of each model in the test results for the units we'll discuss solar panel options how do you maintain and protect these will answer the most common question what can I power with these this part of the video goes over a custom tool that we built specifically for this video to help you answer that question which would I recommend and finally we're going to announce the giveaway and show you how you can sign up all right we've got a lot of ground to cover but before we jump into our first point if you enjoy the format of this video we're going to be opening up our membership area on the city prepping website shortly this website has educational videos similar to those that you'll find in this video for those looking to learn emergency preparedness I'll post a link below if you're interested so let's jump in what is a solar generator I start here because it's really important that we quickly explain what these are most of us are used to traditional ice or internal combustion engine generators you add gasoline Dore propane to fire up the engine to produce electricity but what is a solar generator and should it really be called a generator I'm going to answer that question in a moment but let's first point out what these units actually do in a nutshell these devices Harvest energy from the Sun through solar panels or from an AC source and stored into batteries and you can then plug in electrical devices to power them from that stored energy so in effect you could provide infinite power with one of these as long as you have available sunlight through solar panels now these are popular within my community because if properly maintained you could run these things for years to power your devices so are they really generators though I would argue that you're just skipping the middleman with these devices a standard ice generator uses a petroleum based fuel source oil now oil is produced over long periods of time from organic materials that decayed and were buried such as plants that originally harvested their energy from the Sun through photosynthesis with sunlight being the main driver of the process and with these units we just really skip that whole process and harvest the energy directly from the Sun now admittedly solar generator is a bit of a marketing term but I think you get the general idea so let's move to the next Point important factors before buying okay here's where we discuss what you need to understand before purchasing one this section is designed to educate you so you know what to look for before buying one I haven't mentioned this point in my past comparison videos but here's the issue there are a lot of these companies on the market now and I've been offered large sums of money to promote new off-brand units and I don't because I've seen companies pop up with large marketing budgets and then deliver a piece of junk product and I've seen other channels promote those products because the payout was huge and the problem is and I've seen this happen the company will either deliver a subpar product or just go out of business and then you get stuck with a paper weight when it inevitably fails additionally if there's a disaster and you're relying on this and it's junk it's not going to be helpful even though the company may have a warranty and as such I would recommend you stick with the reputable brands that we're going to Showcase in this video because they're established capacity simply refers to the amount of power that one of these devices can store this unit is often listed as Watt hours and let me explain this quickly to you in very practical terms a watt is just a unit of power I've got a few devices here in front of me to help us understand this practically on the side of most electrical devices if you look very closely you're going to see the Watts that it requires to operate the device for example this light bulb requires nine watts and this laptop charger here in front of me pulls 45 wats now this heat gun actually pulls 1,800 Watts which is quite a lot for this example let's just say I need to power my laptop and just a light bulb the light bulb needs 9 watts and again remember the laptop charger pulls 45 Watts so if we were to add n plus 45 we get 54 okay so what can I do with that number if I were to leave these devices on my light bulb and my laptop charger for 1 hour they would use 54 wat hours of the battery's capacity see what I did there 9 + 45 = 54 again powering these for 1 hour would use 54 wat hours so let's apply this information to the solar generator that I've got here in front of me this is the ecoflow Delta 2 which has roughly a capacity of about 1,000 wat hours if I were to divide 1,000 the capacity of this device's batteries by 54 the number of Watts that I need to power the devices for 1 hour we would get 18.5 51 this means that we could output 54 Watts continuously for about 18.51% surge in UPS or EPS let's start with the first element continuous output this value tells us the maximum number of Watts that this system can continuously provide now here in front of me I have the blue eddi ac10 and according to the specs for this unit it can output 1,800 Watts continuously if we plug in multiple devices that draw more than 1,800 Watts it's going to turn off for example if we plugged in this heat gun which when turned all the way up will draw 18800 WTS and we can see it written here on the side the solar generator could power this until the battery was completely depleted now I don't recommend that you run these devices at 100% output on a continual basis because if you did you're eventually going to prematurely degrade the battery over time at that level it's just going to overheat and degrade it think about it like your car if you were to run your car all day at the maximum rpm you'd burn up your motor pretty quickly and the same principle applies to these devices ideally you want to run them at around 50 to 70% of what the manufacturer list as the maximum and again since this blue Eddie is rated for 1800 watts output I would plan on pushing it no more than about 900 watts to 1200 watts on a regular basis we're going to discuss this principle a bit more later in the video when I walk you through our spreadsheet now regarding surge some devices they draw a lot of power when you start them up think about things like fans refrigerators or saws because all of these have a motor and when you start these devices up you're going to see a momentary Spike and power consumption to get the motor moving and then what will happen is it will settle down the continuous watt usage which we discussed in the previous point so why is it important to understand this value this blue Edie ac180 has a surge capacity of 2700 watts and if you plug in a device with a higher surge requirement than 2700 Watts then it's going to cause this to trip a circuit internally which you can reset when you restart it now the last last output consideration is UPS or EPS UPS stands for uninterruptible power supply and EPS stands for emergency power supply now some of these devices they have this option so what is UPS or EPS if you have a device plugged into your home's wall socket and the power goes out well the device will immediately stop working and to get around this you can plug your device into the solar generators and then plug the solar generator into the wall socket so if the power were to go down the solar generator's batteries would immediately take over and continue providing power to your device if you have a piece of equipment that must continue running if the power goes out without any downtime let's say a computer or a piece of medical equipment then having this feature in the device will be important to you so what's the difference between ups and EPS to qualify as UPS the switch over time has to happen in under 10 milliseconds and for EPS they switch over in under 30 milliseconds before we talk about battery chemistry I first need to explain charge cycles charge cycles simply refer to charging up and discharging a battery so in other words just using it have you ever noticed that your phone battery seems to not really last as long after about a year or two of usage as you charge it and use it each day it begins to lose its ability to hold as much of a charge as it did when you first bought it and with these models you typically have two options either lithium ion or lithium iron phosphate now lithium ion batteries they weigh slightly less but you get fewer charge cycles lithium iron phosphate batteries on the other hand they're going to last much longer and they can handle a lot more charge cycles but they're a little bit heavier let's look at a practical example this Jacker 2000 Pro uses lithium ion batteries if I were to use this Jack's battery starting at 100% fully charged and then drain it all the way down to zero or fully depleted after 500 of these charge cycles from completely full to completely depleted the battery could only hold about 80% of its original capacity it's slowly losing its ability to hold a full charge and this particular unit is rated for about 2100 watts of capacity now after 500 Cycles it would only roughly hold about 1,700 Cycles which is 20% less than 2100 also their lifespan is about two or 3 years before you begin to see degradation in their storage capacity now additionally lithium iron phosphate batteries they can handle heat and they're more stable than lithium ion batteries and most of the products that we're reviewing this year use lithium iron phosphate whereas a few years ago you saw a lot more lithium ion batteries the industry has really switched over because it's a superior Battery Technology the next feature to consider is expandability do you want to expand the capacity of your device in the future by adding more batteries from the manufacturer now some of these units they can be expanded and some cannot jackary really didn't have this feature on their portable units for a long time but they've now added that new feature to this model the jackary 1000 plus many of the units that we review in this video can expand the battery capacity and it's becoming more common with these units it's really a nice feature to have even if you don't initially buy the add-on battery and with the drop in battery prices over the last year and probably into the foreseeable future I think it's a smart option to have available if you want it now let's take take a look at charging capability for both solar and AC this is a very important number to consider when you go shopping for these devices it really gives you an understanding of how quickly you can charge this with either solar panels or from an AC Source or even both now the lower the AC or solar charging capability the longer it's going to take to charge one of these devices for example some will only handle about 400 watts of solar input or maybe 1,000 watts of AC input whereas others can handle 1 1200 watts from solar and 1,800 Watts or even more of AC input and these numbers are really important if you're in a situation where let's say for example the power goes out and you need to charge them from solar or maybe a backup generator being able to charge them rapidly is going to be important and one of consideration we'll cover this year is the ability to change the AC charging speed ecoflow has had this feature on its units for quite some time and it makes really a big difference considering the emergency scenario where maybe you have a small gas generator that can only output 1,000 Watts if the AC input on the solar generator is 1800 watts then the gas generator is not going to be able to provide it with electricity as it would just be too much for the gas generator to handle again it's these little details that can make a big difference some of these devices allow you to connect directly to the device via Bluetooth While others allow a Wi-Fi connection now personally I like the Wi-Fi connectivity aspect after after playing around with these units for years for example if I'm way and I'm trying to power something and I want to turn off the AC or DC output remotely to the unit I can do it via the app if you have an off-grid setup and you want to remotely monitor or control the output capabilities you can do that with Wi-Fi now before we wrap this up let me address the DIY question that's often brought up is it better to build your own system or buy a pre-made one like the ones we're covering first of all the common com is that it's cheaper to build your own unit in my experience that's not always been the case you have to buy specialized tools to build a setup additionally when buying components individually as part of your DIY project you don't normally get a discount unless the item is on sale these solar generators they often go on sale and since these companies buy these components and bulk to build these they can often pass that discount on to you and also how valuable is your time I own and operate two businesses so I don't have a lot spare time and what time I do have is valuable to me now on the other hand after building out a few solar systems I've gained great skill and knowledge of how these work plus if you build your own system and part of it goes out you can just simply replace that component these units on the other hand that we're reviewing are closed systems and they would require fair amount of engineering knowledge and advanced tools to pull them apart and fix the individual components that's beyond my ability the final point and probably the most most important for most people is costs the price for these they can vary widely and as the old saying goes you get what you pay for when I get into the specifics of performance on each of these units people typically look at cost from the perspective of how many kilowatt hours these devices can hold or their capacity for example you can expect to pay between $750 and about $11,000 per kilowatt hour of capacity but we'll cover this more in the breakdown of each manufacturer how I test these units just a quick note on testing when I get these I typically do a few tests on them I start off by testing the DC and AC efficiency for DC I plug in a device that allows me to set the DC output so that I can run the solar generator's output at about 100 Watts continuously and after the batter is depleted I can divide the total output by the total State capacity of the battery which gives me the DC efficiency now I ran a similar test to test the AC output efficiency by recording the total AC output when putting a load of about 75% of its total AC output capability next I test each of the devices pure sineway capabilities at 0 50 75 and 100% load on the AC inverter and I also watch and record the devices while they're charging to see if they have Stadium charging capabilities to help determine the speed of charges at different percentages for example the devices that have Stadium charging and not all of them do but the ones that do May charge quickly for the first 70% % and then slow down at the last 30% all this information is recorded in the spreadsheet that I'm going to link to below and we'll discuss a little more in a moment details of each major brand let's jump into the overview of the brands that I trust as I've worked with these for several years now the only major company missing is Goal Zero I've worked with them in the past and I've reached out to be a part of this year's video but I didn't get a response I did however get a product from one us-based company for this review0 now if anytime during this video you want to investigate each unit specs more deeply again I'll direct you to the spreadsheet link below which provides a much more in-depth breakdown of how each performed after various tests but we're going to cover the basics here plus anything that you need to be aware of so let's go through each of the brands in alphabetical order anchor ankor sent me three of their units the solic c11000 f1500 and F 2600 they also sent me the battery expansion pack for the c1000 and F 2600 let's start off by looking at the test results for these units for DC efficiency the results were 89% 80% and 82% for these three models the DC efficiency for the c1000 was the highest of all the units that we tested and the average for all the units that we tested was 81% so these performed above the average the AC efficiency results were 80% 78% and 78% with the average of all the units that we tested being at 82 2% so these were slightly below average for battery capacity you have 1,56 WS 1,536 W hours and 2560 W hours for solar input they can handle an input of 600 W 600 WT and 1,000 Watts for total battery capacity you can expand up to a total of 2,122 w hours for the c1000 the f1500 does not allow battery expansion and a total of 468 wat hours for the F 2600 now the prices at the time of recording this video were $999 $1,199 and 1,999 each of these units utilizes the popular lithium iron phosphate batteries which allow roughly 10 years of daily use or 3500 charge cycles to 80% capacity and also you can connect to these via their app with either Bluetooth or Wi-Fi one feature that ankor has on their app is the ability to control the AC input charging speed and this really comes in handy when charging the device so you can control the speed and increments that allow you to make some pretty important changes these also have a solid 5-year warranty and provide EPS or emergency power supply in under 20 milliseconds overall ankor put together a very solid lineup I would contend Anker is really the upand cominging solar generator company to watch but there is one small issue that I have with them the solar charging connector which has open slots that plug in the ex t60 connectors to their solar panels most on the market use an mc4 connector which gives you more options as to which solar panels that you can connect to but they went with this approach but to be fair you can buy mc4 to xt60 connectors to get around the issue so it's not really the end of the world but it does limit your ability to connect a wider range of solar panels but if I could summarize these units I would say they're very well thought out blue edti blue edti sent me three of their units the AC 180 ac200 PL and ac240 they also sent a battery expansion pack for the ac240 so let's start off by looking at these results for these units for DC efficiency these three models results were 82% 82% and 79% the average for all the units that we tested was 81% so they performed consistently within the average the AC efficiency results were 90% 86% and 90% with the average of all the units that we tested being 82% so these were above the average now the AC efficiency for the ac10 and ac240 were amongst the highest in AC efficiency of all the units that we tested for battery capacity you have 1,152 W hours 234 W hours and 1,536 W hours and for solar input they can handle an input of 500 watts 1200 watts and 1200 watts for total battery capacity you can expand up to a total of 1,958 wat hours for the ac10 the ac2 200pl can go up to 8,000 W hours in a total of 10,136 hours for the ac240 the prices at the time recording this video are $999 $1,199 and $18.99 now each of these units utilizes a popular lithium iron phosphate batteries again which allows you to charge them for about roughly 10 years or 3500 charge cycles up to 80% capacity and you can also connect to these via their app with Bluetooth all of them except the ac10 can connect to your app over Wi-Fi they also allow you to change the AC charging speed which we discussed earlier in the video again it's a feature that comes in handy if you need to modify how fast these charge these also provide EPS or emergency power supply in under 20 milliseconds and additionally you can addon batteries to expand the capacity okay so let's start off by highlighting the unique aspects of these units these can all be grounded which is honestly rare to see on portable units like these their test results for AC output showed they're very efficient so they definitely did well there now let's take a quick look at the ac200 pl it can be combined with several different batteries that blue Edie cells so you get a lot of compatibility options there plus when combined with two of their B300 batteries it can be expanded out to 8,500 wat hours which is pretty impressive for a unit this size but the really fascinating model they sent is their ac240 it can be tied to four of their B210 batteries for a total capacity of 10,136 WS now additionally it's water resistant which none of the other models we reviewed this year offer this unit really stands out if you need something that you will be transporting around and using outdoors in wet or Dusty conditions but the feature that's extremely unique about this one is that you can tie it together with another h240 to get a total of 4,800 watts of output at 120 volts and what's even more interesting is that with these two units tied together plus combined with their add-on batteries you can expand the capacity all the way up to 20 kwatt hours which is quite a lot and I've reviewed their ac300 and ac500 which use the same approach except those can output 240 volts I'll be honest I'm very impressed with the versatility that they accomplish with this unit and it's still portable this year they did a great job refreshing their lineup and bringing many of the important features such as app connectivity AC charging rate and expandability up to speed ecoflow ecoflow sent me two of their units this year for this review the Delta 2 and the Delta 2 max they also sent a battery expansion pack for the Delta 2 max let's start off by looking at the test results for these units for DC efficiency these two models results were 79% and 82% the average for all the units that we tested was 81% and the AC efficiency results were 78% and 81% with the average of all the units that we tested being 82% now for battery capacity you have 1,24 W hours and 248 W hours for solar input they can handle an input of 500 watts and 1,000 Watts for total battery capacity you can expand to 248 W hours for the Delta 2 and 6,080 hours for the delta2 max the prices for both models are 1,599 and 1,599 so let's talk about what really stands out in these units they both can connect to the device via their app over Wi-Fi and you can control the unit remotely one of the unique things that ecoflow had for quite a while was the ability to change the AC charge input it's a detail again that often gets overlooked when discussing these but I find it incredibly useful when I charge these there are times when I connect these up to an AC source that may not be able to handle a large load but I can easily modify these values through their app the way I would describe ecoflow is really having set the standard for the last few years in regards to their features and ecosystem for example they have a smart dual fuel generator you can connect to these units which communicates with them when charging them they've also just rolled out an 800 wat alternator charger that you can tie into your car if you want to charge these on the go and I read a comment a while back where in the person complained that I don't test these units for durability beyond the initial review after I review solar generators I'll typically do a giveaway to the community for several of the units I'll sell some and I'll just keep some I typically hold on to the ecoflow models after doing these reviews and I've had two of their Delta Pro Models for a few years now and I'll be honest they're tanks I've beat them I've pushed them hard and they just keep going from a durability standpoint ecoflow has held up very well for me jackary jackary sent me three of their units this year for this review the jackary went ,000 plus the 1500 Pro and the 2000 Pro they also sent a battery expansion pack for the jackary 1000 plus so let's start off by looking at the test results for these units for DC efficiency these three models results were 84% 82% and 84% the average for all the units that we tested was 81% so they came in slightly higher than the average the AC efficiency results were 81% 81% and 91% with the average of all the units being tested at 82% for battery capacity you have 1,264 W hours 1,512 W hours and 2,160 hours for solar input they can handle an input of 800 WT 1200 watts and 1200 WTS for total battery capacity you can expand up to a total of 5 KW hours with three of their add-on batteries for the 1000 plus model only and the prices for these models are 1,499 1,699 and 1,599 so let's talk about what stands out in these units jackary has really targeted the outdoor Community for years and they still do they're just simple devices at work their units didn't have app connectivity in the past but they've changed that with their plus models additionally with the 1000 plus they've actually gone to lithium iron phosphate battery chemistry and they've added the ability to expand them with additional batteries when I go camping I like to take the 2000 Pro and connect it up with their solar Sega panels it just really per performs well now their solar panels are not cheap by any means but they're incredibly efficient these units are a bit smaller than some of the other ones that we tested with comparable capacity and again are a bit more lightweight and compact which comes in handy when camping pekron pekron sent me two of their units this year for this review the pekron e1500 lfp and the E200 lfp they also sent a battery expansion pack for both of these units so let's start off by looking at the test result results for these units for DC efficiency these two models results were 83% and 80% the average for all of the units we tested was 81% the AC efficiency results were 79% and 88% with the average of all the units being tested at 82% for battery capacity you have 1,536 W hours and 1,920 W hours for solar input they can handle an input of 800 WT and 1300 watts and with their add-on batteries you can expand and the e1500 lfps total battery capacity to 7.7 KW hours and the e2000 lfps to 8 Kow hours now the prices for these models are $799 and $849 so you probably already see what stands out about these units the price and I've reviewed several of their units over the last several years and they've made some substantial upgrades like the ability to expand their capacity with add-on batteries now as I stated at the beginning of the video one of the common questions I get asked all the time is what's the best option for a tyght budget well here's your answer they're the budget friendly really no FS option what you see is what you get are you going to be able to control these via an app like you can with ecoflow models or tie two of these units together like blue Eddie for double output no but for those models you pay more to get more features but with these our main feature is a low price point Z I wanted to include at least one us-based company in this year's review so I contacted 0 Z to obtain their newest unit the Titan 240s I will say that maybe I should have included this in my whole home solar generator review which I'll do later in the summer as it's very heavy and very powerful and it's really geared more towards off grid setups I decided to include both of these units in this video because again I wanted a us-based company to Showcase and honestly they've gotten some pretty good reviews from some channels that specialize in reviewing these so let's start off by looking at the test results for these units for DC efficiency the Titan's value is 91% and for the Titan 240 SP it doesn't have a DC Port the average for all the units that we tested was 81% for AC efficiency the results were 78% and 85% with the average of all the units being tested at 82% now for battery capacity you start off at 2,000 wat hours with a lithium ion battery and 2500 W hours for their lithium iron phosphate battery for solar input they can handle an input of 2,000 WT and 4400 WT now the prices for these models with one battery are 2,900 and 3800 as I mentioned these are definitely more suitable for permanent installations and the company is really geared toward the offgrade community and those wanting a home backup power option for unseen emergencies and I want to focus primarily on their Titan 24sp in this video which is their newest model it has a 4,000 watt low frequency pure s inverter and it can handle a 10sec surge at 8,000 wat the battery capacity can be expanded up to 27,500 wat hours with their add-on batteries it can provide both 120 volt and 240 volt it has dual UPS backup modes the main head unit can handle 2400 WTS of solar but it can also be expended up to 4,400 Watts with an external mppt charger that they sell it also has an app that you can use to connect via Bluetooth again these units are definitely more on the larger end of capabilities for the range of solar generators that we're covering in this video but again I just wanted to bring them to your attention solar panel options before we dive into this section let me just say one thing first if a panel is ready for 200 watts does it mean you're always going to get 200 Watts anytime the sun is out well not really there are a lot of factors such as temperature the angle of the panel and relation to the sun clouds overhead Etc so just be sure to set your expectations now when it comes to solar panel options are you limited to the solar panels that the manufacturer recommends the manufacturer will list the information on the website explain the Watts amps and volt ranges when connecting your device to solar panels so you always want to be careful to observe the manufacturers recommended values to prevent overloading the device and potentially voiding the warranty now typically they're going to list the recommended solar panels that you can purchase with the unit that works within the range they set now normally these come at a premium though there are lower price options on the market such as rigid solar panels that are often used for permanent exterior mounting but they're not really ideal for Mobility these types of solar panels may be either too heavy or bulky to transport if there's a disaster forcing you to evacuate now in that case you want to purchase a manufacturer's panels which are often easily portable but for maximum Mobility though I do recommend one vendor I've showcased on the channel they sell solar blankets which can be literally rolled up and easily deployed they're light enough and small enough to be easily stored if you're forced to evacuate these also have a higher voltage so they do produce a considerable amount more than just most solar panels on the market decreasing your time to charge plus they do better in low light conditions they do come at a much higher price point though but like with all things you pay for a better product I'll post a link to these solar blankets below and in the spreadsheet and we'll document how many can be used with each solar generator if You' like to pair them with the unit that you're looking at maintenance and protection with a traditional internal combustion engine generator that runs off gas or diesel you have to do things on a regular basis like change the oil the spark plug or keep the carburetor clean for the solar generators there's not really maintenance per se it just comes down to taking them out at least every 3 to 6 months discharging them and then charging them back up so how much should you charge it before storing it ideally around 50% I wouldn't store them fully charged and apart from that that's about it now one last thing I will bring up as this comment always comes up in the comments of my videos is in regards to emps if you're not familiar with emps or electromagnetic pulses it's a concern within the preparedness Community along with CMEs or Carrington events now both are real possibilities albeit not overly probable in the description section I'll post a link to a recent video I did detailing setting up a faraday cage using a metal trash can which can easily protect these against a CME or an EMP event what can I power with these when I do these types of videos the most common question I get is well can it power my refrigerator or power this device and instead of trying to answer each one of these typical devices that people want to power instead we built a calculator that will take you through and show you in real time what the you know whatever the unit is that you're looking at what it can actually power and for how long so if you come over to my desktop we'll start off with this but again you can get access to this we'll put a link in the description and comment section below so here we are on the tab capability calculator now if you look here there's two sides of the spreadsheet on the left side we've got the typical devices that you want to power and we'll talk about this more in a moment on the right side we've got all the different units that we tested for this video and we input all their values including running Watts surge Watts AC efficiency capacity and again all this is built in for you already in advance so you can see in real time what this can output so one of the most common questions I get is in regards to refrigerators so if you look here at row 17 we have an 18 cubic refrigerator kind of an average refrigerator size if you research online they pull roughly about 200 watts an hour so if I were to say hey after disaster you know how long the power goes out how long will these different devices power that refrigerator okay well let's just you know play around let's just say for 1 hour let's say the power goes out for an hour and so as you can see here you can change the time with this drop down you can go all the way from minutes up to hours if you were to say well how many of these refriger ators you have some people have multiple let's just keep it simple we'll say one refrigerator okay great so now what does this tell us well if we look here for the anchor solx c1000 if we scroll down we're going to see all of these values down here it shows us the largest device that we're powering in this particular situation it's refrigerator if I add on other devices it's going to update let's just play around with this for one second let's say we want to use a power tool a small one and let's say I want to run that for I don't know let's say 15 minutes and let's again say there's just one well now we see that we've got the um I'm sorry over here looking at this this one pulls just 200 Watts all right let's say I want to pull a hot plate well hot plate pulls a th000 Watts I'm going to come back over here and shut off appliances by the way so let's just say I'm going to do a hot plate and I want to run that for roughly let's just say an hour and just one of them well you're going to see here it shows it pulls 1,000 watts in that hour okay so if we scroll down here now we see the largest device in this particular case is a hot plate it's pulling 1,000 Watts the largest Surge and again if we look at our values over here is 600 watts it's going to go through here and look for the biggest surge of all the devices that we are powering now this particular device it can output up to 2600 watts of surge so again this calculator is showing you hey the largest surge running is 600 if we go over that it's going to trip it and again this calculator will show that if you select something that's just too much for it the surge if all devices are on it start typically when you start up one of these solar generators you don't want to have everything plugged in it's going to you know just be a lot you kind of want to slowly add them on piece Mill at a time to see how the device handles it but again it just shows you if you had everything plugged in you turn this unit on this is a surge that it's going to you know again if it goes over the maximum it's going to trip it out total running Watts needed while running all the devices you're selected from above so this is telling us that it's going to need a total of 1,110 Watts well we for a particular Hot Plate we're pulling a th000 for the power tools we said we want that for 15 minutes and so we're already seeing that we're now pulling 1,110 now the maximum surge capability of the solar generator is 2600 and again we talked about that the recommended running Watts for this particular device is 900 remember earlier when we talked about running we run to run the device at about 50% of its total output capability so if it's saying hey I can do 1,00 Watts continuous 50% of that would be 900 so that's where that value is right there we're telling you you want to kind of keep it under 900 so again if we look at this uh we see the capacity of the Solar Generator we already prepopulated that for is 1,56 AC efficiency is 80 so what does this tell us right here we're actually running in the negative after running that hot plate well it's going to drain all the power very quickly so you would actually be upside down so it's not going to be able to power a hot plate for an hour so if we were to put that down to zero and we scroll back down here hey guess what it can handle it just fine so let's look at the example again of the refrigerator if we were say well I want a power refrigerator that's my priority for 6 hours and you know maybe running one of these uh you know electrical devices is just not that important the the main thing is the refrigerator well again we've overshot it's just not going to power it for much you know for probably more than about 4 hours so if we bump that number down again you can kind of play around see here all right yeah it can do it for 4 hours on a refrigerator and as you can see some of these other devices if we scroll and they also update in real time uh this one right here the anchor 2600 yeah it's got more than enough juice to continue on and you can see obviously in all this the more battery capacity the more continuous AC output the more power devices you can power in for longer so hopefully that gives you at least an understanding of how this works again my encouragement is to go take this make a copy download it to your Google account your Google Drive and just simply play around with these values here and you'll be able to quickly see if these devices can power what you need which would I recommend now if you go back through this video and you watch my breakdown of each brand based on the units they sent me this year you really get a good idea of what each brand is capable of the ins and outs the features and the capabilities so let's Summarize each brain quickly and I'll give you my recommendation based on what I learned this year to testing these units out now anchor is definitely up and coming and their units are very capable bluetti is definitely designed to do a lot of things and they're expandable both in capacity and AC output when tied together and it's clear they're targeting individuals who probably want more of a permanent backup power source but yet still want Mobility jackary they've done a great job with their new plus models which have many of the features that we've come to expect from these such as lithium iron phosphate batteries AB connectivity and the ability to expand the batteries out now pekron without a doubt targets budget Shoppers they've been making upgrades on their models to offer features that you would normally pay nearly double for in some of the models that we tested 0 Z is going after the off-grid and home backup power community and they're really designed to be more of a permanent powerful and expandable setup now this brings us to ecoflow for the last few years while testing these units ecoflow has really stood out with features the other brands have added only in the last year they've built an ecosystem of products that allow you to expand their units capabilities like their smart dual fuel generator and their Wave 2 portable AC conditioner and they're just innovating some really cool stuff and for me their app is still one of the most intuitive that I've tested but as I stated earlier I typically hold on to ecoflow products after these reviews as they're just durable for example I've been using their Delta Pro Models quite a lot for a couple of years and they just keep performing even though I tend to push them to their limit over and over so for this year I'm awarding the ecoflow Delta 2 max as the winner I like the compact form the expandability and the durability of ecoflow products the ease of being able to control it via their app with Wi-Fi remotely their new car DC charger that they're rolling out that can quickly charge this in your car the AC output capabilities for a unit of the size and weight the ability to be able to charge it quickly with AC and even more importantly being able to control the AC charge rate it just really checks a lot of boxes for me and for the average consumer that wants a basic allaround solid option you really can't go wrong with this unit now also as I say at the beginning of the video I limited the brands that we chose this year and feature because you want to make sure that if you do buy one of these the company is not going to fold this year or next which I've seen happen with a few of the smaller lesser known Brands and look I realize you may have different needs and one of these other units that we covered may be a better fit but if I could take all the features that I think are important based on years of testing and really compress them into just one unit I think the Delta 2 max pulls it off pretty well so what do you think do you think this model or a different model should win the award this year let me know in the comments section below giveaway all right here's what we're going to do for the solar generator giveaway ecoflow they offer to do a giveaway for their Delta Max to the winner of our contest giveaway way to enroll for the contest all you have to do is go to City prepping tocom solar generator and you can sign up for our newsletter to get the spreadsheet and be automatically enrolled for our giveaway there in exactly 1 month from releasing this video we're going to send out an email to the winner so please check your inbox in one month of us releasing this video now additionally ecoflow is doing another giveaway for a river Pro if you're interested in that I'll post a link to that below if you want to sign out for that so hopefully this video provides you enough information to really help you in your decision-making process after this one I would encourage you to watch the video shown here on the side the screen detailing how to determine your power needs after the grid goes down it really covers this subject in more detail to ensure you have a strong understanding and it really reinforces what we covered here in more detail if you have any questions or feedback please feel free to post them below and as always stay safe out there ...
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