Thought it was about time i shared my recent testing, Jackery contacted me and asked if i would be interested in testing out some of their kit, my leisure battery failed recently so the timing could not have been better
I have been looking for new power options as im waiting on a T6.1 van which will hopefully be arriving next year at some point so was looking round at alternatives to fixed installs and a solar generator seemed like the obvious way to go
What is a solar generator?
A solar generator can technically refer to a solar solution that combines a portable power station with solar panels. It converts sun energy captured by solar panels into electrical power and then stores it in a portable power station for later use.
I currently have a Jackery Explorer 500 portable power station
Carrycase
SolarSaga 100W portable folding solar panel
Heres what i received from the lovely amazon man
First up the main unit
It comes with mains power pack for 230v charging and a 12v lead for in vehicle charging and a small pouch to store them (i wont be using this but more on that later)
It arrived half charged so i got it connected to mains and left it for a few hours to get it fully charged while i checked out the other bits
Heres the bag i received
Seems well made, tight fitting zips look to make a nice seal and bag looks well insulated and the unit is a nice snug fit
Lid pocket is good size to hold the shoulder strap and supplied charging cables
Nice coincidence that when you remove the inner packing from the box the unit slides back in there nicely for storage
Solar panel is a standard fold in half affair with a pocket housing the attached lead
Inside the pocket is the link cable and USB connections
One little extra with this unit is the ability to utilise the USB sockets stand alone so even without the main unit attached you can still charge USB devices
Panel opened up
and the fold out legs to stand it up (not that we have much sun to point it at
)
When the main unit was fully charged thought i would get my new fridge plugged in and try it out so i left it running for few days to see how it did
The fridge was empty and set to 5 degrees and left in a heated room in my house so it had some work to do, battery voltage on the fridge (not sure how accurate it is ?) read around 12.6-13.1 volts depending on if the fridge was running or not
Left it to run for a while and came back after 48 hours to the battery reading reading 30%
I gave it another 24 hours and when i got back from work it had all shut down but the fridge was still cold so i got just short of 3 days run time with no charging so very happy with that, i now know if required and away for a weekend i can run the fridge for a couple days with no issues
Back to charging
I have connected the solar panel and it works but not really had the weather to test it out thoroughly but i am confident this will do what i need it to do, given that the solar is capable of fully charging the unit in 9.5 hours i am confident that with several hours of moderate sunshine through the day this will be capable of running my fridge pretty much indefinitely
Im hoping to get the unit outside in the next couple days for a few hours if its dry and see what the recharge rate is like on the solar in this winter sun
Verdict
First impressions are good, it seems like a solid bit of kit with good connectivity and look forward to testing it out in the wild
The 230v inverter is pure sine wave so should be good for running electronic equipment (up to 500W) that cheaper inverters cant handle
Its not the cheapest but if it does its job and lasts then its not too bad
This is the 500Wh which is the medium sized unit in their range, they also do a smaller 240Wh unit and a larger 1000Wh unit but for me the medium size unit is about right for capacity vs size/weight vs inverter rating vs cost
I have been looking for new power options as im waiting on a T6.1 van which will hopefully be arriving next year at some point so was looking round at alternatives to fixed installs and a solar generator seemed like the obvious way to go
What is a solar generator?
A solar generator can technically refer to a solar solution that combines a portable power station with solar panels. It converts sun energy captured by solar panels into electrical power and then stores it in a portable power station for later use.
I currently have a Jackery Explorer 500 portable power station
Carrycase
SolarSaga 100W portable folding solar panel
Heres what i received from the lovely amazon man
First up the main unit
It comes with mains power pack for 230v charging and a 12v lead for in vehicle charging and a small pouch to store them (i wont be using this but more on that later)
It arrived half charged so i got it connected to mains and left it for a few hours to get it fully charged while i checked out the other bits
Heres the bag i received
Seems well made, tight fitting zips look to make a nice seal and bag looks well insulated and the unit is a nice snug fit
Lid pocket is good size to hold the shoulder strap and supplied charging cables
Nice coincidence that when you remove the inner packing from the box the unit slides back in there nicely for storage
Solar panel is a standard fold in half affair with a pocket housing the attached lead
Inside the pocket is the link cable and USB connections
One little extra with this unit is the ability to utilise the USB sockets stand alone so even without the main unit attached you can still charge USB devices
Panel opened up
and the fold out legs to stand it up (not that we have much sun to point it at
)When the main unit was fully charged thought i would get my new fridge plugged in and try it out so i left it running for few days to see how it did
The fridge was empty and set to 5 degrees and left in a heated room in my house so it had some work to do, battery voltage on the fridge (not sure how accurate it is ?) read around 12.6-13.1 volts depending on if the fridge was running or not
Left it to run for a while and came back after 48 hours to the battery reading reading 30%
I gave it another 24 hours and when i got back from work it had all shut down but the fridge was still cold so i got just short of 3 days run time with no charging so very happy with that, i now know if required and away for a weekend i can run the fridge for a couple days with no issues
Back to charging
I have connected the solar panel and it works but not really had the weather to test it out thoroughly but i am confident this will do what i need it to do, given that the solar is capable of fully charging the unit in 9.5 hours i am confident that with several hours of moderate sunshine through the day this will be capable of running my fridge pretty much indefinitely
Im hoping to get the unit outside in the next couple days for a few hours if its dry and see what the recharge rate is like on the solar in this winter sun
Verdict
First impressions are good, it seems like a solid bit of kit with good connectivity and look forward to testing it out in the wild
The 230v inverter is pure sine wave so should be good for running electronic equipment (up to 500W) that cheaper inverters cant handle
Its not the cheapest but if it does its job and lasts then its not too bad
This is the 500Wh which is the medium sized unit in their range, they also do a smaller 240Wh unit and a larger 1000Wh unit but for me the medium size unit is about right for capacity vs size/weight vs inverter rating vs cost
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