Jackery type powerbanks - worth it?

TheGardener

Ok, I'm not an electrician and have limited capacity to understand anything other than basic principles when it comes to electrical terminology or complex maths  - but I would welcome any advice/guidance on solar power banks (Jackery/Bluetti-type products). We do camp a couple of times a year and so does the eldest child with their partner but have so far, not thought having a solar battery is worth the expense for the few trips we make. However, with the slim chance of power cuts and post-April '23 energy costs stalking us this winter - I was wondering if it is perhaps worth considering one now? 
Is it a completely stupid idea - or worth the investment? 

EssexHebridean

As I understand it using a device of this type in a camping type set-up - with appliances designed to be used in that situation is rather different from using it in a household setting. There are other better informed posters than me who will be able to appraise you of the possible issues however - be cautious of anyone bowling in and telling you it's absolutely fine though - we have discovered from other threads recently that there could be potential dangers involved! 

maisie_cat

We have a power bank that will run the fridge/freezer for 24 hours on a full charge, it can be charged via solar, car, or by charging it like a battery. We invested in it because we do have outages now and my only concern is losing frozen food, I can deal with everything else.
Hubby said he could build something similar from a leisure battery and invertor system, but I wasn't prepared to wait.

Astria

My neighbour has a EcoFlow which was given to him and swears by it - but that could be because he didn't pay anything for it!  (not jealous at all, honest )

Uses it for his home office, has since connected some solar panels to it to try and make it last a little longer.

SensibleSarah

They're not cheap (especially the ones with decent capacity) - so I can't imagine it would be a good investment purely on financial terms. No personal experience, but I know a few people that use them for full-time vanlife and on a narrowboat, or in sheds/workshops etc and they have limitations in those settings, so using them for household stuff would be even more restrictive, I think. I expect that a large one would be able to run your fridge freezer for a few hours in the event of a power outage, but you're not going to able to run multiple appliances for any length of time in a house and the solar charging will be pretty poor at this time of year, so you'll need to top it up from the grid for a few months of the year at least. 
If you think that a decent capacity one with an inverter that would stand up to most household appliances is at least £1.5k to buy, a bit more with solar panels included, that's a big chunk of the 'average' annual energy bill right there.

I'd say it's a great gadget to have and can be really useful - but I wouldn't call it an investment in this situation.

Miser1964

Many many YT videos on these devices. I recently got a Jackery 240 as a backup for powering my aquarium air pumps and heaters if the 3 hour rolling power cuts happen. 

For me the cost of 500+ Watt devices wasn't too attractive, the freezer will be OK with a duvet over it for three hours.

Also the cost of solar panels is still very high, so I'm only re-charging from mains (or from the car 12V)

I can see the benefit if you're glamping/camping as it'll power LED lamps, mobiles, mini-fridge etc. 

QrizB

I'm as big a gadget fan as any (and a keen camper) but I've not yet convinced myself to buy one of these.

The case for taking one camping is a pretty niche one.

1. Lightweight camping (backpacking, cycling etc) - you're unlikely to want to cart along an AC power bank or solar generator plus a bunch of mains appliances. A pocket-sized DC-only power bank willl keep your mobile phone and tablet topped off.
2. Heavyweight camping (car camping, caravanning) - many sites have mains-serviced pitches for a few quid extra a night. This is likely to be both more cost-effective and convenient than a power bank.

I would suggest that it's only when heavyweight camping on unserviced pitches that you will need to take your own AC with you.

If you have indoor fish like Miser1964 or eg. essential medical appliances and want some sort of insurance against power cuts, they might make sense at home but in most cases you'll be trying to rationalise away buying a shiny toy

(Do note that most of these devices include the warning that they're not intended for use with medical appliances. I suspect this is just a bit of trouser-padding from the manufacturers but there could be good reasons why thery're not appropriate.)

Edit to add:

Do also keep in mind that many of these contain LFP batteries that you shouldn't charge in sub-zero temperatures. Here's an example, see the tech specs on page 18 of this manual:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0557/7159/4918/files/BLUETTI_AC200MAX.pdf?v=1657535762

This shouldn't be a problem in a nice warm house but if you keep the power bank in a shed or outbuilding when not in use, or if you take it winter camping, you might end up having problems.

TheGardener

These are all really interesting and valid comments - keep them coming...
Can I ask, how long would something like these leisure batteries actually last - 3 years 5..10? We have a very sunny SW-facing back garden and I believe that they can be charged in a car? -  and one of us does a fair few miles a week so could use that method too rather than just plugging it into the mains. 
I don't have a fish tank or medical equipment but I do work from home a lot and having a fully charged large laptop is pretty crucial. Mine is nigh on 7 years old now and the battery is pretty rubbish but it is an otherwise good laptop (but never used on my 'lap') that does everything I need it to do. I could buy a new battery for it I guess. 

[Deleted User]

TheGardener said:

These are all really interesting and valid comments - keep them coming...
Can I ask, how long would something like these leisure batteries actually last - 3 years 5..10? We have a very sunny SW-facing back garden and I believe that they can be charged in a car? -  and one of us does a fair few miles a week so could use that method too rather than just plugging it into the mains. 
I don't have a fish tank or medical equipment but I do work from home a lot and having a fully charged large laptop is pretty crucial. Mine is nigh on 7 years old now and the battery is pretty rubbish but it is an otherwise good laptop (but never used on my 'lap') that does everything I need it to do. I could buy a new battery for it I guess. 

Lifetime massively depends on usage - there's a big difference between keeping it full and trickle charged (ready only for emergencies), draining it a long way and charging it regularly (peak shifting), or the 'normal' use in the middle

QrizB

TheGardener said:

We have a very sunny SW-facing back garden and I believe that they can be charged in a car? -  and one of us does a fair few miles a week so could use that method too rather than just plugging it into the mains.

Keep in mind that there's no such thing as free energy. If you're charging it in a car, the car will burn more fuel to meet the extra electrical load. Cars aren't generally very good generators (they're not optimised for that) and you might burn as much as a litre of fuel for each kilowatt-hour of electricity; that's £1.80-ish a kWh, five times the cost of charging from the mains.

[Deleted User]

Deleted_User said:

Just to clarify - not all batteries will last 10 years. It depends upon the technology. But the Bluetti kit I'm talking about has LiFePO4 which has 3500+ cycles ... which should equate to about 10 years in theory.

But that's a thing to check as most generators have lithium iron batteries with MUCH shorter life. We held off getting a generator for that reason, but last year these got on our radar and we took the plunge. 

Spot on - there's a big difference between lithium-ion (LiPo) which is the same as phone batteries etc, often listed as 300-500 full charge cycle equivalent, and Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4), expected 3500-5000 cycles (and I've seen some over 7000 in tests).

Lifetime isn't 100% to 0% capability of course, it's more like "capacity is only 80% of new" and things like that.  Some manufacturers will just not tell you about all of the capacity at new to make their systems seem to last longer - if you've bought a 10kWh battery they might have installed 11kWh-worth of cells but the controller only shows 10kWh of them-  this means the first 1kWh of capacity reduction doesn't actually take anything off the lifetime.