All Sorts Of Power

Last time we offered this, @Kidsandliz:

Shocked. Just shocked I say. meh selling a 4.8 star item? Is someone in purchasing sick with the “I forgot I worked for a 2 to 3 star product to resell company” flu? What is meh coming to?

But don’t worry, Kidsandliz, we’re not going to ditch our principles and sell out!

Or, wait, actually scratch that. Because we did. No, not ditch our principles, but the other part:

By 9:30 in the morning, we’d moved all 766 units we had in stock. So, what was it about this thing that got people buying?

@KlfJoat lays it out pretty nicely:

I live in hurricane country and have two very old, D-cell-only lanterns (one or both might not be LED). Something like this, that can be recharged by USB-C or solar, seems ideal.

@werehatrack echoes these sentiments:

I don’t remember whether the one I bought was from Costco or Sam’s, but it’s still here and still works - and served us well during extended power outages due to the derecho and other nasty weather events.

I mentioned before that I also dealt with an extended derecho-related power outage a few years ago. I’d been lucky enough to avoid them throughout my adult life, save for an hour here or there where the lights went out, or one or two overnight outages caused by fallen trees. In the intervening years, I’d romanticized them. I remembered getting out the flashlights and even lighting candles, the initial thrill, the excited panic until, suddenly, the lights flickered on again.

And yes, I understand this is the extremely ignorant take of someone who, unlike KlfJoat and others, never lived in the path of a terrifying hurricane, but it’s how I felt nonetheless.

The derecho corrected my thinking. We didn’t have significant damage to our home, but we did spend several days without electricity. And it was not fun; it was a logistical nightmare. And the one thing I thought I could look forward to–a night of reading without any distractions–was always spoiled by the inconvenient fact of the sun setting and leaving us in the dark well before bedtime.

Now, I have a battery generator and multiple power banks. But that doesn’t mean I want to use them to keep a lamp on past nine. Hence why one of these could be so helpful: a powerful light source that can be recharged with solar and powered by batteries in a pinch.

And by ‘pinch,’ I mean ‘really frustrating and potentially scary weather emergency.’

Yeah, maybe ‘pinch’ wasn’t the best word choice…