@Deftoned989 if you live in an area that loses power regularly due to weather, 991WattHours will power your phone/laptop/ mini fridge/ small appliances for multiple hours.
if you lose power during the sunny part of the day, it can recharge without the grid
I’m going to recycle some comments from past offers, and also unconsciously steal the work of others. Three main topics I can think of: chemistry, use cases, value.
Chemistry: I generally prefer lithium iron phosphate (or LFP) batteries to these lithium ion ones, esp if you’re going to use the battery (excuse me, generator) often. However, these lithium ion ones are less expensive, are more energy dense, and per some writers create less fire risk (sorry no citation). They can be a good value for infrequent emergency use.
Use case: for me and I think many folks, the highest value emergency uses for these are communication (charging cell phones, which doesn’t use much power) and powering your refrigerator (which uses a ton). (Special shout out to people who need them for something critical like a CPAP.) The USDA’s recommendations for how fast you should throw out your refrigerated food after an outage were shocking to me - many food groups were clustered around 4 hours without power, even without opening the fridge. Refrigerators also have very uneven power draw, surging at first and only running part of the time. Net, for me, this power station is only about half the minimum capacity I’d want to extend my food safety window (and even that would still be less than one day without a way to recharge). The solar panel helps a little, but even with that, this battery will only power a full sized fridge for a few hours. Not overnight.
I haven’t checked, but I doubt this unit would be sufficient to run a sump pump for any decent amount of time. It would run a few fans well, and an AC either not at all or very briefly.
Value: this unit comes in around $0.60 per watt hour (but includes a panel). I wouldn’t swear to this, but I think I’ve seen a really aggressive sale (on this site?) that was as low as $0.25-0.30 per watt hour for this chemistry, no panel. I don’t think you see that price often, though. Also no memory of how nice a unit that was.
Net: for me, not a good enough option for my primary use case. Still a nice tool to have in the arsenal, and at lower $/watt hour, I’d be tempted for other use cases.
You can probably find a better battery, but the price for a 200w solar panel and 1200w battery is acceptable to me because I don’t have to hunt down something similar and put separate pieces of crap together.
I have two of these. Each will run my 20 year old top/bottom 28 cubic foot fridge easily for 6 hours. Just don’t leave the door open and try and cool the whole house.
For short term power outages, it’s great. If the winds are strong or there is some other pending disaster, I can plug the fridge into the battery and the battery connected to power. If the power goes out, the battery will keep the fridge going for six hours.
With two batteries that’s 12 hours. Beyond that I have a gas generator that’ll power the other home appliance, fridge, etc and recharge the batteries.
If armageddon hits, and I run out of gas (siphoned from our cars), I can always use the solar panels.
Now all I have to worry about is running out of emergency food/water and the zombies.
In case someone needs a helping hand to figure out how long this thing will power something for, it’s not that tricky. See the Battery Size? 991Wh. This is 991 watts for 1 hour, or 1 watt at 991 hours.
Remember those old 100w incandescent bulbs? You’d get 9.91 hours off this thing. That should help with the math thing.
Here’s an eye opener. Compared to that 100w bulb, you can plug in an LED light (13w) instead and it will run for 3.5 days, or a basic 55" LED TV (~80w) around 12 hours for a good binge session, but you may want to plug in your laptop (50w) too, but both together you’d get 7.6 hours.
These are not bad numbers at all, honestly. But, while marketers like to call these generators, it can give a false sense of running capacity.
Modern full size fridges are running about 150W. This is over a 24 hour total. Except for newer models, this is actually fluctuating on and off… 300w on for 30 minutes, 300w off for 30. It would be safe to assume some “cushion” due to temperature rise during that first hour, hoping it’s just a quick outage, and then there’s the defrost cycle that adds an extra 100w or so. Considering all that, I would budget 200w, meaning about 5 hours on this battery. If you have an older fridge or one with bells and whistles, this can plummet down to 2.5 hours or less.
If you are interested in this for use in a commercial building or property, keep in mind that a “generator” is against fire code to operate inside the structure without specific infrastructure in place. Nevermind that this isn’t actually a generator, just a battery pack… because it is labelled by the OEM with the word “generator” on it, NFPA 110 is applicable. In US states you may fail your business permitting, building code inspection, or fire inspection if any “generator” is placed, operated, or even plugged in to recharge indoors without the requisite dedicated room, fireproofing, ventilation, etc etc. Yes, as my Bostonian sister-in-law says, “it’s dawhknob-eating retahded” but letter-of-the-law.
Commenters in previous sales have speculated the stupid marketing decision to mislabel large battery packs as “generators” is why there’s a glut of these being unloaded in the secondary market.
How long will this power the control circuits and blower on my gas furnace?
The longest power outage we have had was during a cold snap when all the auxiliary electric furnaces on the heat pumps kicked in and crashed the grid.
(Don’t trust a heat pump to give you more than 40° over ambient.)
(Also, don’t trust the power grid to actually handle an emergency.)
Specs
Product: Energizer 1200W Generator & 200W Solar Panel Bundle
Model: ENBG1000BUN
Condition: New
What’s Included?
Price Comparison
Was $1400 at Costco
Warranty
90 days
Estimated Delivery
Monday, Feb 3 - Tuesday, Feb 4
The $600 Power Bank is back!!
What’s the use case for this? 2 hours of AC power for $600 seems like a lot. But I’m also assuming I’m not understanding the application of this item…
@Deftoned989 I think that means it charges in2 hours via AC? (I hope)
@Deftoned989 if you live in an area that loses power regularly due to weather, 991WattHours will power your phone/laptop/ mini fridge/ small appliances for multiple hours.
if you lose power during the sunny part of the day, it can recharge without the grid
@communist @Deftoned989 plug a charger into one of the outlets and it will run forever…
@Deftoned989 Hurricanes. That’s my use for it.
Quick! Someone tell me if I need this!
/giphy breathtaking-offensive-rhinoceros
That Costco picture was taken from a TikTok video
. Towards the very end. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8F7NggG/
Let’s be honest, you bought WAY too many of these and are still trying to unload them, right? This comes up over and over
@shirlema I bought an earlier battery pack that looked the same except the color and branding was for Duracell. Seems like Meh got them from the OEM.
$499.00 and it’s a deal MEH
@bugger $499.01
/showme a Meh warehouse with a pyramid of 1200 watt Energizer generators
@mediocrebot The rest of the warehouse is totally empty? Probably not realistic.
@mediocrebot @phendrick I don’t know, they seem to be fresh out of TrackRs
/showme a Meh warehouse with a pyramid of 1200 watt Energizer generators and a forklift buried in TrackR devices and candy corn
@mediocrebot
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m going to recycle some comments from past offers, and also unconsciously steal the work of others. Three main topics I can think of: chemistry, use cases, value.
Chemistry: I generally prefer lithium iron phosphate (or LFP) batteries to these lithium ion ones, esp if you’re going to use the battery (excuse me, generator) often. However, these lithium ion ones are less expensive, are more energy dense, and per some writers create less fire risk (sorry no citation). They can be a good value for infrequent emergency use.
Use case: for me and I think many folks, the highest value emergency uses for these are communication (charging cell phones, which doesn’t use much power) and powering your refrigerator (which uses a ton). (Special shout out to people who need them for something critical like a CPAP.) The USDA’s recommendations for how fast you should throw out your refrigerated food after an outage were shocking to me - many food groups were clustered around 4 hours without power, even without opening the fridge. Refrigerators also have very uneven power draw, surging at first and only running part of the time. Net, for me, this power station is only about half the minimum capacity I’d want to extend my food safety window (and even that would still be less than one day without a way to recharge). The solar panel helps a little, but even with that, this battery will only power a full sized fridge for a few hours. Not overnight.
I haven’t checked, but I doubt this unit would be sufficient to run a sump pump for any decent amount of time. It would run a few fans well, and an AC either not at all or very briefly.
Value: this unit comes in around $0.60 per watt hour (but includes a panel). I wouldn’t swear to this, but I think I’ve seen a really aggressive sale (on this site?) that was as low as $0.25-0.30 per watt hour for this chemistry, no panel. I don’t think you see that price often, though. Also no memory of how nice a unit that was.
Net: for me, not a good enough option for my primary use case. Still a nice tool to have in the arsenal, and at lower $/watt hour, I’d be tempted for other use cases.
You can probably find a better battery, but the price for a 200w solar panel and 1200w battery is acceptable to me because I don’t have to hunt down something similar and put separate pieces of crap together.
I have two of these. Each will run my 20 year old top/bottom 28 cubic foot fridge easily for 6 hours. Just don’t leave the door open and try and cool the whole house.
For short term power outages, it’s great. If the winds are strong or there is some other pending disaster, I can plug the fridge into the battery and the battery connected to power. If the power goes out, the battery will keep the fridge going for six hours.
With two batteries that’s 12 hours. Beyond that I have a gas generator that’ll power the other home appliance, fridge, etc and recharge the batteries.
If armageddon hits, and I run out of gas (siphoned from our cars), I can always use the solar panels.
Now all I have to worry about is running out of emergency food/water and the zombies.
In case someone needs a helping hand to figure out how long this thing will power something for, it’s not that tricky. See the Battery Size? 991Wh. This is 991 watts for 1 hour, or 1 watt at 991 hours.
Remember those old 100w incandescent bulbs? You’d get 9.91 hours off this thing. That should help with the math thing.
Here’s an eye opener. Compared to that 100w bulb, you can plug in an LED light (13w) instead and it will run for 3.5 days, or a basic 55" LED TV (~80w) around 12 hours for a good binge session, but you may want to plug in your laptop (50w) too, but both together you’d get 7.6 hours.
These are not bad numbers at all, honestly. But, while marketers like to call these generators, it can give a false sense of running capacity.
Modern full size fridges are running about 150W. This is over a 24 hour total. Except for newer models, this is actually fluctuating on and off… 300w on for 30 minutes, 300w off for 30. It would be safe to assume some “cushion” due to temperature rise during that first hour, hoping it’s just a quick outage, and then there’s the defrost cycle that adds an extra 100w or so. Considering all that, I would budget 200w, meaning about 5 hours on this battery. If you have an older fridge or one with bells and whistles, this can plummet down to 2.5 hours or less.
If you are interested in this for use in a commercial building or property, keep in mind that a “generator” is against fire code to operate inside the structure without specific infrastructure in place. Nevermind that this isn’t actually a generator, just a battery pack… because it is labelled by the OEM with the word “generator” on it, NFPA 110 is applicable. In US states you may fail your business permitting, building code inspection, or fire inspection if any “generator” is placed, operated, or even plugged in to recharge indoors without the requisite dedicated room, fireproofing, ventilation, etc etc. Yes, as my Bostonian sister-in-law says, “it’s dawhknob-eating retahded” but letter-of-the-law.
Commenters in previous sales have speculated the stupid marketing decision to mislabel large battery packs as “generators” is why there’s a glut of these being unloaded in the secondary market.
How long will this power the control circuits and blower on my gas furnace?
The longest power outage we have had was during a cold snap when all the auxiliary electric furnaces on the heat pumps kicked in and crashed the grid.
(Don’t trust a heat pump to give you more than 40° over ambient.)
(Also, don’t trust the power grid to actually handle an emergency.)