Anyone up on portable power stations/solar generators?

I live in an area/city prone to power outages (especially in the winter) and have been looking into 1000w portable solar generators/power stations.

As it stand I'm leaning towards the Jackery Explorer 1000 model with 2 of their solar panels to keep it charged. I've ahd and no longer want to deal with fossil fuel generators, so that's a nonstarter for me.

Anyone have advice or maybe another equally good or better product they've used or researched?

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DunningKruger · 61-69, M

The wife had a lot of anxiety about power outages, especially over the pandemic and the summer heat wave, so we've spent a lot on these things over the past few years.

We have two Jackery 500s, a Jackery 1000 and the new Jackery 2000 Pro. What we've found is that they all seem to work fine, as long as you're realistic about what you try to run off them.

I regularly carry the 1000 around with me when I'm performing maintenance on our fence. It runs a cheap Black and Decker plug-in drill without any issues at all. I tried to run a Skil circular saw off it, but it simply didn't have the oomph to handle it.

We ran a portable air conditioner off the 2000 Pro, and it worked like a champ with no problems, so we were set if the power went out in the middle of a heat wave.

The wife regularly operates her sewing machine off the 1000, and maybe the 500s, too? I'm not sure about that.

We set them out in the back yard with the solar panels and they charge up fine. It's all plug and play, and we haven't had any issues with them at all.

We looked at a variety of vendors for this sort of thing before we bought anything, and went with Jackery mostly because it seemed pretty straightforward. I'm sure the other comparable units probably work just as well, but we've been happy with these.

Ontheroad · M

@DunningKruger Yep, sort of like me in needs and outlook. I'll have to give the 2000w rig a look.