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Comment by slimsag | Hacker News Reader

Orthogonal: Anker has been working on a 1.2 kWh portable battery that you can charge directly from regular outlets, or solar panels, as an alternative to generators. It's a pretty cool little device[1], I've been thinking about getting one. I hope they go bigger.

[1] https://www.anker.com/powerhouse_757

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It's kind of hard to get that excited about the Anker given price to storage ratio. It's a fancy wrapper around a 100AH LiFePO4 battery. You can get a decent LifePO4 battery now for $399 [1]. I'm not sure the wrapper they have put around it is really worth the extra $1000 (total $1399, at least on Amazon). It's also weird their marketing material says charge to 80% in 1 hour [2] when it has a 300W max. (On Amazon, looks like it is actually 3.6 hours to 80%) [3]

[1] https://amzn.to/3zzt5KY [2] https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0517/6767/3016/files/KSP.j... [3] https://amzn.to/3xoGWBp

Weize teardown review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c6A1THDaeU

tl;dr: It isn't totally horrible, but you get what you pay for in this case.

Yeah, as the poster notes, it's not bad. I've had a budget LifePO4 in use for over a year now with no issues. Can report back in 4 more years I suppose.

10 years ago I bought a cheap solar pump (~$100) rather than the standard priced ones at the time (~$1000) I got flack for buying Chinese made goods which were "surely crap". But that pump ran perfectly fine for about 8 years before it started slowing down and running at a reduced capacity.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Watch Will's other reviews... not all of them are made well at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvCdo0cs99w

Based on his reviews and recommendations, I did just purchase a 'cheap' 300ah Chinese battery off of Amazon (AmpereTime) to replace my 3 AGM batteries in my campervan. We will see how well it lasts...

I have one of the Anker batteries. It'll happily take in >1000W from an AC wall outlet to charge fully in ~1hr. It's 300W max DC input from solar (which is where that 3.6hr number comes from) or 100W max from a 12v car adapter.

Those other batteries you linked look like a potentially great deal for raw capacity, though there's something to be said for having a mostly portable package with thermal management and a bunch of different inputs and high-powered outputs.

100Ah 12V LiFePO4 is $218 on aliexpress. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3256804150747707.html

Ok really dumb question but: how do you plug in a normal plug into a battery like this? I'm nervous about doing it wrong and then frying my musical equipment. The nice thing about the Anker is not having to worry about this.

My friends tried hooking up a car battery to an inverter and something went wrong (not sure what) and they fried 3k of musical equipment.

These "solar generators" have been a thing for a couple years now; GoalZero sells 'em up to 1500W in most outdoor shops (I just bought a 500W "generator" + a 50W panel from REI), and their website has "home" versions in the multi-kW range.

I have a feeling these are gonna be a gamechanger for offgrid and nomadic living, especially with further improvements in capacity and price.

I think we’re going to see these sorts of things take off in the next couple of years.

Greenworks and TORO have a little 300W inverter that you can plug their lawnmower/yard equipment batteries into and use as a portable power back.

I'd love to see electric scooter / e-bike companies also adopt this technology too. My scooter has a 550Whr battery and I'd love to use it as a power station for some of my devices on the go.

I have a 1200mWh bike light that lets you charge stuff off it's battery, it's a life saver. I have used it to charge my phone and my rear lights in a pinch.

I am just remembering now that my e-bike has a USB port for charging off the battery too. I don't ride it much so I haven't used it yet, but I assume I could charge just about anything to full capacity off it.

I use Ryobi batteries on e scooter. Super handy.

What specific use case would you be using that for?

Besides something like camping where you can charge before you go and use it to keep some lower-power devices like cell phones and flashlights charged I can't really see where it'd be useful. It's not big enough for a job site or home backup power, and really just doesn't compete well against even much, much cheaper gasoline generators.

Lots of energy/climate change conscious people use < 10 kWh per day, 1 kWh battery buffer for small solar would do quite a lot, you'll know you can always charge ebikes and gadgets, etc.

This is starting to get into the range of things like Milwaukee’s “generator replacement”: https://www.milwaukeetool.com/Products/Equipment/Power-Suppl...

The MX line is absurdly expensive. Not if you need a cordless jackhammer of course, but for most people.

The residential version of that product would be the EGO unit that can accept 4x 672wh batteries (56V*12ah). Those EGO 12ah are expensive, but still less than the MX XC406 at 6ah.

It’s an exciting time for battery tools.

EDIT: As compared to the MX or Anker units above, I have use for the EGO batteries while the power is on between lawn mower, snow blower, string trimmer, leaf blower, and chainsaw. So while the batteries can be thought of as consumable, I like that they don’t just sit in the corner forever.

Yeah there’s a tiny m18 100w 120v outlet thing that’s a bit more reasonable, especially if you already have batteries.

Happy to see Anker went with the LiFePO4 batteries in the 757. They're definitely a chemistry I feel safer using in these bulk applications. Much more resistant to thermal runaway and they're not nearly as spicy if things do go wrong. Plus you can run them down to 0%.

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