Buy it for Life

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A place to share practical, durable and quality made products that are made to last, with an emphasis on upcycled and sustainable products!

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Things that are well-made and durable (even if they won't last a lifetime) are A-Okay!

Unlike that other BIFL place, Home-made and DIY items are encouraged here, as long as some form of instruction is included in the body of the post.

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The item must be made with sustainable or recycled materials.
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Recommendations for portable power stations? (for camping, power outages, etc.) (lemmy.ca)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I took a look around and a lot of comments mentioned to get one that uses 'LiFePO4 Batteries', and that seemed like a reasonable requirement.

They're supposed to have a longer life span, be safer, light weight, and better charge/discharge efficiency which is in line with what I'd be looking for.

Some brands/models that I saw recommended:

BLUETTI came up in more recent posts
Ecoflow (specifically the RIVER 2) came up a lot
Anker was suggested a few times, but the comments weren't that detailed

edit, added an image of what I'm referring to

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

I have a GoalZero Yeti 1000x. I haven't put it through the paces too much yet, but it seems to work well.

It's not LiFePO4, but I chose it cause it allows you to expand it with additional batteries as needed, and it technically supports integrating with your home panel (though I have no plans to do either thing yet).

They try to be a bit more "plug and play", so they use semi-proprietary jacks for their solar panel integration. They seem to count on the fact that most people are scared of electricity so they try to make it easy, but they definitely charge for the convenience (for the solar panels specifically).

Their "high power port" that you can use for solar panel input is really just standard APP connectors in a vertical configuration instead of horizontal, so you can easily buy a cable that allows you to plug into it. They just try not to tell you that openly for liability, I'd assume.

Other brands I've looked at previously include jackery and westinghouse. I might have bought one of those, instead, but I got a good deal on the goalzero.

I think the biggest thing is that the battery cells themselves always have a finite life, so it's most important to see if you can get something with a replaceable battery, or expandable capacity.