Best (and Worst) Portable Power Stations | Practical Self Reliance

Solar Generators and Backup Batteries for Camping and Emergencies

This past year, I started working on a comprehensive review of all the solar generators and portable power stations on the market these days. With major widespread power outages due to storms (or planned service outages out west for fire prevention on hot dry days), more and more people are looking into options for backup power.

We just had major mid-summer floods for the second year in a row here in Vermont, and we’re just as likely to lose power due to summer storms as we are due to winter snow.

Since we’re already familiar with solar and battery technology after living in a solar-powered house for more than a decade, I did a deep dive explaining the ins and outs of how these systems work in plain English. I put a lot of time into this y’all, and in the end, it came to more than 8,000 words.

If you have questions about portable power banks or solar generators that I didn’t cover…I’d be surprised…but do let me know in the comments, and I’ll see what I can do to answer them.

Read More: The Best (and Worst) Portable Power Stations

Portable solar panels charging portable power stations in front of our rooftop panels.

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Gas generators were the most common option in the past, but the problem is that they’re noisy and emit a lot of emissions, raising concerns of carbon monoxide poisoning if improperly set up. They also only power your home when they’re running, and if you want to run one small thing (or charge a few phones), you have to kick it on, whether you’re using all the power it generates or not.

Portable power banks, on the other hand, incorporate batteries that can silently power appliances or charge phones in an emergency or while camping. You can recharge them with a wall outlet, a car charger, or lightweight portable solar panels. Or, even better, you can use both…you can run a gas generator to charge a portable power bank and then store all that surplus electricity the generator produces for later.

Most of them are quite small yet incredibly powerful, and my 8-year-old can carry a battery bank that can keep our essential systems running all day long.

If you just want quick answers, and aren’t up for reading an 8,000 word dissertation on Solar Generators…

My favorite portable power stations come from Bluetti, and their long-lasting Litium Iron Phosphate batteries are rated for 10+ years of daily use (or longer if just used occasionally). This newer battery technology is incredibly safe, and you can fully discharge it down to 0% without issue (unlike older battery types).

If portability is your main concern, then you might want ligher NCM batteries in from my 2nd place choice, Jackery.  They use older battery technology, which happens to be 30% lighter for the same Watt Hours…but it’s only rated for about 2 years of daily use (or 4-ish years of occasional use). The main benefit is they’re ligher, which doesn’t matter as much for home backup…but makes a big difference camping.

Here are my specific picks for various use cases:

• Best Budget Portable Power Station: Bluetti EB3A It’s small but mighty, and with 600 Watts, it can still handle most small appliances, and it’s one of the least expensive options.  It can charge a phone 15 times, run a fan, laptop or CPAP for 6 hours, or simply keep a light bulb going for up to 24 hours.

• Best Lightweight Portable Power Station for Backpacking: Jackery Explorer 240 At Just 6.5 lbs, this is one of the lightest portable power stations, but it still has enough juice to charge devices and run small electronics.

• Best Portable Power Station for CPAP: Bluetti EB55 With enough power to run a CPAP for 8 to 10 hours, this small power station will let you sleep through the night even when the power’s out.  It can be recharged during the day for extended outages.  If you’re looking for an option for multi day camping trips, choose the Jackery Explorer 2000 below which can run a CPAP all week without worrying about recharging, or it can run all your camping gear and recharge on solar panels during the day.

• Best Portable Power Station for Car Camping: Jackery Explorer 2000 Pro If you’re car camping, but you still need something lightweight enough to move about the camp site, go with the Jackery 2000.  It has plenty of power for multi day outings, but it’s still portable enough that a strong child can pull it in and out of the car.  (My 8 year old can handle it on her own.)

• Best Portable Power Station for RVs: Bluetti AC200Max (Includes TT-30 RV Plug) This expandable power station can hook right into your RV’s TT-30 plug and it has enough juice to power things most of the day.  You can add on B300 expansion batteries if you need more power, which can keep you going all week (especially with solar panels to recharge).

• Best Portable Power Station for Emergency Backup Power: Bluetti AC200Max with B300 expansion batteries.  The AC200Max can put out 2200 Watts, which is enough to power most small household appliances, but it’s still portable enough to be moved by a single person (62 lbs).  You can add expansion batteries, extending the watt hours from 2,048Wh to 8,192Wh.  If you need more juice, look into Bluetti’s AC300, which is expandable up to 12,288 Watt Hours.

Next up, I’m hoping to write a comprehensive review of portable solar panels, but I take my time with these things and make sure I cover everything…so it might be a few months before I finish that one.

At the moment, I’m absolutely loving Jackery’s 100W panels, and they’re really sleek and easy to carry. My husband, and my little ones, can easily carry four of them at once without skipping a beat, and they’re incredibly easy to setup. They have a lot of nice little features, like magnetic closures and well-designed fold-out legs that make them my top pick (for now, at least…I have more models to test).

My husband carrying four portable solar panels (2 in each hand) from Jackery.

This review was a long time in coming, becasue I really wanted to do justice to a complicated topic. In the end, we had a lot of fun testing everything and though we know quite a bit about solar and backup systems, we learned a lot too. All the new technology that’s come out in the past 2-3 years is absolutely amazing, and now we’re looking into options for upgrading our off-grid battery bank…and I’ll talk you through what we decide there when we get to it.

What would you like me to review next? We had so much fun testing everything that we’re hoping to incorporate more reviews into the site going forward, and I’d love it if y’all would help me decide what to tackle next!

Beyond that, I always want to know what you’re harvesting, preserving, building, or exploring on your homestead this week.

Leave me a note in the comments…

(Comments only, please. Emails tend to get lost in my inbox, and as much as I’d love to get back to each and every one, my screen time is very limited…and things fall through the cracks, and emails get buried in my inbox. If you comment here, they’re all in one place, and it’s much easier to get back to every single one.)

Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance