ACOPOWER Solar Panel and Generator Kit

“Modified sine wave” is standard in the ups industry as is “pure sine wave”.

“Pure modified sine wave” is just marketing double-speak. I and others have called it out.

Nice job doubling down on it, I guess.

I use this battery for camping with my CPAP. Using a DC power supply I get about 14 hours out of it, so almost 2 nights. It’s great for that purpose.

The solar panel will “generate” electricity and it plugs into essentially a car battery with inverter.

Calling the battery a generator drives me nuts, sorry!

Could this power a hot plate, electric tea kettle, or coffee maker? My camping stove goes through propane like nobody’s business trying to boil water at high altitude. This could be a good camping accessory if I could find a use case.

For reference:

This weekend I plugged 3 Crock-Pots into my Goal Zero 1250. Popped them on Hi, and each used around 260W. This thing wouldn’t have been able to run 1 of them, but it’s also a lot cheaper.

So just be aware of the limited use cases where the might be useful.

All nomenclature aside, small powerpacks such as this are really not that good for 110v items. Someone here uses one with their CPAP, but don’t expect any satisfaction with anything that has a higher load such as a heater, stove, cooking appliance, refrigerator, etc. Cooking or running a frig with this set-up would be a fool’s errand because you would deplete the power reserve quick enough then have to wait while it charges all day long before you could use it again the next evening.

So what is it good for? Let’s say you had a hurricane and decided to “ride it out”. Utility power, landlines, and even cable TV are all out. This powerpack would be great to keep an entire family’s cell phones, weather radios and iPads charged, plus run more than a few low-wattage LED emergency lights all night long - and then you can recharge it during the day while you wait for the flood waters to rise and FEMA to show up with a ham sandwich and a check. How do I know? I live in Central Florida where hurricane prep is our national sport so I keep three smaller solar panels and three power bank battery packs in my disaster kit at home just for this situation. Believe me, it doesn’t take long to get tired of not having AC!

No, not really. A car battery has a capacity about four times this thing. If you were right on the edge of being able to start with the car battery, and left this to charge it for 45 minutes, MAYBE, it would push the car battery over the ledge and get the car started. After 45 minutes of having the 12V output running at 15A(maximum), this battery would be completely discharged.

There’s probably nothing more than a fuse protecting the 12V line from drawing more than 15 amps, so in all likelihood, the moment you connected this to your car battery, the fuse would blow(since the battery would probably be well below the 12V, or you wouldn’t be in that mess) and you’d get no charging.

No. this generator is not for cooking, coffee maker, tea kettle, etc. it is mainly for small DC and AC Load below 100w, such as laptop, cell phone, lighting, radio, etc.

I received mine today. Had been looking at Goal Zero products, bought this because it included 50w (claimed) solar panels for about the same price as the comparable Goal Zero battery alone. I don’t know a lot about these kinds of things, really a “just in case” unit, and mostly I wanted the panels that I could then use for a higher powered/quality unit later.

The battery unit and panels seem well enough constructed. Not heavy at all. Beyond that, the first thing that struck me is the typed note that was included in the box:

“And we receive several reports with the Solar Charging MC4 adapter, please contact XXXX if you miss one, we would send you one as soon as we can.”

If they can put a note in the box, why in the blue hell can they not just check that all the parts are there instead? And yes, my charging adapter is missing.

Next note, and you might have assumed this from that quote above, but OH MY GOD the Engrish! The manuals included in this are literally the WORST I have ever read. And I use the word ‘read’ loosely. I honestly cannot figure out a LOT of what it says, and frankly am worried that I’m missing important details and will end up damaging it/doing something unsafe. As I said, I am not an expert in batteries/solar stuff/electricity. For example, the manual for the panels seems to be saying you have to tell the controller (again, not included) what type of battery you are charging, and all the options were types of lead acid. No lithium. Yet this was specifically sold as a package with a lithium battery.

I didn’t read into the pure/modified sine wave stuff before ordering (and wouldn’t have known what it really meant without researching), so I was a bit disappointed this thing won’t necessarily power any AC load less than 100w.

If it works, it works I guess, and I won’t be upset about buying it. It was a good price and the panels alone (assuming they can be adapted to other units, amazon reviews implied they could) make it not a bust, but next time I’ll be looking at Goal Zero again, or finding another more reputable US based brand.