What are the differences between a portable power station and solar generator?

It turns out that the answer to the question of ” What is the difference between a portable power station and a solar generator?” is way too simple. So, here goes… a solar generator is a portable power station charged using a solar panel. Ok, I know you are thinking Duh! But honestly, while shopping for back-up power systems,  there was never an explanation as to the difference, so I started asking questions and doing a little research.

What I found was the answers to a lot of questions I didn’t even know I had questions for! Such as what is a portable power station? Another very simple answer is… (drum roll) a battery! Those are both very simplified answers, but there are also many features, and sizes I needed to learn about before deciding on what kind of system I would be purchasing.

Alright, so let’s start with what I need this system for and a brief description of “portable power station” beyond just “a battery”.  A  portable power station needs an external source of electricity to charge the battery, which is usually provided by the grid or a generator. Generators can be Gas powered (your standard generator), or Sun powered (a solar panel), both providing DC electric currents to the battery system. The Power Station also has an inverter which turns DC (direct current) into AC (alternating current), which is the current your home appliances run on. DC is what your cell phone needs for charging, along with many other rechargeable devices like flashlights, laptops, headlamps, Bluetooth speakers, radios, headphones, and many other small electronics. So, most portable power stations have both AC and DC ports to plug into. The portable power station can also be charged by your car’s cigarette lighter port (if it is old enough to still have one). The cables are usually included in most power stations for charging from the three sources I have just mentioned.

Since these systems are portable, meaning lightweight and fairly compact, they are designed to be used indoors or out. If you have a large enough power station to run your refrigerator for several hours in the case of a power failure or brown out, you will need to recharge it somehow. That is when you might want to have solar panels outside with a long enough power cable to reach your power station. The longer power cables are an optional feature that you can purchase separately.

What I just described is a small portable “Solar Generator” because the solar panels are sending power generated by the sun to the power station. This also has the limits of only being able to recharge during the day, and you will want to be monitoring the panels outside to make sure they are fully in the sun.

Portable power stations come in many different sizes, and some even have the capability to run in parallel with another power station or to connect other batteries to increase the power or the time that you have before the batteries are drained. The sizes are advertised as watts (W) and watt hours (Wh). I’m not an electrician, so please don’t laugh at my simple understanding of electricity and electrical terminology, (if I can’t see it, it’s harder for me to understand) but I do know bigger is better, (also more expensive).

In determining my power needs and trying to understand what it is I need, I came across this info, I hope it helps you understand as much as it has me. If for a second you imagine a 60-watt light bulb, it needs 60 watts of electricity to light up for 1 hour. If I need the light for 6 hours in the evening, the simple equation looks like this: 60w x 6 hours = 360 watt hours (Wh).  360Wh = 0.36 kWh. Watts x hours divided by 1000 = Kilo Watt hours (kWh). The bigger portable power stations have a W rating and a kWh rating, for example a 4000 Watt solar generator has a 400 watt solar panel included to charge the batteries during the day.  It has a 4000Wh rating equivalent to 4kWh, (Hint look at your monthly power bill and divide the monthly Kilowatts usage by 30 to determine a daily kWh need. I took a look at my yearly electric consumption and the average use per month was around 325kW, divided by 30 equals about 10.8 kW per day. A 4000Wh solar generator would provide less than half (about 4kWh) of the power my household uses during an average day, meaning I would really have to conserve power consumption drastically, or get an extra battery for storage to up the Wh capacity.  Also the 400 watt solar panel is probably not going to keep up with normal consumption, so even if I were to really conserve I would only have power for a short time, at the most a couple of days in sunny weather.

It has come to my conclusion that my family’s best shot at being somewhat comfortable in the event of a several day power outage, is to have multiple power sources. I am going to purchase a solar generator ( the largest my budget will allow) in addition to the Dual fuel generator (gas and propane) that I already own.

If you are looking for something to supply power for a camping trip, an RV, or just to have a jam session with your friends at the beach, then a small solar generator might be the perfect fit. On the other hand if you are looking for whole home power backup, it just got a little more complicated.