What solar backup generators offer the best value?

[jondisla]

Hello all,

Another solar newbie here. I hope not to insult anyone's intelligence here as all of us know more than others on different topics. Anyways, I have started looking at the following generators:

Bluetti AC200Max
Bluetti EB240
EcoFlow Delta
Titan Solar Generator (4,000wH)

My purpose for the generator is to backup energy for refrigerators in case of a power outage. Are these products able to do that or am I way off? Looking to between $3,000 to $5,000 (if necessary). Any suggestions for other systems would be appreciated.

 

[rmaddy]

I don't know anything about the solar generators but before you can begin to decide which is best for you, you need to work out how much power you need. Do you know how many watt hours per day (Wh/day) your refrigerators (or other items) actually use under normal circumstances? If not, get a kill-a-watt type meter and take some measurements for a couple of days. Once you know how many watt hours each of your items uses in a day you can get a grand total for the things you wish to run off of a solar generator.

Then decide how long you will need the generator to last. Do you only need something to last for an hour? 6 hours? A day? 3 days? How long is the average power outage that you want to handle?

That info will tell you how many watt hours total you need the generator to support between recharges.

In addition to that capacity information, you need to work out the total combined wattage the total loads will be and then you need to make sure the solar generator can provide that much power at a given time.

 

[jondisla]

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction rmaddy

 

[corndog]

Never really felt like commercial battery generators were a good value, but if you wanted a plug & play solution, probably any of those would do what you need, assuming you had a newer fridge. The smaller one should run the fridge during the hottest part of the daytime(maybe 8hrs?) and you don't really need it at night, so even that would probably get you by. The biggest one would probably run the fridge for a couple days non-stop, give or take.

 

[jondisla]

Thank you corndog your post will help me a lot in making my decision.

 

[circus]

My purpose for the generator is to backup energy for refrigerators in case of a power outage. Are these products able to do that or am I way off? Looking to between $3,000 to $5,000 (if necessary)

3 gal jugs of frozen water equals a 1000w battery and cost $0

 

[LazyDragon]

3 gal jugs of frozen water equals a 1000w battery and cost $0

When I glanced, I read that as "3 gal jugs of frozen tequila"

For the OP, the big question is really how much do you really want to hassle with this project? If the goal is to power the fridge with minimum cost and trouble, just get a nice dual-fuel inverter generator. Multi-purpose, quiet, reliable. In the future, you can easily sell it for close to what you paid. Also much less money than the solar generators.

If you want to pursue solar as a green hobby, there are better ways to spend your money, generate more useable power and learn more along the way. Plus it will be there as a much better emergency backup if/when it's needed.