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Portable power station for camping

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Portable power station for camping

Wow! I own 6 other Power Stations and finally found one that has all the features I'm looking for. 1. This BULLBAT has a built-in MPPT charging section. Why is this important? You can directly connect 12-30v solar panels to this and you don't need your own MPPT controller as it's built-in. MPPT or Maximum Power Point Tracking allows sources with variable power to maximize energy extraction from your solar panels. This is crucial for solar panels; without it you can lose up to 30% of the panel's maximum wattage output. 

2. It allows triple power inputs with pass-through charging while supplying AC and DC. This is crucial if you want to maximize the total kWhs you can get out of the unit per day. Without pass-through charging, AC would be off when recharging the batteries. So that would mean no AC for 6-10 hours a day! Also, You can turn this 500Wh unit into a 2000-3000Wh unit if you have some 12-24V lead acid batteries laying around. Just don't expect much more than it's rated 500 Watts.


I tested it to 800 Watts before it shut down but it held 600 Watts perfectly. How do you add capacity? Let's say you have a couple of cheap 12V 110Ah Group 27 lead acid Sealed cells laying around in your garage. You can connect them to this unit via the 12V-30V input and now you have 500Wh + about 1kWh x2 for 2.5kWh of total energy all while the AC and DC outputs are on. The max charging input for me hit 229 Watts so that's the limitation on keeping the unit charged.

I tested the 5V USB 3.0 and they will do continuous 3 Amps at 5.16 Volts (over 18 Watts) with zero sagging! This is great for the fastest cell phone charging! See image. The USB-C ports can both output 60 Watts Each and will Charge Apple Macbook Pros. The auto-detect voltages can adjust from 5 to 20 Volts. See the image The USB-C ports are directional so you can use your USB-C MacBook Chargers to boost Charging speeds. I managed a 110W (charger that comes with the UNIT + 60W + 60W for a 229 Watts Total of charging while simultaneously out-putting 400-500 Watts AC. See image.

The Inverter is a True Sine Wave Inverter so it can safely power electric Blankets, laptops, CPAP, and Bi-PAP machines. I tested them all with it. The voltage for me held steady at 114 to 114.5 volts at 1 watt to 500+ with no spikes or peaks at all from no load to full load. See image. Overall Efficiency from the Battery including inverter DC to AC conversion losses seems to be right at 90%. This is very good. 12V DC output with no load is 13.3 Volts (Cigarette lighter style plug) I didn't have time to test the voltage at a full 10 Amps. The output on the 12 volt DC 2.2mm output Jack is also 13.3 volts The Unit has an LED light with low, High, Slow Strobe, and High Strobe.

That draws the 2 and 4 watts low/high and it's very bright. I didn't use my photometric integrating sphere but the LED looks to be about 150 Lumens per watt on high. So expect a true 600 lumens output. It's right at 5,600 Kelvin with a great reflector and a low-loss lens and no hot spots. The onboard power management is great with real-time wattage input and outputs showing wattage Draw on AC/DC, Charging Watts, time left before the battery is depleted and time it will take for a full charge.

The construction is solid and it's a hefty 12 pounds. It comes with a Solar charging adapter (MC4 to DC5525 cable) Just make sure your solar panels' Open Circuit Voltage (OCV) is between 12V-30V and does not exceed 30 volts. Since it has a built-in MPPT controller you can plug your solar panels indirectly. You can connect a few panels in parallel for faster charging just as long as you don't exceed 30 volts.

Max input via solar only is about 160Watts. If you have 200-400 Watts watts worth of solar panels you won't hurt anything as this unit limits the maximum charge rate. I hooked up 400 Watts of Sunpower flexible panels with no problems.

They are Maxeon Sunpower flexible monocrystalline solar cells. 32 cells per panel, 4 panels all in parallel. Even if you only have a 10 Watt panel it will work it will just take much longer to charge.

My panels are 17.5 Volts under load and a 21V open circuit. I was able to peak at a continuous charge rate of 229 Watts when using the Solar input and the USB-C inputs simultaneously. 160W with the Panels only. That's the fastest you can charge and is very fast for a 500wH battery as faster charging would just reduce the (total) charge cycles It also comes with a 12V auto plug adaptor so you can charge the unit while driving or from your car battery. The Unit is 100% silent on charging at 60 Watts and using AC at low Wattages. Somewhere in the 60W to 100W range the fan will kick on for both charging and discharging but it's very quiet.

 


The negatives that I found so far: I was able to trick the computer into thinking it had 9.9 hours of power left when connecting 3 charging inputs for 229 watts of charging input and simultaneously drawing over 400 Watts output. Not a big deal at all as it was the only info



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