I was up at CostCo the other day and saw this:
The semantic part of me recoils at the advertising calling this a ‘gasless generator’. A generator…generates…electricity. This thing stores electricity, it doesn’t make it. Calling it a ‘gasless generator’ is at best a stupid mistake and, more likely, at worst, misleading. Its like calling a 55-gallon drum of water a ‘portable well’.
What is it? Basically its a big lead acid battery with a built in inverter and some bells and whistles. What does it do? Absolutely nothing, as far as I can tell, that you can’t do for a fraction of the price with some wires, a couple AGM batteries, and a battery charger.
It’s 55Ah, which is, really, kinda puny. What it does have is a built in ‘solar controller’, the ability to be used as a UPS, visual metrics, and a few bells and whistles. But, really, it’s just this with a nicer casing:
If you zoom in on the packaging you can see it boasts that it’ll run an LED lamp for 48 hours. Color me unimpressed. I ran one for almost 4x that long with the battery jump box and it cost 1/5 the price.
While I like the turnkey plug-n-play approach this thing represents, the frugal part of me is aghast thinking what I could (easily) put together for $500 that would perform the same basic functions (albeit without the bells and whistles of automatic low-discharge shutdown and solar controller) at an exponential increase in capacity/runtime.
Worse yet, it is a Duracell product. The shoddiest of Chinese-made junk. Their disposable batteries routinely wreck electronics due to leaks — would anyone want to risk the quality of a lead-acid battery from them?
For what they are asking, one could buy a couple of deep-cycle Optima gel-cells and a solar panel to keep them charged.
Point conceded.
But what good country – USA or otherwise – makes decent AAA or AA batteries?
What brand do we look for?
We haven’t had any issues with the Costco generics — so far. Costco occasionally changes its supplier, so I remain wary that the next batch may turn out to be Costco-labeled Duracells or similar.
For mission-critical electronics I use the Energizer lithiums exclusively. No problems, and Li batteries have much less of an issue cold weather than alkalines.
I should be looking at rechargeable batteries, but just haven’t managed to motivate myself to sort through all the advertising, reviews, etc, in order to make an informed choice.
I am somewhat skeptical of the long-term reliability of rechargeables in general, due to the repeated problems I have experienced with NiCd and Li-ion batteries. When a supposedly reputable toolmaker makes Li-ion batteries that last for less than a year under low to moderate use — and then charges nearly as much for a replacement battery as the tool and 2 batteries cost in the first place — it is hard to consider it anything but designed to fail. They’re not so much in the tool-making business as they are in the battery-selling business.
As far as fixed-site batteries I can not say enough good things about the Optima batteries. I’ve used and abused their red-top automotive batteries for years — high heat, extreme cold, even physical damage — and the only one I managed to kill was done-in by a failing alternator that wasn’t fully charging it and thus caused frequent deep-cycling of a battery that was never intended to handle that.
I haven’t used their yellow-top deep-cycle battery, but I have not heard any complaints about them.
The drawback to the Optimas is that their price has gone up dramatically. I paid about $150 or $160 for the last red-top I bought, but checking the current prices I see that the cost has literally doubled.
I use eneloop
Energizer lithium for disposable, no leaks and they last a very long time.
Eneloop rechargeables.
If it has a sine wave inverter it’s worth an extra $50 over the jump pack but yeah, overpriced.
I see that Duracell has taken another step lower. We purchased some of their smaller AGM batteries for use in a project for work. I tried looking up the datasheet to find out some of the characteristics such Ah rating and wound up chasing my tail. It turns out that Duracell doesn’t manufacture their AGM and lead acid gel cells. They buy off-brand Chinesium batteries from whichever vendor has them at that moment and stick their own label on them. I’m willing to bet that they did the same thing with these ‘gas-less generators’. In six months, they’ll probably be selling a completely different unit from some other off-brand name. They seem to be fully on board with slapping their name on foreign junk and marketing it to cash in on their name. I wouldn’t be surprised if the company was bought out by some conglomerate and hollowed out to a shell corporation. I don’t even buy their AA or D cells anymore.
Yeah, I made my own with a deep cycle battery that has about twice the storage capacity of that one, added a 2000 watt inverter, a distribution box with 3V, 6V, 9V, 12V and USB jacks, a solar controller and 3-15 watt panels for around $200. I could add another three batteries for the extra money that they’re charging for that thing……….
Wow. I bet they sell out too. SMH.
I have 4 “jump start batts” and use them to power lights, & using a 200w inverter to watch movies on our camper TV and charge any USB device…these will also hook direct to the power cables on the camper (using the alligator clips) and will power the heater furnace to take the chill off…I use these “jump packs” all the time and even to power a little 7″ DVD (old westerns, zombie flicks and comedies) and LED lights and usb charger when I Van camp (honda odyssey) by myself way out in the boonies–away from and hidden from society. I have various inverters–100w, 140w, 200w, 300w & 400w….saves my vehicle and camper batteries for truly needed options.
I’m a fence-sitter on this one. On one hand, I’m with you; I’ve cobbled together MUCH more capable setups with deep cycle batteries and my choice of yard sale-procured inverters. On the other hand, some people are just not good at that sort of thing, and for them, these things are available… for a price… ‘Kinda like changing your own brakes for $50.00 in parts, or paying someone $200.00 to do it for you…
…ANY prep is better than NO prep…
Oh; and the “gasless generator” thing; I’m with you on that!
As for Duracell batteries leaking, I’ve experienced the same thing with the Ray-O-Vac alkaline batteries commonly sold in bulk at Lowe’s. DON’T BUY THESE!!! They start leaking IN THE PACKAGE within a year!!!
Does anyone have any plans, parts lists or suppliers for the above setups? Novice electrician here.
Youtube is your friend for these. Spend the time to watch as many of the videos as you can before deciding on which one to build.
Also, do a search on the Instructables webpage.
I quit using the Duracel AA and AAAs some time ago. One too many ruined maglite, but the final straw was a $600 laser distance measuring tool…
I had good luck with the Kirkland brand, but lately I’m finding these leak too. They leak something much less damaging and much easier to clean up though.
I had one package leak and fail in the original packaging, clearly marked to be good for 2 more years. Took that back to Costco, and after some incredulity, and being so old they couldn’t find a purchase in their online system, I pointed to the expiration clearly printed on the package and grunted…. and she couldn’t deny what was printed right there…. so I got a new package.
WRT rechargeables, I have and use the eneloops that Costco used to have on sale every other month. Most have self discharged, and I go thru them and recharge them in batches now. I use them in my EDC pelican 1920 flashlight. They generally work well, but the metal can is a bit softer than the disposables. I’ve dropped my flashlight and had the shock dimple the flat end of a couple of batteries to the point they don’t make good contact with another battery anymore. I just make sure I put that battery against the spring and it’s all good.
I’ve also got several of the lithium jump packs that Costco sold, Something 6 brand?? I never got one to jump a vehicle but they make awesome usb power banks for phones and tablet charging, or with a USB reading light.
Lastly I only recently discovered that china makes an adapter for the Dewalt 20v lithium tool batteries that has a 12v barrel jack on it. Ordered one but haven’t used it yet. The reviews say to make sure to dismount it when done as it will kill your battery by overdraining it. There are several china brand adapters that let you use your Dewalt batteries with other company’s tools. I’ve got a bunch of the dewalt batteries so that was great news for me to keep some older tools working with my new batteries.
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Good Lord – just noticed the price tag….do they offer financing?
In a stationary application,I have wondered about using a forklift battery(powers a forklift for more than a 8 hour shift). That should be able to power just about anything but electric heaters for at least a week, should also be good for hundreds or thousands of recharges with regular maintenance.
Is there a solar charger out there that would recharge this?
They have their place. In addition to my gas generator, I have a Rockpals 300W power station with a 100W solar panel to keep it going in a grid down environment. It’s quiet, I can use it indoors. I can run plenty of LED lights, small devices, and keep all my rechargeables going. I don’t always need 5kW of juice and this is a nice discreet (quiet) way to keep the smaller stuff going.