Planning on spending a decent amount of time camping without a mains hookup?
If so, you may want to invest in a portable camping power pack. These are lightweight and robust batteries which store power for you and with their built-in inverter you can either uses AC or DC electricity to recharge your camping gear and electrical devices.
As you can draw on the electricity virtually silently and without fumes then these are ideally suited for tents or awnings and can power lights, fridges, phones, music speakers or electric grills. Boiling water can take some time with the smaller devices but using travel kettles with units over 1000w capacity the results are much faster.
Apart from power one serious consideration when buying a portable power station is the noise levels of these products. As they all include fans some of these units can often be annoyingly noisy and winey with noise approaching 45 decibels although the Ecoflow 3 series products are generally now one of, or if not the, quietest on the market with noise levels around the 30dB level when drawing say 500 – 600 watts. In general, all units are noisiest when being charged via household AC (fastest charge) or when they are powering very power-hungry devices.
All portable power stations are meant to be kept dry as they are not waterproof, although protective jackets can be purchased to increase their protection. So always keep them within your awning or tent. Generally, they will only get warm when being on maximum charge and because all the leading manufacturers use the latest Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) battery chemistry (as opposed to Lithium NMC) they are very stable and ultra safe to use.
Severe extremes of temperature, very cold and very hot, will not help the portable power station and will affect productivity and longevity so best to protect them from the severe extremes.
One essential piece of advice to keep warm, generating heat from any appliance is power hungry and will deplete any devices relatively quickly so we thoroughly recommend instead to use a low wattage electric blanket with will use at least 10 times less power than any space heater.
When considering portable power stations for camping it is also worth noting the weight of your portable power station as, not surprisingly, the more powerful stations can become quite heavy with the most powerful one even a 2 man lift but do come with sturdy integrated wheels and telescopic handles. The lightest Ecoflow portable power unit is the River 3 is a mere 3.5kg, comes complete with durable integrated handle and has an AC power output of 300w.
