Since I got my first portable power station a few years ago, I have been thinking about all the possibilities how I could Saving electricity in my home. Since then, I’ve been testing larger and larger models that can provide enough power to larger appliances like the best smart air conditioners, thanks to their huge battery capacities, so they run for longer.
However, over the last few months I’ve done several test drives with some of the best electric cars on the market – so I thought this would finally be a good opportunity to see how much charge I could get from a charging station. This idea came to me after I tried to charge a Kia EV9 at a charging station, only to find that it was just as expensive as filling up at a petrol station due to tariffs, and also realised how slow Level 1 charging was at home with the Hyundai Ioniq 6.
Let me be clear: electric vehicles offer greater long-term savings than traditional gasoline-powered vehicles. And with the portable power stations I charge via solar panels, I have a virtually endless supply of electricity to charge an electric vehicle. Here’s what I found:
Not all power plants are the same
Just because they are battery packs doesn’t mean they can all be used to charge electric vehicles. First of all, you should understand battery capacities to really appreciate how massive the batteries in electric vehicles are. For example, my Geneverse solar generator has a 2,060 Wh battery – while the average electric vehicle has an 80 kWh battery (80,000 Wh). That’s a huge difference that I didn’t realize until I started testing electric vehicles.
When I tried to charge the Kia EV9 with the Geneverse Solar Generator at home using the included Level 1, I quickly realized that it couldn’t charge at all. It just couldn’t, so I tried to connect it to my Bluetti AC200P portable power station which contains a comparable 2,000Wh battery. Neither worked, so I gave up at that point. However, it turns out that grounding issues prevented me from charging them properly, which would require grounding accessories.
Only when I Anker Solix F3800 with its 3.85 kWh (3,850 Wh) battery in a 2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV, I got it to work. That’s because it has a 240V power output and a special EV charging mode for up to 6,000W of charging. There are other factors to consider as well, including setting your EV to a lower amperage so it doesn’t use too much power.
Very low range added again
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the opportunity to charge the Anker Solix F3800 to 100% capacity before starting, but I still continued with a battery charge of 76% as of 1:15 p.m. The Blazer EV, meanwhile, showed me a charge level of 49% with a range of 252 km. The Anker power station display showed me an estimated time of 2.7 hours until the battery would be empty.
I kept checking the progress this weekend and the Anker finally ran out of battery at 3:48 p.m. — just as predicted when I started charging. Since I was already familiar with Level 1 charging speeds, I wasn’t too surprised to see the Blazer EV showing 51% charge with 163 miles of range.
Honestly, that’s better than expected, as the Blazer EV’s dashboard indicated that the charge extended the range by about +1 mile/hour. I know 6 miles is nothing compared to what Level 3 chargers can return in the same amount of time, but that’s more than enough range to get me to and from the station.
Conclusion
While I wouldn’t recommend always relying solely on portable charging stations to charge an electric vehicle, I can imagine that they could be useful in emergencies when your electric vehicle’s battery has reached a critical level of charge, giving it enough charge to get you to a suitable charging station.
I’d also like to mention that I used a 400W solar panel to charge the Anker Solix F3800, which normally takes two separate afternoons to fully recharge. While I could get another solar panel to speed up the charging process, which I could then use to charge an electric vehicle, the amount of work required to do this may not be worth the time and effort. As I said, it’s great that I get free power, but it just wouldn’t be practical to do this on a daily basis.
