Unfortunately, over 400,000 home around Ireland have been left without power today. The ESB outage map looks absolutely stark today as a result of the extreme weather. Now, we should be able to relax and read a book for a few hours, but it’s a reminder of just how frail our connection to the grid is.
A few weeks back Energizer sent me a portable power station to test out, which today I’m left thinking more Irish homes should have.
What are Portable Power Stations?
Most of us have used a power bank at some stage to charge our phones on the go. It’s a relatively small secondary battery that gives your phone some juice when you’re stuck short on charge. Portable power stations are effectively the same idea, but with much larger capacity to story energy.
While both power banks and portable power stations are designed to provide portable power, they serve different purposes and have distinct characteristics. A power bank is essentially a battery pack with capacity usually ranging from 5,000 to 20,000mAh.
A portable power station is a more comprehensive solution that can power a wider range of devices, including laptops, lights, fans, and even small appliances. They often have a higher capacity, typically measured in watt-hours (Wh), and may include additional features like AC outlets, USB ports, and DC outputs.
Typically, people will buy a portable power station for lifestyle reasons. By this I mean they go camping and want to power a small travel fridge or something similar for a few hours. But portable power stations, once charged, provide a brilliant source of backup power in emergencies too.
What can a portable power station run?
At the time of writing, Energizer’s PPS240W2 72,000mAh portable power station is the only one I’ve gotten my hands on (full review coming later). This is a relatively small capacity in the world of portable power stations, but still incredible useful in Ireland should you find yourself without power.
One of the main things making this power station useful is the single 220v AC output or typical Irish plug socket connection, powering up to 150w. This means this power station can not only charge multiple devices through USB-A and USB-C connection, but power small appliances too.
Now, you’re not going to be running washing machines and driers on this, nor will in power a fan heater for very long. It just doesn’t have the capacity. You can buy bigger power stations for bigger jobs, something I’ll be covering int he coming months.
But one of the most impressive things the PPS240W2 portable power station can power, is your WiFi. In the event that your electricity is gone, it’s likely the only thing taking down your WiFi is a lack of power. If you can plug your router into a portable power station, you’ll get WiFi again just over 3 hours (assuming your router uses about 60w).
If you instead opt for a TV (which uses about 75w of power), you’ll get a little under 3 hours of entertainment before the power station is drained.
And, arguably most important for a lot of you, you’ll be able to boil the kettle (though I don’t drink tea).
It would be remiss of me not to mention charging smart devices here too. You can expect to charge the likes of an iPhone from a portable power station like the PPS240W2 at least 10 times. So if you have multiple devices trying to keep the kids entertained on a day like today with no power, the PPS240W2 is a blessing to have.
Just remember; it’s only useful once you keep it charged!
Buying a Portable Power Station
These portable power stations have become more affordable and more available in the Irish market in recent years. After some of the chats that I’ve had with Energizer, we can expect even more of these to enter the market too. Brexit was a massive setback to getting these kinds of products into Ireland, and Amazon UK can’t ship most things with a battery to Ireland either. Plus, while popular on mainland Europe, our Irish style plug which is based on the UK design, is harder to get built in too.
But Irish retailers themselves will be selling more products like this in the near future. You can already find these in Harvey Norman and DID. I hope to test out more of these in the coming months too.
Portable power stations are a versatile and convenient solution for anyone who needs reliable and portable power. But in truth, while these can be used for camping, having a portable power station charged at home gives you the peace of mind (and possible peace and quiet if you have kids) of knowing you can keep devices powered at home during a power outage.
This article was created with the support of Goosed.ie’s in-house AI-assisted writing tool, designed to aid our writers, not replace them. While the tool offers outlines and context, all content is crafted and edited by the Goosed team.
