Actually it’s already camping without me. Dropped my mom and her sister out to the woods in the PNW and they are using my brand new AC180 to make coffee, charge their phones, and to charge a 222Wh CPAP battery.
It’ll be 2 nights then I drive up to meet them tomorrow. I’m interested to see what battery level will remain.
I’ll be bringing my 2 PV200 solar panels with me. Weather is forecast blue skies and sunny. I hope over the course of the day to recharge the AC180 to full.
I’m bringing my portable electric dual zone cooler and that’ll run on the AC180 too. I want to keep frozen hamburger patties and popsicles for the weekend.
Finally back home and unpacking from a great weekend in the Cascade mountains of Washington state. Time for an update.
When I showed up to camp a little after noon Wednesday the AC180 was down to just 12%. Time to plug in my PV200s! I’m glad I bought a 30’ 10awg extension cable so I could keep the battery in the shade and the solar panels in full sun. So easy to setup and the cables just snap together.
The most charging I got was about 300w in the mid afternoon. I just had the panels on my cars roof because I found it a hassle to continue to move it around trying to find that maximum sun exposure. It did the job and charged it to 100% the second afternoon. 6 days of what I would describe as medium use and it never fully ran out of charge (ok, one morning it was down to 3% before the sun came out).
Are there any negatives? Yes. The AC180 isn’t light. I had to hand carry it about 300 yards and back to another camp site to blow up an air mattress and I wouldn’t want to do that again. Probably not something you’d want to carry far like to the beach. But it was doable.
All in all I’m very pleased with my AC180 and my 2 PV200s. It charged multiple CPAP batteries, many phones and vape pens, and I even plugged my brother’s trailer in for a short while when his batteries were low (probably sold him on buying a solar panel for his trailer too lol).
Hi, I agree with you about the weight of the AC180. That’s why I also use an EB3A for less demanding electric devices, so I can move it everywhere and plug it on PV solar panels when I come back.
