Jackery has been cranking out portable solar generator systems for the masses for years and continues to level up their game with the new Solar Generator 1500 kit.
They sent me the new Solar Generator 1500 which pairs their Explorer 1500 battery and its 1,534 watt-hours of storage capacity with four of their 100 watt Solar Saga folding solar panels. The result is a kit that not only stores a ton of juice for when you need it, but that can recharge rapidly with an impressive 400 watts of solar panels.
Disclaimer: Jackery provided the Solar Generator 1500 to the author free of charge for the purposes of this review.
The Solar Generator 1500 is an ideal kit to power a full camp setup or even as a complete power system for a recreational vehicle. It packs far more than just a battery in, with a solar charge manager, AC inverter, and all the DC to DC goodness that allows you to run a high power AC toaster off the same unit that’s pushing out 5 volts of DC to charge your smartphone.
At the center of the device is a screen that provides insights into everything the unit is doing, displaying in real time exactly how much power is being generated by the solar panels, consumed by any attached devices, and stored by the battery. This is extremely helpful for a wide range of applications.
When setting the system up to charge from the four 100 watt folding solar panels included in the Jackery Solar Generator kit, it is extremely useful to see exactly how much power they are putting out. Seeing real time power output from the panels makes it easy to quickly and easily adjust the layout and angle of the panels to maximize solar output with just a quick glance at the screen. Charging up the system on a late Southern California afternoon, I saw power outputs from the four 100 watt panels ranging from 140 watts total all the way up to 329 watts after a few simple adjustments of panel position.
Adjusting panel position and the amount of power they generate also updates the amount of time needed to recharge the battery on the display. With the four solar panels connected, the 1,534 watt-hour battery will recharge from zero to 80 percent in around four hours. As with all lithium-ion batteries, adding the last 20% takes a bit longer, which we consistently saw to be just over an hour of solar-powered charging.
That makes the new Jackery Solar Generator 1500 a fantastic option for folks looking to use the full capacity of the battery (or more) every single day as the solar panels can fully recharge the battery on almost any day of the year. Granted, solar production varies greatly based on geography and time of the year, but it is a very capable kit.
Back at home, the Jackery Solar Generator 1500 can still fill a clutch …….