Several power trollies and power stations are available for less than R10,000 to help households survive two hours of load-shedding with Internet access, a TV, computers and some lights.

When it comes to these compact backup power solutions, there are two main lines of products you can choose from.

Firstly, there is the power trolley, which combines an inverter and battery. The battery can be lead-acid, gel, or lithium-ion based.

Unless you opt for the lithium-ion option, such systems are typically only suited to situations where load-shedding is not frequent, or you don’t have to run it during every power outage.

That is because lead-acid or gel batteries, even ones with deep cycle capabilities, can typically only last for a few hundred charges. That means they are not ideal with the prevalence of load-shedding in recent times.

To avoid the maximum battery life reducing faster, you should also only discharge these non-lithium batteries up to 50% of their capacity. This figure is referred to as the depth-of-discharge (DoD) of the battery.

The second option is a portable power station or large power bank, which features a built-in inverter and lithium-ion battery.

These products have grown more popular recently due to their ease of use, deep discharging capabilities, longer overall lifespan, and compact form factor that lets you move them where needed.

Due to their chemical make-up, lithium-ion batteries can be discharged to between 80-100% of their capacity without significant impacts on their overall lifespans — which can be well over 1,000 charge-discharge cycles.

However, they are substantially more expensive per kWh of capacity than lead-acid or gel units.

No matter which option you choose, your first stop in deciding on the unit best suited for your needs should be calculating your electricity demand based on the appliances you want to run.

For less than R10,000, you won’t be able to power your entire home, but you should not have any problems running several lights, a TV or monitor, and a laptop or gaming console.

We’ve selected two power usage profiles for users who plan to use their backup systems for these purposes, dubbed “The streamer” and “The gamer”.

In the case of the gamer, you should note we chose a laptop or console as a desktop tower gaming PC would require a much bigger backup system.

Scenario 1 — The streamer: About 150W

Scenario 2 — The gamer: About 300W

Below are 15 of the most affordable power stations or trollies you can buy to provide backup power for running a few appliances over the typical duration of load-shedding with the scenarios described above.

The minimum performance threshold considered was two hours of backup under scenario 1, which would require at least 300Wh of capacity.

It should be noted that would get you only one hour of uptime under scenario 2.

There are numerous more affordable lithium-ion power stations which you might want to consider if you don’t need 300Wh or more.

backup power Headline loadshedding portable power station power trolley

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