It Could Happen Here - Emergency Solar Power Solutions and You

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

Robert broke his waterbed. Also, the world might end. Let's talk about emergency solar power.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature.

Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T. Connecting changes everything. podcast. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Hey, I'm Gianna Pertenti. And I'm Jamee Jackson Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. If you're early in your career, you probably have a lot of money questions. So we're talking to finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it down. Looking at the numbers is one of the most

honest reflections of what your financial picture actually is. The numbers won't lie to you. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Robert Evans, and this is a podcast about things falling apart. This week, the thing falling apart was my bedroom. Allow me to explain. Three years or so ago, I was finally able to buy a house, or at least, you know, get a mortgage. This allowed me to achieve a very stupid lifelong dream, which was to finally own a waterbed. I know you're wondering what all of this has to do with solar power, and I swear there will be an answer to that question.

I also want to make it clear up front that this is not an ad. Some of the equipment I tested was provided for free as review units, some of it was purchased with my own money, and some with company money. I'll try to make it pretty clear at each point, but I promise it doesn't matter, re my opinions on any specific product. No one paid us in any way for their inclusion in this episode. Anyway, back to my stupid waterbed. The first thing to know about waterbeds is that they are surprisingly cheap. They cost about as much as an equivalent-sized mattress new. So, not cheap, but the one I bought cost the same as any delivery mattress sold for and cheaper than some of them. The reason that most people can't afford a waterbed isn't the actual cost of the bed itself, it's that landlords are terrified of the things and so you can't get

one if you don't own your own home. In case you're curious, my desire to own a waterbed is entirely the result of the fact that, as a small child, my aunt and uncle fell upon hard times and had to live with us for a while. Then, for another while, they lived elsewhere, but their stuff stayed with us. That stuff included a waterbed, and for a few glorious months, it was my waterbed. I have craved the insane high of waterbed ownership ever since. For three perfect years, then, I slept in wavy comfort until about two days before I wrote this episode, my bed sprang a pinhole leak. I don't know how. You might guess a cat, but the actual bladder that contains the water is inside and underneath a

very thick padded frame that cat claws can't really puncture. I should also note that the bladder sits inside a vinyl sort of soft cage so that when it's spraying a leak, it got some of my sheets wet, but it did not cause damage to my home. Anyway, because waterbeds are the kind of product that only an insane man-child would dare to own, fixing a hole in one is not the same as performing maintenance on your regular mattress, because the kinds of beds that reasonable people own don't spring leaks. because the kinds of beds that reasonable people own don't spring leaks. To patch the leak, then, I had to purchase a patch kit. But you can't apply a patch kit to what is effectively a soft bladder filled with roughly a metric ton of water. I did do the bare minimum of research here, and king-size waterbeds weigh around 2,000 pounds.

Now, that's not all water weight, but it is basically all water weight. I bring this up because I'm proud of myself for guessing right. So, to apply the patch, we had to first drain the bed, which necessitated attaching a hose to one of the spigots through which we had originally filled the bed. Because of the layout of my home and the ground outside of the window where we intended to pour the water, we couldn't get the hose started without assistance. The kind of assistance that you would say need to suck gasoline free of a stranger's truck, were you hard up for fuel money. Thankfully, my roommate had a wet vac, which we were able to hook up to the hose. But how to power the wet vac? Well, we could have run an extra long extension cord,

but mine were all in use for various insane projects around the farm, and instead I opted to wheel out the solar generator that I had filled with the beneficence of the sun god Ra just a couple of days earlier. The generator was one of two similar products I tested for this episode, a Jackery SG2000+, which had been sent to me by the good people at Jackery. In previous weeks, I tested it by powering my deep freeze and a refrigerator. And in case you're wondering, with the panels outside in the sun, I got a little over a day before things ran dry on my refrigerator. If I'd had the panels in a better position, I could have had longer. And the deep freeze, it would have been able to power essentially indefinitely because deep freezes are actually insanely efficient machines. I also used it to run a heat gun for my friend's art project,

which is about as intense a test of output as you can run a battery through short of powering your home, and it handles that. In terms of specs, this battery is part of a more modular system that you could wire in to power your home or off-grid setup. You can actually attach this to your breaker. It has a maximum output of 6,000 watts in parallel connection and 120 to 240 expandable voltage. watts in parallel connection and 120 to 240 expandable voltage. For a rough idea of what that means, it can power most household electronics and even power tools for a while. You'd get about one and a half hours of running a home AC unit and more like two, two and a half, you know, with a portable unit or a window unit. You could charge this thing to full in two hours with good sunlight if you had six 200-watt panels attached in perfect

sunlight, which is another $3,000 or so in panels. But that's not an insignificant thing to be able to do. Mind you, that would mean just running your AC most of the day and nothing else. Neither of these are cheap products. In Jackery's case, the battery itself runs about $2,000. I understand that's out of reach, perhaps wildly so for a lot of people. We will be talking about cheaper options at the end, but it is an unavoidable fact that unless you are a skilled electrician and scavenger, setting up substantial solar systems costs money. Period. Jackery actually represents one of the more affordable options for a plug-and-play home backup system that is also portable,

i.e. can be taken camping or hauled away with your shit during an evacuation. I should note that you can connect the Jackery SG2000 Plus directly to your breaker and also connect the battery to other similar Jackery battery generators to get additional capacity and output from it. I tested another solar generator system for this episode, the Geniverse HomePower O2, which was provided to me by Geniverse. Both the Geniverse and Jackery systems are similar enough that they can use each other's solar panels and operate in basically the same manner. Jackery's product is cheaper. Other reviews I have read suggest the Geniverse system might be more robust, lasting longer over time. It is

certainly heavier and thus has a higher capacity, around 2,400 watt-hours as opposed to a little over 2,000 for the Jackery system. Both of these can be the basis of an off-grid or full backup power system for your home, and we'll be talking about home off-grid power in future episodes. I want to make clear up front that what I'm advising you on today is the quality and utility of different solar generator battery products for emergency power. So let's talk about what emergency means. The primary emergency you might encounter that a battery solar setup would help with is a power outage at your home. In that case, you have a couple of immediate and real needs. I will list these from most basic and easy cheapest to fill to most expensive and difficult to meet.

Number one would be to keep your devices and stuff like flashlights that are chargeable topped off so you can keep in contact with your community and stay aware of breaking news on whatever emergency you happen to be in. Being able to entertain yourself with books and movies does, in my view, count as one purpose for these systems in an emergency, because morale ain't nothing. Number two is being able to run emergency cooling devices, starting with fans and terminating in stuff like window AC units or even portable camping AC units. Number three is being able to keep a fridge going so your food doesn't spoil. If you're prepping for disaster, you should have storable food, anything from freeze-dried stuff to beans and rice, etc.

But losing all of your shit in an outage is expensive and annoying, and it's nice to be able to avoid. The most achievable of these systems for a person of normal income is number one. And if you have disposable income at all, you can afford some sort of emergency solar setup to keep your phone or laptop and rechargeable lights going. There are a wide variety of battery packs that have solar panels built into them. I have tried a lot of these over the years, and I have never once been happy with the quality,

either of their ability to charge in the sun or to last over time. The system that I currently take with me on trips is made by a company called Goal Zero, who produce a variety of solar battery and charger products. I purchased for myself a Nomad 13 solar panel set, which folds into something that approximates the size of a trapper-keeper set you had as a kid in school. I've had this for years. I take it with me on every flight as my carry-on. I have it and two batteries, which are different incarnations of Goal Zero's Sherpa 100, on me wherever I go. The Sherpa 100 has a little three-prong outlet. You can charge basically any laptop on it.

You could even do, like, emergency power for a computer, I think, with it. This and one battery would allow me to keep my phone going for emergency purposes indefinitely. Two batteries ensures I'm able to travel with roughly three or four working days of power for my laptop and phone wherever I go, and that's without me actually trying to recharge them using the panels. You can find various years of this battery model on Amazon or at other retailers from $200 on up. The latest model retails for $300 off Gold Zero's website. These batteries are TSA approved, as are the panels. I have never had an issue flying with them. Obviously, in different countries, your experience may vary, but I've taken these things to most parts of the world. And again, I haven't had an issue. They have varying

sizes, but the Nomad 100, which is 100 watt hours, runs about 300 bucks. So you're looking at $500 or $600 for this traveling setup, which is also great to keep in your home and just have less a bit, you know, if you find used versions on eBay or wherever, which is often possible. That's not an insignificant cost. But if you're building an emergency kit over time, most people are capable of bearing that cost again, over time, you could just start with the battery, which is the most initially useful part of the kit. And then you could get a panel set six months or whatever a year later. And this brings me to what I'm talking about quantifiably when I discuss a disaster and what you actually need when we're talking about emergency power in a disaster. It is uncommon for the average U.S. consumer to lose

power for more than an hour or two at a time. In 2018, most consumers lost less than two hours of power per year without, quote, major events. With major events, that number leapt to six hours per person per year on average. In 2017, it was closer to eight. As we deal with more climate change, more natural disasters, all of these things are going to become inevitably more common. These are also all averages of huge numbers of people in huge areas of terrain. I will guess that the percentage of people listening to this who have, as adults, lost power for a day or more at a time is very close to 100%. Now, given the averages, you might consider just purchasing battery power units without solar panels.

Because in most instances, what you're trying to do is ensure that if your phone is dead and there's a bad storm and, you know, you run out of power by the time you get home, a two- or three-hour outage doesn't leave you unable to contact your people or emergency services. I have a fuckload of different portable batteries because I try to keep enough in my work bag wherever I go to function in my job for most of a week without power when I go on trips. This kind of preparation has stood me in good stead in places like Syria, Iraq, and the desperate wilds of Seattle that one time. But if you're not going to such terrifying hellscapes, you can probably get a suitable battery that's reasonably tough for under $100. And we will continue talking about batteries and talking about, you know, next kind of home solutions and eventually cheap solutions.

But, you know, what's not cheap is the products and services that support this podcast. Affordable, but not cheap. Anyway, here's these ads. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists

to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people.

I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts.

Check out betteroffline.com. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko.

It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head,

search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me in a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners,

for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back and we're talking about portable batteries, right? And my only note here is that if you're buying portable batteries,

you know, stuff not necessarily to run on solar, just to have some extra juice with you wherever you'd go to keep it home in an emergency, these fluctuate wildly in quality. And when it comes to disaster kit to something that you need to work in an emergency, it can be worth going with a brand that is a known quantity with a long record and a lot of testing done on their products rather than whatever the Amazon algorithm spits out when you Google battery. The advantage of a small portable folding setup like the one I have from Goal Zero is that you can take it with you and have it on

demand if shit happens when you're traveling or if you have to evacuate, and it's idiot proof, right? A good option if you just want something in you have to evacuate, and it's idiot-proof, right? A good option if you just want something in your home to keep your devices topped off is what I'd call a large small battery generator. These are a couple of steps below products like the Jackery 2000 or the Geniverse that I tried, but above the handheld little batteries that many of you have already. The two examples of this product category that I have and have tested are the Yeti 400 from Goal Zero and the Anker Solix C800. The Yeti 400 is the product I purchased with my own money, and it's what I've taken with me for years into the mountains when I go shooting or hunting, usually with a set of folding panels. This ensures that if my car dies and I've been dumb enough to

let my jumper box that I keep with me die, I have a backup that I can use to charge my jumper box. I also have a convenient way to top off my phone or my e-reader or my sat phone, both for normal use and in an emergency. It handles extreme cold and extreme heat well, and that's not always something you can take for granted with batteries. Again, kind of top of the list is that I am an idiot, I don't know much about electricity, and these products are pretty idiot-proof. When it comes to my Yeti 400 or the C800 from Anker, I keep them both plugged into the wall at all times so that I can grab either for an emergency. Now, the Solix C800 that I have was sent to me as a review unit by Solix, and by necessity, I have not been able to subject it to the years of rigorous real-life testing that my Goal Zero Yeti 400 has endured.

I will note that it is well-reviewed, and from the exploration I have done on it, which does not include years of testing but does include a decent amount of reading and some testing, I think it's better constructed and more conveniently laid out than the Goal Zero, and it also gets you about twice the storage, nearly 800 watt hours, as opposed to a bit over 400. Both products cost the same price, around $600, although older generations are often available cheaper online, new and used. Either is enough to keep a family of four's phones charged for a two or three day outage without severe rationing. You can get a lot more, on the Anker. And you might not want to have someone like gaming on an Alienware laptop or whatever with either, but you can charge your laptops and the like off of them.

If you want to like watch a movie at the end of the night, you're all huddled together there in the dark, that's not going to be something you have to stress out about too much. Again, the Anker Solix is going to give you a lot more juice to play around with, but either should be enough for an average outage if you just keep them plugged in. You can also use them to power a fan during the day. They will not run small AC units. These are worth considering as an intermediate option for the more casual prepper. What you're looking for here is not a full off-grid replacement,

but something that can provide you with options for more than just basic gadget power. With these big, small batteries, you can run a fan or fans, maybe not long enough for comfort, but in bursts throughout the day to get you through the hottest part of the day during a blackout during what we call a wet bulb event. This would be the life-saving health emergency that a basic solar setup would be most useful in saving you from. For context, in case people aren't up to date, a wet bulb event is a weather situation in which the temperature reaches a critical level, above 88 degrees Fahrenheit, and does not drop below that point for an extended period of time.

If people lack access to effective cooling during heating events like this, they will die. We saw one of these hit a couple of years ago where I live, in Portland, Oregon, which has been long famed for its mild temperatures, and thus most homes lack central air. During a three-day heat wave, temperatures rose to record highs and did not drop low enough at night to allow people any recovery time. More than a hundred of them died. This kind of thing is possible anywhere. If you have central air standard where you live, the grid can always go down, as we've seen happen in Texas over and over again. For someone with money, your best bet might be pairing a portable air conditioner like the Midea Duo, which ranges from $500 to $600

on Amazon, with something like the Jackery SG2000+, which with panels and a good sunlight would allow you to run it during the day at least in a single room. As an aside, this is actually a case in which someone with a window unit is at more of an advantage than someone with central air. You can connect your Jackery directly to the breaker, but without expansion batteries, it's not going to run a whole home long. So you'd want to unplug everything and turn off the lights, running your AC in short bursts, and maintaining discipline with your doors and windows, ideally putting up foil or at least cardboard over the windows to maximize efficiency. If you're just being able to run a fan because you've got a smaller unit,

you're probably looking at something like, you know, getting towels and rags wet, putting them over people's chests and faces, and kind of getting directly under the fan for the periods of time that you can afford to run it. Again, we are not talking about the most ideal comfort situations here. We are talking survival. The limitations I found for are generally twofold. One is that, even with good sunlight, folding panels like the ones Jackery and Genover ship me don't always hit their advertised wattage.

This is because you've got to deal with a lot of other factors. The movement of the sun throughout the day, where shadows fall on your home or property, your access to the roof, how clean the panels are, and under normal use conditions, it is surprisingly easy to get stuff on them. On a sunny spring day in Oregon, I found my 200-watt Jackery panels tended to get 120 to 150 watts during the most optimal parts of the day. I was able to plug the Jackery panels into the Geniverse generator and vice versa, and I found that Jackery's panels generally performed 10-15% better during real-life conditions. I looked it up, and on paper, the Geniverse has a solar cell

efficiency, or EFF rating, of about 23.4%. Jackery beats them by 1% with an EFF rating of 24.3. That is not enough of a difference to matter too much, although I should note that what I saw in real-life use was a notable difference. You may experience something different with these panels, with any panels that you get. I can't claim to have tested anything but the ones that they shipped me. The Jackery Explorer 200 Plus is capable of taking 1,400 watts of input max, which would be 7 sets of panels. Although from what the manual says,

it can take up to six Solar Saga 80 panels, which are their 200-watt panels under normal conditions. You can expand all this with added Explorer 2000s running in tandem and up to 12 Solar Saga 80s on a single generator. But doing that requires some wonky shit with cables. And at that point, we're talking about a system beyond what most people are likely to want or need. When it comes to durability, I suspect that both the Jackery and Geneverse are probably close in functioning. Online reviews give both systems

good user reliability ratings. In real world conditions, I had the opportunity to do something that you never want to do in real life with the device you paid for, which was work one of these systems to death. I chose the Geniverse, and the torture test I used basically involved keeping it outside, charging and providing power at a fairly low trickle for 12 days of intermittent rain and wind in the Pacific Northwest late winter.

We got about two inches of rain during this time, and that was enough to eventually kill the generator. But it took close to two weeks of downright irresponsible treatment. We are talking the kind of neglect you would not subject a product like this to without no other option. In subsequent tests with the Jackery, I have been able to keep it operating outdoors in bad weather without damage through taking minimal measures to shield the generator.

The least I did was stick a plastic Home Depot crate lid above it, literally set it down on top of the unit to stop water from just hitting the ports on the sides and back directly. The most elaborate protective setup outdoors was a simple tarp cover and making sure it was elevated a bit above the ground. When it comes to which of these systems would be best for you, the primary difference between the Geniverse and the Jackery is that the Geniverse is higher capacity, 2419 watt hours as opposed to a little over 2042 for the Jackery. This means that without input, you can run a normal fridge off the Geniverse for about six hours. In good sun, you can recharge it fully in eight hours with two Geniverse Solar Power 2 panels. The Jackery system will recharge in a similar time frame under optimal conditions and give

you a bit less usable power. It has the benefit of being almost 20 pounds lighter and significantly friendlier in design. For reasons that elude explanation, the Geniverse lacks a telescoping handle or wheels to help you maneuver it into or out of position. This sucks because it's heavy, and if it's not wired into your breaker and you're using this for an emergency, you might need to move it around so that you can, you know, have the panels in different positions to take advantage of the sun. This also makes the Geniverse less useful than the Jackery in normal daily life tasks. I started this episode with a rather ridiculous story about my waterbed, but I've actually found quite a few tasks at which having a wheelable battery capable of this kind of output is handy. Basically, any power tool that you're likely to own will run off of either of these

systems, but only the Jackery is friendly enough to want to move around outdoors to take advantage of this fact. And this kind of gets us to the crux of a question some of you have been asking this whole episode. How practical are any of these solutions? My answer is complicated, but I think fair. If you can't or aren't going to expend the energy to become competent with solar power to the extent that someone living off-grid would generally want to be, these are exceptional solutions, so long as you can afford them. In both cases, you're looking at around $3,000 for a setup that could power anything in your home and would handle all necessary tasks for longer than the length of an average blackout. The Jackery and Geniverse systems are also future capable. You can expand both with added batteries over time and add in

more panel capacity, up to a point that makes them quite attractive if you can afford them. My personal recommendation would be for the Jackery over the Geniverse for most people for a couple of reasons. Please note that I received review units from both companies and money from neither, so I have no vested interest in picking one over the other. One reason that I chose the Jackery Explorer 2000 is that it is a bit cheaper, $1,900 for the base system and $479 for each set of 200-watt folding panels. Compare that to the Geniverse HomePower 2 Pro, which starts at $2,299 and $3,400 for the generator with two 200-watt panels. The Jackery is also meaningfully easier to use in recreational situations, so it is a system that the average person will get more use out of.

You can take it camping easily, you can use it for overlanding, and you can have it ready for an emergency. I will note that if you have a system like this, you will surprise yourself with how often it comes in handy for simple tasks. What I like about both systems is, again, they're future compatible. You can start with the base system and then add a couple of panels, and as you save more money, you can add in additional battery packs and panels to give you both more capacity and more input, with the goal of eventually storing a day or a couple of days of power and being able to run your home minimally during extended emergencies.

The shortcoming that you'll find with either system is that if you have a normal home, it will cost as much as a nice used car to have a setup that could run your house for extended periods of time, let alone indefinitely. A typical home AC unit can burn something like 14,000 kilowatt hours per day, and that's just half of what an average home draws.

Heating amounts to a comparable draw, so while these systems can be expanded significantly with additional batteries, if you're dealing with an outage that extends past several days, you will encounter severe limitations. This brings me to the most impressive but least accessible piece of gear that I tested for these episodes, the Anker Solix F3800 portable power station. This holds about 3,840 watt-hours of electricity and can output 6,000 watts if

necessary. You can charge your electric car or run a welding rig off of this thing. It can be expanded with additional battery storage, and if you had 30 or 40 grand to spend, you could wire this thing up to power your house for close to a week without sunlight. The F3800 itself costs $4,000, and you can run two of them in tandem with 12 battery packs each to power your home for about two weeks for just the cost of,

at this point, a rather nice car. That is wildly out of reach for most people. But if you can afford it, the Onger is a really cool system. There's been a tremendous amount of thought put into everything from how the device is constructed and laid out to how you carry it. I particularly appreciate the fact that you can wheel it like a big suitcase or lay it on its side where it has additional pop-out handles to enable you to carry it in multiple different ways. All of Anker's products feel premium, and the metal handles

that I said pop out are like metal. They're very solid, everything has a clean interface and what I would describe as an exceedingly livable industrial design. If you happen to be one of the people who can consider putting down $4,000 for an emergency battery, the Solix F3800 will see you through 99% of the power loss situations you are likely to encounter and require minimal knowledge to set up and get working. It is easy to attach to your home breaker, and Anker's instructions for doing so are simple to follow. For folks who can afford the cost, then, and that cost is not inconsiderable, it is a great mix of might save your life and will definitely come in handy. I should also note that the Jackery system has a better pedigree than the Geniverse system in the industry, probably similar to Anker. They've got a long track record and are well regarded, not as an inexpensive solution, but as a reliable one with a good warranty and a lot of history to back them up. All of these systems are, in my experience, reliable and easy to use. All of them are, and I have to hit on this a few times because it matters, expensive.

All of them are, and I have to hit on this a few times because it matters, expensive. That presents a problem if you're someone who sees the value in these as potential emergency devices, but will realistically never be able to throw down $3,000 for them. It would be irresponsible of me to give you some specific technical advice because I lack that knowledge, but I have some experience here. And we're going to get to that after this next set of ads hi i'm ed zitron host of the better offline podcast and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tex elite has turned silicon valley into a playground for billionaires from the chaotic world of generative ai to the destruction of google search better offline is

your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts.

Check out betteroffline.com. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise

it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series,

Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me in a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Blacklit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. We're back, and we're talking about what you can do, at least a little bit of what you can do.

Again, the furthest thing in the world from an expert here, but I wanted to at least provide some starting points from folks who are never going to be able to afford these more formal, easier to use, idiot-proof kind of situations. Because while I'm not an expert on this, I have lived off-grid a bit, and I have known people who have done so in a wide variety of weird situations. At one point, my partner operated a solar-powered shack that they lived out of with batteries so comparatively primitive that she had to regularly refill them with water. That kind of maintenance is going to be second nature to people who know their shit with solar, and those people have a lot more options than the layman. Probably the most impressive and cash-neutral setup I saw was in a place called East Jesus

in far Southern California. This was a totally off-grid power setup that kept around 12 to 18 people alive year-round in often intense temperatures, powering AC units and trailers and RVs, fridges, fans, lights, the entertainment equipment they used, the wikes. Now, their setup was all scavenged or bought cheap at auction. The batteries they used, which took up an entire shipping container-sized space, were purchased cheap from a telecom company in the area, which retired its deep cycle batteries once they hit 80% of their original functioning capacity, or something like that. Panels were likewise scavenged or bought cheap and used. Since they had a lot of space, but little money, wiring a shitload of panels of varying efficiency together was a solution

they could afford, both in terms of the money that it cost and in terms of the space that was required. Most people lack the technical knowledge to set something like this up. I sure do. And even more of them lack the space. But it is an example of the sort of solutions that people with little to no cash can cook up if they're clever and knowledgeable about the fundamental technology. It would be extremely irresponsible if I did not add here that solar setups are the sort of thing where it behooves you to be exceedingly fucking careful. The chief benefit of the systems Goal Zero, Anker, Geniverse, and Jackery make is that they are all as close to idiot-proof as they can be. Part of the cost comes from the fact that

they use expensive but extremely stable lithium-iron-phosphate batteries. These have long lifespans. Jackery rates theirs at 10 years and a cycle life of up to 2,000 cycles. They have a good standby time, too. Jackery rates theirs at up to 50% charge after two years in storage. A lot of the cheaper or scavenged options you find are lithium polymer batteries. These are rather infamous for igniting and burning down people's homes.

There are solutions you can find online, and if you're interested in cheaper homebrew solar setups out there, one place I'd suggest starting is diysolarForum.com. The people there will have suggestions for minimizing risk. Since LiPo is one of the most dangerous battery chemistry types out there, some people build what are called battery bunkers. One form I've seen this tape is basically a cube of bricks around and below the batteries with a ceramic flat sheet above them. Some people will suggest lacing sandbags above the bunker

so that if the battery goes into thermal runway, it will melt the sandbag and pour sand into the battery to stop the fire. Again, I am not giving advice here, just providing you with an example of the kinds of concerns that you do have to think about when considering building setups like this for your own. It is unfortunate that the most financially accessible way to do this is by taking the research into your own hands and relying on the experience of hobbyists and lifestyle explorers who have been there before, but disasters aren't fair, and neither is life.

Another exploratory option I'd suggest is googling questions like how to run small room AC off solar, or how to run 12-volt fridge indefinitely, comma, solar, and then add Reddit as a search term. You'll find threads of people in off-grid, solar, or overlanding subreddits who have explored these problems for themselves, and their journeys can at least act as a basis for your own. I'd like to thank, at the end of this, the reps at Jackery, Geniverse, and Anker who sent products for me to review. It was incredibly nice of them all, and from an aesthetic point of view, they all make great gear that is a genuine pleasure to use.

Goal Zero didn't send me anything, but I've paid for their stuff for years and I've never had anything fail in the field. So I figure I owe them a shout out here too. And that's going to do it for us at It Could Happen Here for the day. So, you know, check in tomorrow or, you know, Monday,

depending on when you hear this, whenever it drops. And yeah, goodbye. It Could Happen Here is a production of cool zone media for more podcasts from cool zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for it could happen here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. you Thank you. Hey, I'm Jack B. Thomas, Apple Podcasts, wherever else end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

AT&T, connecting changes everything. Hey, I'm Gianna Pertenti. And I'm Jamee Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. If you're early in your career, you probably have a lot of money questions. So we're talking to finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it down. Looking at the numbers is one of the most honest reflections of what your financial picture actually is. The numbers won't lie to you. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the

iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.