Living Off The Grid

For some time now I have been lovingly eyeing up the River from EcoFlow as a means of having a power source when we're sitting around the fire at a campsite with no hookups. This is a lovely-looking piece of kit with great specs and a $900 price tag.

Unfortunately I was unable to find a store that sold these, so I would have had to get one shipped from EcoFlow direct which involved a 7-day shipping window.

So, it was off to Best Buy, where I stumbled across a kit from GoalZero, which included:

• a Sherpa 100: essentially a big rechargeable battery with USB, 12v and laptop outputs
• a Nomad 20: a folding solar panel that can either be used to charge devices directly, or to top up the Sherpa
• an inverter: this provides a source of 110v power via a standard (US) plug

At $360, it was not an insignificant purchase, but we've already been using it tonight in the bar to recharge our laptop as we've been writing blog posts and editing video, so I think it's going to be something we get a lot of use out of.

The only disappointment at the moment is that I couldn't seem to use the inverter to supply power to my laptop charger. Maybe its because the charger wants 1.0A and the inverter only supplies 0.9A? Something for me to have a fiddle with in due course. The bespoke laptop port and adapter tips worked fine, though, so I'm not overly bothered.