PowerBrick extensible load-shedding backup station from Wits engineering school

Jan

Jan

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PowerBrick load-shedding backup station — a plug-and-play micro-Powerwall made in South Africa

An innovative new compact battery system featuring patented technology developed in South Africa is hoping to bring electricity to millions of power-less African households and support load-shedding backup needs at the same time.

The recently-launched PowerBrick was created by Peco Power, a company born out of Wits University's School of Electrical and Information Engineering (EIE).
 
r00igev@@r said:
Who sells them?
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Nice article but where to buy so I can do this

shut-up-and-take-my-money-futurama.gif
 
"Developed and refined over the past seven years by a team of Wits innovators, headed up by Professor Willie Cronje, the off-grid solution is designed to be affordable for low-income households, robust to survive demanding African settings, and can be configured for several applications,” the company explained.
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The company wants to partner with humanitarian organisations to address the plight of 600 million people in Africa without access to electricity.
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I hate to have to break it to Professor Willie Cronje Rip Van Winkel, but the Chinese have been fulfilling this requirement for a few years already.
 
‘Tis a bit of a pricey piece of underpowered equipment.

The made in China Genki variant has 7x the output power and a bigger battery…don’t see how this is or can be competitive. The Genki also uses LiFePo4 chemistry.

www.sustainable.co.za

Genki GK500 500Wh/515Wh Portable Power Station

Planning an outdoor adventure or just want to evade loadshedding? Then our Genki Portable Power Stations range are a must have. Our agile portable power stations feature a compact carry-on design with enough capacity to meet your energy needs. It is perfect to power your smart devices at once...
www.sustainable.co.za www.sustainable.co.za
 
Jan said:
PowerBrick load-shedding backup station — a plug-and-play micro-Powerwall made in South Africa

An innovative new compact battery system featuring patented technology developed in South Africa is hoping to bring electricity to millions of power-less African households and support load-shedding backup needs at the same time.

The recently-launched PowerBrick was created by Peco Power, a company born out of Wits University's School of Electrical and Information Engineering (EIE).
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This needs more practical examples. For example, this doesn't help me much:

One 15W Wi-Fi router — 10 Hours

I have a device that cost half as much and gets me through stage 6 load shedding.

Also, there's the specs for this unit for R7999:

200W output and 500Wh capacity

How does this unit compare to the Ecoflow River for example? It looks good on paper (almost double the Wh capacity, and looks like 4x more life cycles), but how does it compare practically to this device? For example, the River does 600W (Surge 1200W) total, 230Vac (50Hz/60Hz) which means I could potentially use it for quite a lot of devices, even if the capacity is lower. And what sort of recharge time are we looking at? A smaller unit that recharges faster might be more useful than a unit that cannot recharge quickly enough in higher stages of load shedding.

Would love a proper review of this thing. Might get a couple of them just as backups.
 
Lower cost inverter is good, but proprietary battery is a no-go.

It's should take a 12v replacement Li-ion battery.
 
This is the same price range as those Ellies trollies, or am I missing something
 
Unreal said:
This is the same price range as those Ellies trollies, or am I missing something
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What makes the PowerBrick different from other plug-and-play storage systems like the Gizzu Portable Power Station and Ellies Nova Cube is that you can expand it by stacking multiple units together.
 
It explained it was able to fit a rent-to-own chip into every PowerBrick to deactivate it every 14 or 28 days and reactivate it using an SMS unlock code.
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Ooh, some say Sowetans are going to hate the idea of finally having to pay or risk getting disconnected..
 
R3.8k isn't cheap lol, what low income household can really afford this? And isn't this just essentially a bigger Li ion battery than a gizzu with an inverter function, it doesn't feel like anything new or did I miss something?
 
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