Good news for people buying portable power stations in South Africa

Many popular portable power stations in South Africa cost less than half their price from a year and a half ago, an analysis by MyBroadband shows.

Portable power stations are simple plug-and-play inverter-and-battery combo systems with which users can easily and safely power computers, TVs, lights, and cellphone chargers for several hours.

Their initial primary purpose was to provide campers with the means to run or recharge basic electronics like smartphones and lights. In developed countries like the US, their advertising is often still aimed at this market.

Amid South Africa’s severe load-shedding from 2020 to early 2024, portable power stations provided a more affordable way for households to power a few appliances than getting a fully-fledged integrated solar and backup system.

However, household demand for solar and backup power products plummeted in 2024 when Eskom suspended load-shedding in March.

This was thanks to the proliferation of rooftop solar and backup batteries, which reduced demand, and the success of Eskom’s maintenance programme, which increased generation performance.

With the power utility closing in on nearly nine months without load-shedding, the motivation for buying a portable power station or power trolley has largely disappeared.

Whereas self-generating solar products provide the additional benefit of electricity savings in the long run, backup-only devices like portable power stations and power trolleys are solely for serving power outages.

Suppliers and retailers have drastically reduced the prices of power stations and trolleys to get stock off shelves.

Game and Makro owner Massmart told MyBroadband that industry-wide promotions in the country have discounted portable power stations by as much as 60% this year. 

“Our particular experience has been that there is demand for off-grid systems, which in the case of solar appears to be related to increased and increasing electricity costs,” Massmart said.

MyBroadband looked at the prices of portable power stations in November 2024 to see if the reduction was tangible at the consumer level.

When we previously compared the prices of portable power stations in mid-2023, when load-shedding was its most frequent and severe, we found that pricing ranged from R2,499 to R39,999.

At that point, prices had already reduced significantly from previous years, where lower levels of load-shedding had started building up demand for these systems.

In November 2024, the prices of these same power stations range from R845 to R19,999.

The average price across the 18 power stations that were still available was R6,090, nearly 50% less than the average of R12,058 in June 2023.

An entry-level 242Wh power station from budget-focused local brand Gizzu was 76% cheaper than a year and a half ago.

Even models from premium brands like Ecoflow have seen significant price cuts.

Its large output and capacity models, like the Delta Max, have also seen price cuts of 50%.

While some might question the need for a portable power system, given Eskom’s recent reliability, it is important to emphasise that these devices can also be useful for applications outside load-shedding.

Smaller municipal-level power outages are expected to become a major headache in the coming years due to under-budgeting on local distribution infrastructure, which is another good reason to have a simple backup system on hand.

A large backup battery can also be useful for peak shaving if you are on a time-of-use tariff.

These tariffs typically punished electricity consumption during peak hours while offering lower charges in off-peak periods.

If you charge up your battery during the off-peak hours and discharge it during peak usage, you could slash your electricity bill.

The table below summarises the price changes of the 18 portable power stations we included in our mid-2023 comparison that were still available in late 2024.