Power is always an issue for photographers and filmmakers when you’re away from plug sockets for extended periods of time. And I’m a big fan of portable power for my gear and to recharge stuff. But this one really takes the cake. It’s billed as “portable” power bank, but it doesn’t exactly fit in your pocket… Or even a camera bag. An entire camera bag. Without any camera gear in it. But this thing has huge a storage capacity to match its huge size.
It was built by Chinese tinkerer Handy Geng, who decided to go a little over the top after seeing that his friend’s USB power banks were bigger than his. So, he set about making his own DIY 27,000,000mAh power bank. Yes, you read that right, a 27 million mAh – or 27,000Ah or 27kAh – “portable” power bank. Potentially enough to charge a camera battery thousands of times over!
Obvious overcompensation aside, while the power bank offers 27,000,000mAh of capacity, neither the actual voltage of the battery or the total Watt-hours is ever mentioned. That being said, Geng did claim that it has enough juice to charge around 5,000 phones with 3,000 mAh batteries with a nominal voltage of 3.7V – the standard for single-cell Lipo batteries. So, we can make a little guesswork.
5,000 phones each taking out and storing 3Ah at 3.7v is around 55,500Wh. But if we take 27,000,000mAh at 3.7v, that would total around 99,900Wh (99.9kWh). So, Geng’s estimate is probably much more conservative to allow for some overhead. After all, there are multiple voltage conversions going on here, each of which will be operating at different efficiencies.
This thing doesn’t just let you charge USB devices, though. In fact, it doesn’t even appear to have USB sockets at all. It has a whopping sixty 220v plug sockets on it (the voltage of AC power in China). So, those 3.7v DC cells are first being converted up to 220v. And to charge a phone, it has to be converted back down to DC at a much lower voltage (either 5v for standard USB or anywhere between 5-20v for USB Power Delivery).
But even if it does lose a whopping 40% of its energy in converting voltages to deliver 55,500Wh of usable energy going into a camera battery, that would still allow you to charge over 4,000 Canon LP-E6 batteries. Or, with my little 1,200mAh Panasonic BLC12 batteries, around 6,250 complete charges from flat to full.
As for it being portable… Well, it has wheels. He pulls it along on a rope.
It’s a wonderfully ludicrous build and it sure seems to put out some power – as we can see in the video when Geng watches TV, fires up the washing machine and even cooks all while fishing on the bank of a river. I’d hate to think how long this power bank would take to charge up when it runs out of juice!
Editor’s Note: It shouldn’t need to be said, but don’t try this at home unless you really know what you’re doing. This many cells and these kinds of currents can easily be fatal if you’re not careful.
Another note: It appears to be a 100hWk (100,000 Watt-Hours) battery pack from the Zeekr 001 electric car. So my assumption of 27,000,000mAh @ 3.7v seems accurate at 99.9kWh. If it’s losing close to 30%
[via Android Authority]
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