Who writes this

Jean-Benoit Buisson

Every page on PowerVerdict is written and signed by one named person. This page explains where the judgements come from, lists what the author is not, and gives an address for corrections.

What set this off

It started with a capacity. A power station sold on a thousand watt-hours that hands back appreciably fewer. The larger figure is what the cells hold; the smaller one is what reaches the socket once the reserve the battery keeps for itself and the inverter's own losses are taken out. Both are watt-hours, both are printed on listings, and only one of them decides whether the fridge runs all night. Once that gap is visible, the same pattern turns up across the whole shelf. An inverter sold on a peak rating that lasts a second and a half. A battery sold on a cycle count with no capacity percentage attached to it. A panel sold on watts measured at 25 °C in full sun. A power bank sold in milliamp-hours, a unit that describes the cells rather than the charge. And most pages that answer the question look alike: a ranked list, a score, a button, and no figure a reader could check against the maker's own sheet.

The second problem arrives after the box is open. These machines are bought on a headline and kept or returned on details. A panel whose open-circuit voltage sits just outside the station's input window, so it never charges. A cable one size too thin, giving away watts as heat on a long run. A fuse holder rated for alternating current fitted on a direct-current battery lead. A battery whose case is fifteen millimetres too tall for the locker. A charger with no lithium profile, stopping short of full every time. None of it is printed on the front of the packaging, and each one decides whether the purchase works.

So the site does the dull part. It reads what manufacturers publish, confirms each product reference market by market, and writes down the line that settles the question — nominal or usable capacity, peak output next to the seconds it lasts, a cycle count next to the percentage it is measured to, the open-circuit voltage a controller has to survive — and it says so plainly when a figure is not published at all. That last habit matters more than it sounds: much of the disappointment on this shelf comes from a number nobody printed, or from one printed without the condition that gives it meaning.

Behind the pages are notes: the specification that matters for each family, the places where a manual and a sales page disagree, which connector and voltage standards a station ties its owner to, what a maker means by a cycle count, and the buying mistake each family invites. The site is those notes put in order, in five languages, because the same questions are asked in French, German, Spanish and Italian and are answered worse in most of them.

Everything covered so far

The catalogue builds this list on its own, one link per published page, so it moves whenever a family opens or a product is withdrawn. Read it as a record of what has been written up here — not as a list of equipment anyone owns.

Three convictions behind the pages

The biggest number in a listing is rarely the one that decides. A station is sold on its watt-hours when the continuous output of its inverter is what limits it; a battery on its capacity when the current its management system permits is what limits it; a panel on peak watts when the open-circuit voltage a controller must survive is what limits it; an inverter on its peak when what it consumes doing nothing is what empties the bank. What a product costs to keep outlives what it cost to buy. A proprietary expansion pack ties every later upgrade to one maker; a generator wants oil and filters; a monitoring app that insists on an account determines what a controller is worth in its third year; a pack charged below freezing gives up capacity nobody planned for. And the fact that settles the purchase is frequently absent from the sheet: whether the unit fits its locker with the clearance the manual asks for, whether the app still exists, and whether spares will be sold when the first part gives out.

What I am not

I am not an engineer, an electrician, a solar installer or a battery technician. I hold no qualification in those fields, I have never worked for a manufacturer or a retailer, and nothing on this site rests on a professional title. A page here describes a product — its dimensions, its stated figures, its published specifications — and stops there. In particular, every capacity, continuous and surge output, cycle count, depth of discharge, peak panel wattage, open-circuit voltage, charge current, rated current, breaking capacity, cable cross-section, ingress rating and temperature limit on this site is reported from the manufacturer, with its unit as published and its source named, and never derived by me. When a maker gives a figure under a named condition, the page attributes both to the maker and keeps them together, and nothing here is described as tougher, faster or safer than something else because a specification sheet says so.

This site is not an operating manual and not safety advice. For lithium cells and their charging limits, for petrol generators and their exhaust, for anything wired into a house or a vehicle, and for anything connected to the mains, it points to the maker's instructions, the markings on the product and the rules where you live, rather than paraphrasing them. Two statements are repeated rather than assumed. Nominal capacity and usable capacity are two separate quantities, and every page states which of them a maker published. And no fuse, breaker, isolator or setting is described here as making an installation safe: a page reports what the maker supplies and what the marking states, and the rest belongs to the maker’s instructions and the regulations where you live.

Nothing here asks to be believed because of the name at the top of the page. Whatever a judgement rests on is written into the page that makes it, and there is a fuller account of what an order here is built from on its own page.

The working rules

Each number arrives with its provenance attached: a datasheet, a manual, a marking, a named standard, or what owners consistently report after a year.
Nothing is invented — not a price, not a reference, not a specification. Where a maker publishes nothing, the field is left blank and the page states that it is not published.
Every reference is confirmed on Amazon store by store before the page goes up. Where a model has no offer in your country, the button runs a search on your own store rather than opening a dead listing.
Where the less expensive option is the right one, the page says so — and where the real answer is to move a panel, fit a proper fuse or step up a cable size rather than buy anything, it says that instead.
No page is organised around a headline number. Nothing is ordered by the largest capacity or the highest peak printed on a box, and where a new model is barely distinguishable from the last one, the page says so.

Why the wrong number is so expensive here

Because this equipment is sold on figures that describe something other than what the buyer needs, to people who will then spend evenings working out why. Nominal watt-hours appear where usable ones belong. A peak output appears where a continuous one belongs. A laboratory wattage appears where nobody has measured a roof. And the parts everyone treats as extras — the shunt, the fuse holder, the busbar, the cable one size up, the bracket that genuinely fits the railing — frequently decide whether any of it works.

A good deal of the useful advice on this site costs nothing at all. If one sentence outranks the rest, it is that a published figure describes equipment; it does not promise an outcome. Much of what makes a system work better is free: moving a panel out of the midday shadow, cleaning the glass before suspecting the controller, going one size up on a long run, selecting the right chemistry profile on a charger, and reading the pack maker’s own charging limits before the first cold morning rather than after it. Sites that exist to shift hardware pass over those steps. They are not passed over here.

Corrections

Where something on these pages is wrong, write and say so: it gets fixed, and the page carries the date of the correction afterwards. The address is [email protected].

Jean-Benoit Buisson · PowerVerdict · Montrollet, France