I am a huge solar power / off the grid / self-sustainable-tech nerd, so it would be safe to say that I would be a huge GoalZero fan-boy. Why am I not?
The first time I saw GoalZero's products was about 10 years ago. I got super excited about the company, its products, and what they were trying to accomplish. The only negative I saw was the price, which was to be expected since they were new and essentially the only team in the sport so to speak.
Flash forward to 10 years later and I happened to come across a deal at Costco for the Yeti 3000x generator kit with a 200-watt solar panel for $400 dollars off. To give you a comparison number, I quickly did some math which looked like this: I get my solar batteries at about $.30 per watt, and my panels for a little less than $1 per watt, so this GoalZero setup should be about $1,200 in parts. Add in the benefits of having USB outlets, led readouts, etc. for about $500, (which is being generous) should put it at about $1700.
At Costco, AFTER their holiday special savings of $400 off, the asking price is $2,799! Where does the extra $1,100 come from? ($1,500 if you don't count the sale.) I understand that branding and R&D factor into this a bit, but after 10 years of R&D under their belt, they need to be focusing on getting costs down and trimming fat perhaps. They have a killer product, but they just price it out of most people's league.
We need to make sustainable, clean energy accessible to more people. Not everyone is up to researching and configuring solar panels, batteries, generators on their own and could really use an affordable, dependable plug and play solution.