The People Behind
Every Verdict.

A corporate litigator for seven years in San Francisco, Wenny drafted her resignation letter off her very first power station — a little orange Jackery Explorer 240 — parked at the Bootjack Trailhead on Mount Tamalpais. She now tests portable gear for Station Arena and lives out of a lifted, all-terrain Subaru Outback.

Her legal training makes her relentless about the fine print: she's quick to flag chargers whose USB-C ports won't negotiate full speed with her Sony a7S III. Her signature test is the Dipsea Trail carry — hauling each unit up the trail's steep steps to see if the handle bites into a sweaty palm.

Ian spent nearly a decade on experimental rocket planes and avionics at the Mojave Air and Space Port before moving to Truckee, where he lives in a self-built cabin that runs entirely on his own solar setups.

His obsession started in 2014 with a lead-acid Goal Zero Yeti 400 that shed half its capacity on sub-freezing Tahoe mornings — so now he studies how lithium handles the cold. He clocks how fast charge controllers react to pine shadows with a Fluke multimeter and data loggers, and leaves units on his 15°F deck overnight to see if their heaters can safely warm the cells before a solar charge.

A retired Cal Fire wildland firefighter, Gunner lives in a redwood canyon in Boulder Creek where storms routinely take out the grid. He runs emergency radio for his mountain neighborhood off a Yaesu FT-991A and a wire antenna strung seventy feet up between two redwoods.

He wheeled his first backup battery — a 116-lb Goal Zero Yeti 1250 — down his driveway during the CZU Lightning Complex fires, and has chased better home backup ever since. He wires our heaviest units into his house through a Reliance transfer switch, checks whether they can start his deep-well water pump, and puts an oscilloscope on the line to confirm the switchover is fast enough to keep his Starlink and desktop alive.