I want to see the VOLTAGE under various loads with a voltage tester or kilowatt meter. If the voltage drops below 117 volts under full load, I call that a failure.
Hi Steve, First of all a big thank you for all your great videos. Secondly I use a v-splitter-cable to connect my two 160 watts panels on my „old“ ecoflow bank. Works good. V-splitter is also sold by EcoFlow. I just „rescued“ a friend of mine who’s batteries were completely dead. I connected my eco-flow-bank to his mains and he was able to start his engine without any further fuss. No need to use any jump wires or generators. Just plug and play. I love my eco-flow (and no, I am not sponsored by them). Good luck with your trip to the West Indies.
Hi Steve. Thank you. Do you ever connect the Delta Max into the boats electrical system so as to make use of the stored power? If so how? Or do you just connect various items of electrical equipment and run these from the Delta Max rather than the House Bank?
I have a lead made up to take a feed from the cigarette lighter o/p to the positive bus bar so if the house banks BMS shuts down for any reason I could have that as an emergency back up. It would be nice if it was a higher capacity, but 10A would at least power the nav gear / lights etc. Really though we use them to power food mixers, hair dryers, etc from the inverter as we rarely even turn the ships one on. And the USBC o/p does all the charging of our computers.
Hello Steve, Once we again you have convinced me to take the plunge (as I also did with my E-Propulsion). I just bought an Ecoflow Delta pro (3.6kw) for my little solar powered, off grid garage. This provides more than enough power for my table saw and even a spot of welding. The deciding factor was a €500 off Xmas sale AND their offer on a limited number of "refurbished" models with an additional €600 off. I couldn't pass that up. Call it refurbished but the one I was sent hasn't a scratch on it, was in an original unopened packaging and has the full 3+2 yr guarantee. Thank for the good tips.
Can you join 2x Delta 2 Max's together with an XT150 dc cable? And then plug the duel fuel generator into one of the remaing XT150 ports to trigger auto charging for both?
I have a question, if you think you have time to answer, Thank You, if not, no worries. I have a small cabin we stay at for 2-4 days at a time. The only power we use is a few lights, the oven and a DVD player with a 48" LCD TV. Would we be able to use the PowerOak (or other you like better) as our battery bank and would it be enough? We could put 1 or 2 larger solar panels on the South facing roof that gets great sun and then could we use the pilot plug to plug into a switch to go between the grid and the battery rather than buying batteries, inverters and everything? Would 1 PowerOak be enough for the oven once per day for an hour and a couple of hours of DVD and the lights? Thank You so much, still loving your channel! I am only on Episode 41, but yours is the best edited, filmed and most professional channel I subscribe to. Thank You for all of the time and effort you put in for us!
Well it all comes down to the figures! Any of these even the smallest ones will cope with lights and TV no problem at all. The cooker is the issue. So you just need to know how efficient it is. The Delta Max is a 2KWH unit, so if the cooker draws 2KW is could run it for an hour if it was full, but that would empty it. With two large solar panels on the roof (i'm guessing thats about 600w array?) so you might expect them to deliver an average 300w so they will charge a Max in about 6 hours on average. If this is right you dont have any problem charging, but capacity might be the issue. Most of these larger units, like the poweroak and the EcoFlow Max are around 2KWh, there are larger ones or you can get the expansion batteries, the EcoFlow system is good here & it can go up to 6KWh. So look at what your cooker draws, if it's a lot maybe invest in a more energy efficient model as they've made great advances lately and this may be cheaper than just buying expansion batteries to cope! Good luck!
@@svfairisle Thank You so much! I am going to have a look at the stove and I think I understand your example. I was thinking 2KWh was a lot more. Well, off I go, Thanks Again. You two are so thoughtful and helpful, I (we) really appreciate it. K, did the calculations and it appears for the stove/oven, fridge and electric water heater we would need the big Bluetti and 2 additional batteries. Think we could get away with 2 solar panels, really, but 3 will be better. Anyway, thank You for your advice. Loving your videos! :)
Steve, I don’t understand why these devices are better than having a well sized, configured and suitably charged house bank? Then there’s no requirement to manage and store an extra device on board? Am I missing something? I can’t see that redundancy is a compelling argument, we’ve used AGM battery banks for the past twenty years without a problem. So why? Rob
There are so many reasons why Lithium is better than lead acid / agm. just a few are that lithium batteries are lighter, more energy dense, charge faster, can be cycled deeper than agm without damaging your battery. and far more charge cycles than agm.. the list goes on. But if you like your AGM's tthat's also OK.
I have talked about it in various episode, there are several reasons. The main one is that you ideally need to size your house bank so that you get regular 'top balances' that is that you get to 100% and keep it there for an hour or two. This is important to keep the cells in balance. Lithium suffers if the cells go out of balance, it's really not good. So if you just chuck in as big a bank as you can you are likely to not regularly get that top balance. So the best way is to size it such that if you get a good dose of sunshine or maybe have to motor a good distance (how much and how long for both of these things will depend on what gear you have, solar and alternator) your house bank gets a full charge. You want this to happen once a week or so to keep the cells nicely in balance. So if you get the sizing right for this it does mean that when you do have those days in mid summer when it not cloudy, or you are doing a lot of motoring etc you can't store the excess power, which is a shame. Well if you have one or more of these devices you can store it. I have the rotary switch I showed in the Allpowers video as well as the tap off with the XT60 o/p wired into the house bank. Also redundancy is a bigger deal than you think. Main ships power is pretty rock solid with AGM's yes (although you will see in our episodes a couple of years ago we lost two out of three of our AGM's mid season and relied heavily on the solar power stations for months) Lithium on the other hand could possibly be more prone to outage because it has a BMS that can cut you off. So if you've gone to lithium because of the massive advantages if you are cruising long term, then this is a consideration I think. But these solar generators give you redundancy not just in extra power but with an extra MPPT and an inverter. Our ships inverter died a couple of years ago and it took us 6 months to get a new one, but we had AC from the solar generator so it wasn't a big deal. If one of our MPPT's dies I would simply route that panel to an EcoFlow. It's also very nice to have the portable aspect of this power. I've had several occasions where I needed power tools away from where I could get an extension lead to & just used the ecoflow.
Yes there are those great upsides, the downside is cost and complexity. the long and the short of it is usage though. If are a full time cruising like us then Lithium wins on every level, even cost because you are talking 3,000 cycles rather than 300 before you get to the point of the batteries being at about 80% original capacity. If you're boat spends almost all of it's life in a marina plugged into shore power on a trickle charge then AGM are fine because you are not cycling the batteries all the time so they can last 10 years.
There are a lot of limitations with the Delta 2 Max. Solar limit for example. 500w on each of two inputs. I have 3 200w panels. This means more cables, and more holes in my roof. Do you notice the very poor 12 volt output. Oh, by the way the app does not show the remaining power in the extra battery. The 12 volt output is under developed for the unit. Cigar lighter output. Really. 3amps on the two barrel plugs. This is amateur design. Maybe Echoflow put all their talents into the much more expensive Power Stations and did little with this Delta 2 Max.
The split 500w solar might be an issue for you with 3 x 200W if you want to just have one set of leads coming in but for most people this will suit much better than a single 1000w i/p. Most large panels are 400w but it's really designed for fold out panels which are usually 100,200 or 400w so having the split i/p will be useful for most people especially as you can use the second i/p for a cigar lighter i/p. Some people have specific needs and if this doesn't fit the bill for you then there are plenty of other options, find one thats fits. We have a different make as well because it is the exact size to fit in a space we have under our shoe cupboard. I'm not sure what you mean about the DC o/p's. this unit has the best regulated output of any of the stations I've tested and also the best app by far. The only thing I'd like to see is an high amp RV o/p which might come in useful to me.
