EcoFlow Delta Pro Whole Home Backup - Real World Testing

Is a truly Plug and Play No wiring  required full split phase home backup   available? EcoFlow thinks so if you live in  a country that has split phase like the US,   some components in the home run off of 120 volts  ac and some run off of 240 volts ac it's not a   simple solution to efficiently deliver both  in a pure sine waveform ecoflow sent me these   four components to do just that two Delta Pros one  split phase hub and one generator extension cable so that I can simply plug them in and show you  what can be achieved with their all-in-one Plug   and Play System welcome back to projects with  everyday Dave let's see what this system can   really do before we get started with the testing  I'm guessing you noticed the smash screen on this   unit and that's entirely my fault I did it within  the first couple of hours of opening the box the   first thing I wanted to do was see if I could  actually simply plug everything in and deliver   a 120 volt 240 volt backup plug for the Hub is  kind of awkward in its positioning and the units   are very heavy so I popped out the convenient  handle and rolled them into place well the units   are very heavy about a hundred pounds and they  roll very easily when I back the second unit up   to the first very quickly because I was in such a  rush to see if this would work the handle of the   Tilted unit rammed right into the screen of the  other I heard the crush of the screen and moaned   instantly recognizing my colossal mistake  fortunately screen damage does not affect   performance in any way and ecoflow already sent me  a pair of remote displays to make filming easier   so we can continue testing no problem the one  thing that is required for this to be a simple no   wiring no inspection Plug and Play activity is a  transfer switch with a generator plug fortunately   past Dave was looking out for a future Dave when  he built this house and added a sub panel with   emergency circuits and a transfer switch and a  generator plug outside the building of course this   battery backup solution didn't exist back then but  generators did and that's the great thing about   this ecoflow system it can be used just like  a gas powered generator if your home doesn't   have a generator input and a transfer switch you  can have one added it's a very common addition   something any electrician should be able to do  for you so let's plug it in and see how it works if your house is like mine and it's already set up  for a generator then you'll have a plug to connect   your generator to they can be different amperages  so you have to make sure your plug matches in my   case I have a higher amperage plug on this end  and I'll put some information on the types in   the description but I can simply plug it in give  it a quarter turn and now we're connected to the   building now all I have to do is connect the  other end to our ecoflow Hub and then flip the   transfer switch and we'll have power to all of our  emergency circuits now with the units in position   I just need to attach the double voltage Hub it  has a very nice sturdy plug but the orientation   of the plugs is pretty inconvenient snaps in very  securely the cable is very rigid so it's it's hard   to get a good position for it for now I'm just  going to lay it all out like this I think you   could stack these up and reconfigure it in a more  convenient way then with just the standard 30 amp   twist lock plug you can plug it in and turn  it then I can connect the other end and to my   generator extension cord which has a 30 amp plug  on this end and a 50 amp plug on the other end all   right it's plugged in it's powered up there's a  button on the back of the Hub [Music] turn that on   you hear several clicks and that's disconnecting  the AC connections on each one of the inverters   so now only the Hub is powered so now we have  power to the house we just need to flip the   transfer switch and check the voltages make sure  everything's right and turn some circuits on   let's briefly go over how a split phase load  Center is laid out there are four conductors   coming into the panel line one line two neutral  and ground the ground will connect to the ground   bus bar in this case there are two of them the  neutral will connect to the neutral bus bar in   this case there are two and they're linked by this  connector so the main neutral just comes into this   main lug and then line one and line two connect  to these two lugs from either one of these lugs   to neutral you have 120 volts and between these  two lugs you have 240 volts the reason this is   important is if you're trying to balance loads in  your house you need to understand which Breakers   are going to be on which leg notice that there  are two bus bars one for each one of these legs   running down the length of the load Center and  there are tabs bent up alternating between each   bus bar so this bus bar has a tab here and then  it skips and has a tab here and so on down the   line and this Boss Bar has a tab here and then it  skips this one and has one here so a single pull   breaker like this one will share this tab on each  side when you latch it in it connects to this top   bar this row and alternately a breaker latched  in on the left side also shares this same tab   the next row down will utilize the tab from  this line so this rope Breakers is off of this   line the next row of Breakers is off of this  line and so on and so forth all the way down   the panel alternating rows switch line one line  two if you have a double pole breaker like this   one notice there are two contacts one for each  one of those tabs when you place this breaker   in it takes up two rows and you have a contact  for each line one and line two and the voltage   between those two contacts will give you your  240 volt load anytime you have a double pull   breaker the load is always balanced because  it takes an equal amount from each one of the   lines so when you're laying out your circuits  you can consider which loads will be on at any   given time and place them in alternating rows  to better balance your loads alternately you   could use an auto Transformer to help balance  those loads but that's a topic for another day   all right I connected the two units now I'm going  to take the cover off my transfer switch and make   sure that the voltages are correct before I switch  it on so this side is the input power from the   grid and it is 249 volts right now and the power  from the solar generator is 240. on the house   from one leg to neutral it's 125 the other leg  to neutral 125 and our generator from one leg   to neutral is 116 and the other leg to neutral is  125. I'm not sure why one leg is 116 and the other   one is 125 however both of those are within range  of where they need to be for appliances to work   so I think we're okay to move forward and try out  some appliances to start with just to be careful   I'm going to turn off all of the circuits that  are on my two panels that are emergency circuits   right now this inverter is just passed through  it's not doing anything so the goal is to take   what is currently fed from the mains and this  breaker will switch it over to our inverters so let me turn off okay now I can switch over to our   inverter now I can try and power some things  up let's start with a very important load the   well it's a 240 volt load I'm just going  to turn this on to relieve the pressure all right all the residual pressures out of  the lines that's just draining from the head   pressure from the rest of the building so now  we can go turn it on and see how much it draws   Luke sent me their 393 FC which is a category 3  1500 volt true RMS clamp meter this is going to   help me safely take very precise measurements on  my future solar projects and I really like the   flexible current loop it's super handy and I've  wrapped it around one of these legs and that's   going to allow us to measure the current and to  start with the inrush current from the well as   I take it on here all right I've got the meter  set to inrush and I'll flip the water on [Music]   and right away we can see seven  800 watts coming from each inverter   nice balanced load there I have a couple  hundred watts of solar coming into this inverter   and then our Peak inrush current was 6.3 amps  per leg and our constant current is 2.6 2.7 amps   looks like the well pump has caught up and now  it's just running that faucet which is taking   six 700 Watts combined from the two units now I'm  just monitoring one leg so I can start adding some   other circuits here let's load up one inverter and  see what happens I can turn on the fridge take a   minute for that to kick in kitchen Outlets kitchen  lights all right now you can see we've pulled   about five amps and the loads are a little bit  unbalanced we still have the 300 watt base load   from the well but now we've added lights and the  refrigerator and a few other things and we have   600 watts coming from inverter a now if I turn  everything else on garage lights now you can see   they're back to almost balance because the lights  in the refrigerator in the kitchen are balancing   out the lights in the garage and the well has an  even amount on each side so we have a pre-balanced   load at the moment but we can push that I can plug  some things in to this Outlet we've got about five   amps on the one leg so we've got a lot of Headroom  here we're nowhere near the limit of the inverter   so let's start adding some more loads all right  let's add the heat gun to one side foreign now we're pushing a little bit 12 amps   coming on one inverter the top  inverter here I'll kick it up to full 14 amps on that one leg  1600 Watts got lots of space   it's had the compressor a little pancake  compressor here [Applause] add that in too many things I can hold 14 amps well that was no problem all right let's try the microwave in the  well at the same time the water's running all right that's pretty good load we have 2600  Watts coming out of one inverter 5500 coming out   of the other inverter I wonder if we can overload  it I don't want to overload it with the microwave   running so I'll let the microwave finish and I'll  plug in a bunch of heaters and we'll see what it   takes to overload this thing all right I've got  a couple 1500 watt heaters here this radiant one   and a fake wood stove one I'll plug them in if  that's not enough I'll add the heat gun until we   overload the thing all right let's see pretty  even load right now let's start adding stuff   all right right away 1800 watts from that heater  and we are pulling 13 and a half amps [Music]   all right let's add the heat gun to it the inverter fans are kicked on here we are 3000 Watts 22.7 amps I'm going  to plug in the other 1500 watt heater   because that wasn't enough [Music]  all right let's kick it up [Music]   whoa up over 4 000 Watts there  for a second let's try full power   3300 Watts that leg is getting 25 amps all by  itself we were well over 3000 Watts we still   haven't killed it well I guess I'll  add the heat gun all right here we go 31 amps 3 700 Watts holy smokes 4 000 Watts [Applause] 42 almost 4 300  watts 34.3 amps on one leg [Applause] I don't know why that hasn't tripped yet foreign oh there it goes finally hit the overload 4300 Watts  for quite a while there before it   tripped probably have to turn the inverter  back on all right I just hit the button   flipped right back on everything powered  right back up so we'll go back and look   at the film but it looks like about  4 300 watts for close to a minute   wow that's pretty impressive all right now that  we know the overload limit for the system running   in parallel with 240 volt loads and running the  whole house lights and microwave and well and   all kinds of other equipment multiple 1500 watt  heaters okay well I want to do a couple of tests   to see what each unit can do by itself I want to  do a cold test cold soak test how long can one   inverter run the refrigerator a couple of other  things just a capacity test just to round out   the performance characteristics this video isn't  trying to cover absolutely everything but just   give you a good overview of whole home capacity  testing and then I'll summarize it at the end   I used the 12 volt car adapter to test the total  available DC power I ran the port right at its   10 Amp Max but after one to two hours it would  shut off I assumed it was because of overheating   although I didn't see any errors I contacted  ecoflow and they confirmed it was the result   of automatic heat protection I reset it reduced  the current to 9.5 amps and it ran the remainder   of the 27 hours with no issues the total time  drawing about 100 Watts was 27 hours and 13   minutes the total power delivered was 3021 Watt  hours out of the available advertised 3600 Watt   hours that is 84 percent of its rated capacity  which is a pretty good result for these all-in-one   power stations from the ones I've tested I did my  regular fridge test to see how many hours one unit   can run the fridge under normal use this result  will also be able to be used for a rough estimate   for available AC capacity when being used for  long-term cycling loads the fridge ran almost   exactly 1.5 days it was 31 hours and 59 minutes  and it consumed 2.44 kilowatt hours if I compare   that to the actual usable battery capacity of  3.02 kilowatt hours from the DC capacity test   then I get an efficiency of 81 percent which is  very good especially considering all the idle   time that the inverter is on just waiting for the  fridge to need power the advertised standby power   consumption with both AC and DC powered on is 30  Watts but the results of this test would indicate   with just the AC power on the idle consumption  is only 18 watts and that's pretty good   one nice feature on the Delta Pro is its variable  speed AC charging it has a switch on the back to   switch between slow and fast charging slow  charging is better for the batteries but if   you're in a hurry you can charge it quickly the  slow charge from zero to one hundred percent   took 10 hours and 39 minutes it consumed 4.62  kilowatt hours that's an overall round-trip   efficiency of 65.4 percent in fast charge  mode it took only two hours and seven minutes all right I've been running these for several  hours now it's been powering lots of circuits   in the house the well and lights and microwave  and kitchen appliances I won't try and add a   little bit of solar of a few panels laying out  in the backyard it's not very sunny out today but   first thing you want to do is check and make sure  the voltage is within the range of the unit and   we're at 107 volts so definitely within the range  and we can plug that into the back port [Music]   mount my clamp meter I can measure   aren't coming in so I'm at three amps almost  exactly three amps way below capacity for the   unit and those panels but there's not much sun to  work with today so yeah we'll take what we can get   all right now you can see we have about 270  Watts going in and 360 Watts plus going out   nearly balanced input and output for this  particular inverter we had some more panels   I could add them to the other inverter  so we'll let it run like that for a while   I want to see how having imbalance between the  inverters works out are they able to manage that   between themselves or do they get further and  further out of balance well this is definitely   the most Plug and Play System I've done so far  I'd set the two units together plugged them into   each other added my extension cable to go out to  the transfer switch input and flip the transfer   switch we were up and running then to add a little  bit of solar I connected a few panels in the yard   and strung a wire up to the back of one of the  inverters and there you go we have solar coming   in power going out 120 and 240 volt units running  no problem so far well it looks like the imbalance   in the discharge and charge is not automatically  balancing on this side we have solar coming in   and it's holding it up at nearly 100 percent and  this unit with no solar coming in happens to have   most of the load so it's down to 75 percent I was  really hoping that the units would automatically   balance the battery charge between them but it  looks like I'm going to have to manually move   the solar input to the other unit to try and  bring it up because this one's fully charged   all right it's been really cold so I thought  I'd do a cold soak it was about eight degrees   Fahrenheit I let it soak all night long and we'll  see if it can run things and whether or not it   will charge under those conditions I've got the  remote display here see if it powers on [Music] well the inverter came on  let's see if it'll run a load all right 600 watts wow that's pretty good   I'm surprised that it's running at  this low temperature kick it on up yeah almost 1200 watts so  it's running it no problem   also when I put the battery out last night it was  at 75 and it's still showing exactly 75 percent   all right one of the other issues with using these  batteries when it's really cold is charging so   we've seen it can actually provide Power let's  see if we can charge it at this temperature I heard a click and it's not charging and you see   there's this little low temperature  icon flashing on the display here and that's exactly what it should be doing  because these batteries do not like to be   charged below freezing so that tells us that  the low temperature sensor is working and the   unit is self-protecting by not charging  at these temperatures so what that tells   you is you'll be able to use power from your  unit when it's very cold out but you won't be   able to charge it until you bring it up to  temperature now if you're using these in an   off-grid situation where you're continuously  charging and discharging them every day you'll   need to make sure you're keeping them  in a place where they're above freezing the largest 240 volt load I have in the house  is this geothermal heat pump it's a three ton   heat pump but it's not connected to my emergency  circuits I never thought I would be running this   big of a load off of an emergency capable  device but today we're going to try and   see if the ecoflow system can power my entire  heating and cooling system don't do this at   home but I have wired the system directly to the  geothermal heat pump using an extension cable so   I have both Eco flows connected together with  a double voltage Hub and then I've plugged the   geothermal unit directly into that so I can  supply 240 volts I'll use the Fluke meter to   measure the inrush current and then later switch  to current and then I'll use my key Watts meter   to measure the voltage all right I'm going  to turn it on let's see what happens [Music] a pump oh overload well I know the running  load it could handle so it seems like the surge   current which is very high and I can measure  that real quick using the AC connection just   for reference but apparently that's a little  bit too much for the system to handle I know   it'll handle it once it started maybe there's  a soft start system that would allow it to but   looks like the geothermal heat pump is just  a little bit too much all right I switched   it back over to Mains power now I'll turn the  unit on and see what the actual inrush current   is I wrapped the current sensor around the  line that goes to the heat pump motor only   so we don't catch the circulation pump to trigger  the inrush current too soon and I'll try it again foreign 203 amps no wonder it failed 203 amps is uh that's a lot no wonder it couldn't pick that up   okay well I guess it's unrealistic to think  that it would ever be able to carry that pump   foreign let's bring all this together with some  conclusions first this is a truly Plug and Play   backup system no experience required First  Connect The multi-voltage Hub to the Delta   Pros then connect the Hub to your generator input  then you simply have to turn on the multi-voltage   Hub and flip the transfer switch and you're in  business it can run everything in my house all   the 240 volt and 120 volt loads except my three  ton geothermal heat pump that was not unexpected   my heat pump has a massive starting current  of over 200 amps and that was just too much   for the system to deliver other than that it  can run the 240 volt well microwave lights and   other appliances all at the same time no need  to run extension cords all over the place in   an emergency just use all of your appliances  as normal it has multi-speed AC charging and   very capable solar input I didn't get a chance  to fully test the solar performance but the 1600   watt input has great specs with a voltage range  from 11 to 150 volts and a 15 amp Max current   that's a great range and gives you lots  of options for solar panel configurations   for some reason this mc4 to xt60 connector doesn't  come with the unit so if you want to do any solar   charging be sure and order this accessory the  system has temperature sensors to protect the   battery from charging below freezing temperatures  something to be aware of if you're operating in a   below freezing environment you can discharge  but you won't be able to charge the battery   one of my favorite features on this power station  is the ability to manually set the maximum charge   and minimum discharge State for the battery if  you're using the battery as a UPS or for a small   off-grid system this allows you to adjust the  top and bottom limits and greatly increase the   service life of the battery the UPS function  works great providing true pass-through AC   power with no impact to the battery the physical  positioning of the double voltage Hub is a little   bit inconvenient and when you connect a double  voltage Hub the 120 volt outlets on each unit   are disabled if you're running everything off  your house that's fine but it would be nice if   ecoflow at least included a couple of 120 volt  outlets on the double voltage Hub but in the   spirit of Plug and Play I have a solution you  can purchase this 240 volt to double 120 volt   splitter off of Amazon and Presto you have 120  volt access now I can plug the iron into one plug   foreign power on the first  inverter about 1300 Watts I can plug this heater into the other one [Applause]   now the other inverter is delivering a little over  a thousand Watts so back to 120 volts power for   each inverter through the 240 volt Hub if you  need to you can get a splitter for the output   of the Hub so you can run both the house and the  splitter at the same time so there's a easy Plug   and Play way to get 120 and 240 from the double  voltage Hub maybe in the future they'll upgrade it   so you can get that right off of the Hub itself  but for now there's a plug and play solution   unfortunately the units can't share battery  capacity if you happen to draw more power from one   leg of the system you won't be able to take full  advantage of your total combined battery capacity   I did hear back from the ecoflow technicians and  the reason for the slight imbalance and voltage   between the legs is an intentional method to  help balance the state of charge between the   units which is pretty clever but it's not enough  to solve large imbalances it seems like ecoflow   could solve this problem by connecting the two  Delta Pros with the same cord that's used for   expansion batteries through these extra ports  and then some software to help balance the load   it's not a game changer just something you need  to be aware of when planning Your Capacity and   circuit distribution in your subpanels I hope  this has given you a good first look at the   split phase capability of the ecoflow Delta Pro  that can be achieved with just these four parts   overall this is an amazing system the combination  of features capability Simplicity of use make it a   great choice for an emergency home backup system  ecoflow is offering a significant exclusive   discount for my viewers simply use the link and  the discount code in the description in addition   U.S taxpayers may be eligible for an additional  30 tax credit for qualifying solar installations   please consult with your Tax Advisor you can  follow this QR code and find more information   on my website projectswithdave.com I have lots of  additional testing and projects coming in future   videos so be sure to subscribe so you don't miss  out thanks for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: Projects With Everyday Dave

Views: 149,947

Keywords: solar generator, ecoflow delta pro, 120/240V whole home backup, ecoflow delta pro battery, ecoflow delta max, Double Voltage Hub, ecoflow delta, ecoflow delta max battery, ecoflow delta 2, ecoflow river, ecoflow river 2 max, ecoflow river pro, ecoflow 400w solar panel, ecoflow 220w solar panel, smart panel, bluetti smart home panel, smart home panel, Ecoflow smart home panel, delta pro, ecoflow review, portable power station, solar power, solar power system for home

Id: NTpSEfAxWnw

Length: 28min 29sec (1709 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 21 2023