I'm not sure why anyone hasn't thought of this before, but today we have a stackable,
modular, expandable battery backup system that any electrician can install that takes a home off grid.
Whether you want to be completely powered by the sun, or use batteries to evade
the expensive time of use electricity rates that Uncle Sam sets for us,
I've been using this for a few weeks now and it is wild.
This is called the Delta Pro Ultra from my channel EcoFlow.
My parents just recently added onto their house and I'm going to use this battery
and 6.7 kilowatts of
solar to completely eliminate their electricity bill on the new addition.
Each of these stackable battery modules are 6 kilowatt hours and can be daisy chained
together in up to 3 stacks for a mind blowing 90 kilowatt hours worth of energy.
That's enough electricity to back up an average home for like a month,
or indefinitely if solar is there to charge them back up.
All the batteries just stack together like little Legos.
Let's let me back up for a bit though.
EcoFlow has been making portable batteries for almost the last decade.
And this new system comes in three parts.
The smart home panel, that's
the keystone, you know, that brings everything together.
I'll explain this more in a second.
Then we have the battery and the inverter which stacks neatly on top.
This is the most basic EcoFlow Delta Pro Ultra kit and it comes with one 6 kilowatt hour battery,
which weighs about 116 pounds.
The batteries can be stacked up to 5 units high for a total of 30 kilowatt hours per stack.
And each stack will have an inverter on top.
The inverter weighs about 70 pounds.
And the whole stack can be wheeled around and placed anywhere.
The Delta Ultra is using a lithium iron battery chemistry, which means that even if the batteries are
completely drained every single day after 10 years, they would still have about 80% of their original capacity.
And EcoFlow backs their hardware with a 5 year warranty.
And while there are many different use cases for this system,
my favorite part is that each inverter has two solar inputs.
A high voltage array and a low voltage array that brings
in 5,600 watts worth of solar juice to each stack of batteries.
All of these panels that we installed on my parents' roof are used to charge up the batteries,
which in turn then power the house.
None of the juice flows out to the grid.
The larger lower array of
panels is the high voltage array and the top group of panels is for the low voltage input.
With the two arrays mounted to the roof, I can drill a hole through the top of the
wall from the attic and pass the solar wires behind the drywall and out into the garage
using a nifty little glow in the dark electrical fishing rod to minimize drywall damage.
We added an inline DC disconnect breaker to the solar just for kicks and giggles
and to act as a safety switch.
When it comes time to connect the battery stack into a house, this
is where the EcoFlow smart panel comes in.
The smart home panel can be split in half.
If you remember when I unboxed it, there were three separate input plugs at the bottom.
We've detached those three plugs, one for each potential battery stack,
and we're mounting this section in the garage since it's where the batteries are going to live.
We'll run one Cat 5 and another 6.3
Romex cable through the wall down to where my parents' current
dumb circuit panel is in the basement.
We're going to replace that dumb panel with an
EcoFlow smart home panel.
Dumb I guess is kind of a mean word.
It's more of an intelligently challenged electrical panel.
Running wires is probably the most time consuming part of this whole project.
The EcoFlow smart home panel gets recessed into the wall, and a qualified
electrician can move all of the breakers from the old panel into the new panel.
The new panel allows me to control each breaker individually from my EcoFlow app,
and the individual breakers run on grid, on battery, or even off a 12 kilowatt gas power generator.
Since there are five different energy inputs for this panel.
The grid power comes in through here.
We have an optional generator plug right here.
And then the batteries that we have out in
the garage come in through the bottom.
And the panel can choose between any of those energy sources.
It's one of the coolest electrical panels that I've ever seen.
Got the high and
the low solar panel input, 2500 watts on a cloudy day.
Still charge up in about two hours.
While I'm plugging a house into this battery, it can be used independently since it has
420 volt outlets, an RV outlet, and a 240 volt outlet.
It's kind of overkill for a camping trip,
but for a recreational vehicle or for a cabin, it would be perfect.
One of the best parts is since these batteries are mobile and not bolted to a wall,
if my parents ever move or there's a bug out situation, these batteries can very easily come with them.
However, one thing I have noticed is that when this unit is plugged into the house,
these external outlets stop working.
So that is one thing to keep in mind.
I have my EcoFlow
Delta Ultra set so that we use the solar power during the day and the batteries charge up
to be essentially off grid all night long, all the appliances pulling directly from the battery.
My parents deplete about the entire 6 kilowatt hour battery every single night,
which doesn't leave us a whole lot of wiggle room for emergency backup power.
So what I think I'm going to do in this situation is just grab another battery,
pop it into the takes about 60 seconds, and that would give us the extra cushion that we're looking for
if something does happen.
The stackable modular battery idea is phenomenal and I'm a huge fan.
EcoFlow does have a storm warning mode which can analyze the weather patterns and
charge up the battery so that it's ready just in case of an emergency, probably built specifically
for the people in Texas and Florida.
And just for reference, a Tesla Powerwall is about
12 kilowatt hours of energy.
So two EcoFlow batteries and an inverter would be about the
same capacity as a Tesla Powerwall at a fraction of the installation cost.
The EcoFlow Delta
Pro can output 120 volts as well as 240 volts at a peak of 10.8 kilowatts, which is enough
for a 3 ton air conditioning unit.
Since this is winter right now, I haven't tried out the
air conditioning yet, but I'll pin a comment down below when things finally start warming up.
And speaking of being warm, the Delta Ultra has an internal battery heater so it
can charge and discharge in below freezing temperatures, which is something I wish the
older EcoFlow Delta Pros had since I've been powering my barn with those for about the last 3 years.
The heater allows the Delta Pro Ultra to work in temperatures down to
negative 4 degrees all the way up to 113.
And speaking of the older Delta Pros that
I'm powering my barn with, this smart home panel too can accept power from two of those wired together.
It's super awesome that EcoFlow doesn't make their old technology obsolete
when they release something new.
So I can have an Ultra and two Delta Pros tied into
the same smart home panel too from EcoFlow.
These solar panels took us about a day to install.
The wiring for the smart home panel too took us another day.
And then stacking the batteries took about 2 minutes.
So it's not a big time investment.
And yes, it does cost a bit more upfront.
But at the same time, you can't really put a price on energy independence.
And not having to depend on a grid is pretty awesome.
You can get $1,000 off of your own
Delta Pro Ultra with a link down in the description, as well as 6 months of interest free financing
off of a 5 year installment plan.
With other Powerwall installers being proprietary and
taking months to arrive, it's nice to see something off the shelf that any electrician
can install that's expandable, portable, and modular.
Get the 10 out of 10 from me.
I'll leave a link down in the description.
And thanks a ton for watching.
I'll see you around.