I have reviewed some power stations in the past few months, but the VESTWOODS Power I’m
going to present today seems to have unique highlights that make it different from the
rest.
And today they invited me to their lab to check out everything.
So, what’s special about it?
Let’s take a closer look!
Starting with the unboxing.
We have a bag of accessories that you need to get this power station to work and the
main VESTWOODS Power unit.
Definitely included for the official unit will be some paperwork like a manual or warranty
card.
Moving on to the design, here are all the ports on the machine.
We have two communication ports, an ON/OFF switch, and two sets of positive and negative
ports.
Moving down are the indicators.
Turning to the back, we have the bracket so you can mount the machine to your wall if
needed.
While today in the lab, we are not going to mount it on a wall.
We’ll just put it on the floor to test.
But before the test, let me walk you through the key specs first.
The one we were testing was the VE51100W model with a 5.12KWh capacity, they have a larger
version boasting a capacity of 14.33 kWh.
The cost that comes with such an enormous capacity of course is the weight.
The weight of the two is 54kg and 128.5kg respectively, this is definitely not something
you can easily move around.
But we can see the logic here, they are designed to let you mount on a wall or put in a corner
instead of moving it around.
It has more than 6000 cycles and was designed to use for more than 15 years.
For others, you can check out on the screen.
To use the VESTWOODS Power, you have to connect it to a solar inverter, VESTWOODS also sells
that as well.
We use the cables that come with the box to connect the positive, negative port, and the
Communication cable with the solar inverter, and then press the ON/OFF switch to turn it
on.
As we can see, the indicator will light up
as well.
Now moving to the max loading power test.
Of course, the max loading power relates to the solar inverter as well.
I’m just so glad that it handles those high-power electrical appliances without a hiccup.
The next test is the charging and discharging speed.
We used the RePower, a professional battery test machine to test that, as you can see
it reached almost 100amp for charging, which means, theoretically, you could fully charge
this 5.12KWh capacity in just one hour because the VESTWOODS battery backup we were testing
came with 51.2 nominal voltage.
That’s fast compared to some of the big players on the market.
And here is the discharging.
Just like you would expect, the VESTWOODS Power offers an App.
Here on the home page, you can clearly see the status of it.
How much power you get from the solar panel or the grid and the remaining capacity and
consumption of the battery.
You can check your production power and consumption each day.
You can view more from the Statistics, so you will know your total production, total
grid Feed-in, etc.
Also, you can check more data about your Inverter.
Alright, that’s a very simple and first look at the VESTWOODS Power.
Compared to the “Portable” Power Stations I’ve reviewed before, the advantages are
obvious, it offers a massive capacity that lasts for days that other normal ones couldn’t
even imagine.
It integrates with your family grid power system seamlessly even when power outages
occur, your power still stays on.
And it stores solar energy.
This is great as you probably live in an area with time-of-use charges, like the sample
plan in California, 33cents from 8 am to 4 pm and then 53cents from 4 pm to 9 pm, that’s
a much higher rate.
All solar generation happens during the day so if you are not home and you are not consuming
that power you could store it in your battery and use it when the peak charges are present.
But like all such battery backups, they are not cheap, definitely more expensive than
let’s say, a whole home generator.
Usually, the price lies between $15,000 to $20,000 for a 10 – 15 kWh backup.
Gladly, if we compared to other big brands, VESTWOODS still has the best price per Wh.
Thus reliability and safety are the two most important factors when buying such battery
backups.
The VESTWOODS adopts a new Lithium Iron Phosphate battery technology, which has a higher resistance
to thermal runaway, and doesn't set on fire or explode under pressure so they are safe
and reliable, with 6,000 cycles and 10 years of warranty, that could definitely earn back
all you invest for such a product.
So if you experience power outages often for an extended period of time and you want to
be able to stay warm or cold, or for those areas with extreme weather events that are
without power for weeks that could lead to severe damage, then this VESTWOODS is more
of a convenience reason to buy and sometimes even a necessity, what do you think?