*Ambient Air Noise/ Slight wind blowing*
*deathly ear splitting screaches of metal on metal doom*
Today I'm going to install an off-grid solar and battery system here in my barn, and it
should be pretty easy. This barn is a little bit too far away from my house to the grid,
which also means it's a little too far away to use extension cables. The longer an extension
cord gets, the more juice it takes to push that power through and the hotter it gets.
We've actually melted two extension cords trying to power this place and this place
needs a lot of juice. We have our fleet of Not A Wheelchair prototypes and an electric
lawnmower. Plus, we want to install some lights up top so we can come out here at night. Having
an off-grid power system kind of meshes perfectly with my off-grid watering system. The way
we're going to accomplish this is with the Delta Pro battery system. This battery pack
comes with the same outlets that you can find in your house with the exact same power - enough
to run fridges or charge an electric lawn mower if you need to. The one here in the
middle has 3600 watt hours of power, which is 3.6 kilowatt hours. And with the expansion
plugs on the back, we can add two more battery packs for a total of 10 kilowatt hours, which
is more power than my barn is ever going to need but it's also a great emergency back
up system. Since it'll be connected to solar, it'll always have power no matter what's happening
with the grid. And all of this is substantially more modular and easier to install than say,
you know, a Tesla power wall which needs to be installed by a professional and connected
to your control panel in your house. These babies have enough juice inside to charge
up an electric vehicle...which we might put to the test a little later in the video. At
the very least we'll be plugging in our electric lawn mower, the Not A Wheelchairs, the chicken
heater, and lights for the building at the same time so see if these can handle it. Let's
get started.
[Intro]
The Delta Pro from Ecoflow looks nice enough to just put it on a shelf or put it on the
floor of your garage, but here inside of the barn things get pretty dusty thanks to the
miniature horses and the chickens we have. Yet another reason to add power to the barn.
During winter the water freezes over and the chickens need a little heat lamp. And the
10 kilowatts that come with this battery is enough to supply all of that. I'm going to
take my battery system and plop it inside of a cupboard which is a little cozy, but
as long as I cut a vent out of the back side of the cabinet, they should fit just fine.
I've already tried welding with it. As you know, welding has one of the highest power
draws of any power tools. And the Ecoflow handled it just fine. When the power bank
is delivering large amounts of power or charging, little fans kick on inside to keep the battery
cool so the vent out of the back is pretty important.
The lights we're going to be using to illuminate the barn are these LED modules that can be
linked together end to end. And the interesting thing, once they are linked together they
are only pulling 300 watts. And if we do the math, that 300 watts divided by the 110 power
coming out of the normal outlets means we're only using about 3 amps, which is a pretty
low draw for the battery pack. LEDs are pretty awesome. Now let's get these lights on the
ceiling. So the lights are hung up and functional and we'll clean up the cords over here in
a second. And they are plugged into the battery bank, now just one, we haven't connected the
other two to the singular one yet. And all of the lights are controlled with this remote
control which we will mount on the far door over there so we can turn the lights on and
off.
So I have these cabinets that I'm going to jerry-rig and customize a little bit so that
there will be enough airflow for these machines when they are inside when the batteries are
under load or powering something, there's little fans inside that turn on in order to
keep the batteries cool. So I will have to add a vent in the side, as well as a compartment
in the back so that they will fit and be able to draw air in from the back.
So you've seen them work indepentanlty, let's see if we can run them both at the same time
off of the Ecoflow. Pulling almost 1300 watts at the same time. And just like the back panel
cutout, the cutout for this vent hole isn't going to be visible from the outside so it
doesn't need to look perfect. For the countertop I'm using a thick slab of butcher block, mostly
because it makes a very nice countertop and it matches the wood aesthetic of everything
else in the barn. This slab is a tad too long so I am going to have to mark it out at 7
feet and cut it so that it'll fit the alcove where we're planning on putting the power
banks. But once again, cutting isn't a big deal because we've got the Delta pro supplying
all our power. I'm using a straightedge to help guide
the saw. This last part might be a little bit of overkill, but I'm taking a metal plate
and putting it as a barrier between the top wood panel and batteries. Screwing the metal
plate into the butcher block first, then flipping it over and bolting the cabinets to the block
itself. And just like that the countertop is finished and ready to store our 10 kilowatt
hours worth of batteries.
This is just a test fit, obviously I still need to connect the batteries together and
we still need to test and see how many things we can charge at the same time. We know everything
fits, but before we do the load testing on these battery banks, let's get the solar panels
installed. And it's actually quite a bit easier than you think. I'm installing the same snap
and rack system that I used on my house. Drilling a hole up through the metal in the barn roof,
the installation process is pretty much the same, except for that we're using a special
kind of clamp that's made for metal roofs. It's able to install on the peak of the little
metal lips and screw into the sides of it without puncturing down into the roof or the
insulation below the metal sheaf. It's kind of smart. I'm still leaving everything loose
right now for when we put the rail in place, but we have the roof, rubber, the metal bracket,
and then the bolt also has a little rubber washer on it as well to help keep water from
going in. This is where the power will go. Now we just need the rails,
The bottom rail is now installed and I'm leaving it loose just in case we need to slide it
back and forth inside of this channel and position it better after we get this top rail
installed, which should be pretty easy. And in order to fasten the panels to these two
rails that we just put down, we have one silver clamp over here on the edge which I'll show
you in a minute. And another clamp which just comes in like this, locks into place, and
then I can cinch it down on top of the panel once it's installed.
I broke my wrist hanging Christmas lights a couple years ago so I'm not allowed on ladders
anymore, but that's okay because this thing is way cooler. If we look on the back of the
Delta pro it says that it can be charged via solar from 11 volts, all the way to 150 volts
d.c. with a 12 volt max. What that means is one of these panels can generate about 9 amps
worth of electricity at 33 volts. So if you want to maximize the power that the Ecoflow
can charge with, we have to wire two of these panels in series which means that the amperage
stays the same while the voltage goes up. Instead of just 33 it would double to 66.
So theoretically we could wire four panels together and still plug it into the Delta
pro and it would be just fine. But since this is out in a barn, and I'm not going to be
using it a whole lot, mostly just to power a small heater for the chickens, some lights,
and charge my mower once a week. Two panels will be plenty for my situation.
Ecoflow has their own trippy looking, futuristic 100 watt solar panel if you're looking to
be a little more mobile. This guy follows the sun across the sky to get the most out
of his position. Since my barn isn't going anywhere soon, that I know of, I opted for
the roof mounted panels. During the summer if I had 3 panels, it should be enough to
charge that main unit every single day. But since I have the expansion batteries connected
to the main unit, I'll only get a partial charge. Wiring in series just means connecting
the positive of one panel to the negative of the other panel, which means that the voltages
add up and the amperage stays the same. If you were to wire in parallel, the voltage
would stay the same and the amperage would double. Electricity is pretty cool.
Now that we have the panels mounted to the roof we can see that each of them has two
wires: a positive and a negative, and so if we want to wire them in series, we just have
to connect one of the negatives and one of the positives and then the voltages will add
up. And then I can take the other positive wire, attach an extension to it, and the negative
wire, attach an extension to it and feed it down through the hole in the roof. We have
the panels mounted and up underneath there I have a little white ramp type of thing that
I siliconed down to the roof and that will help keep the liquid out from the hole that
we drilled earlier. And I used the rails and zipties to keep the wires from touching the
roof or the panels. This is what the wires look like coming inside. I will put them in
some conduit in a minute, we just want to make sure everything is working. We have the
positive and the negative, and this adapter is what comes with the Ecoflow. And now with
those two solar panels, we are now charging at 500 watts and should charge completely
up in about 7 hours - at least this module. Of course in the morning there is less power.
The power of the sun kind of looks like a bell curve. As the sun gets higher in the
sky we get more power, and then as the sun goes down we get less power. So I think this
will charge up in about one day with both of my panels in the summer, and obviously
it would have charged up a little faster if I put three up top, but I think two's going
to be plenty for what we use it for here. It also has a normal charging plug on the
back that can charge up from a wall outlet in about two hours, but solar is quite a bit
cooler.
Plugging in the additional battery packs is easy enough. They keep the extra cable in
a compartment up top. I can plug it into the back and move it over to the main unit. Then
the solar power can charge up all three batteries at the same time for a total of over 10 kilowatt
hours. It'll take a while for each pack to balance out since they each have a different
level of charge at the moment, but my solar panels should be able to keep things topped
off every single day with how little power I'm using in the barn. Ten kilowatt hours
is a lot...unless I bring an electric vehicle in here to charge, these batteries are probably
never going to dip below 70 or 60%. But it's always good to have backup power. Kind of
interesting that with the lights on right now and plugged into the power bank, we are
using 269 watts, but the solar is supplying that so the battery isn't going down at all
- it's running directly off of the solar which means that the lights could pretty much run
indefinitely. Obviously at night we would be using battery power, but then during the
day we would charge back up the power banks. So we added a little bit of a backsplash to
provide a little bit more room for these cables behind, as well as some conduit which protects
the wires coming down behind the cabinet.
Now let's start plugging things in like the off-road wheelchairs, the lawnmower, and the
heat lamp for the chickens, and we'll see what happens. Plugging in the lawnmower took
us up to 1,000 watts, but we are charging, which is nice, with the power of a normal
wall outlet. So it should take the same amount of time as plugging it directly into the house.
A setup like this would also work well in the garage as kind of a backup solution, or
on an RV or some remote cabin. It's a lot of power, all while still being pretty portable.
There we have it. We have a Not A Wheelchair, the lawnmower, another Not A Wheelchair all
plugged into the same system, along with the lights, and we're pulling about 1200 watts.
It's kind of nice that we can use all of the outlets at the same time. Eventually I think
I'm going to run an extension cord over to this wall so that I can park along this wall
and charge everything that I need to. But with the solar panels producing about 3 kilowatt
hours a day, or 3,000 watts, it should be enough to top off this system every single
day to 100%, with my usage at least. So if there ever are cloudy days or a cloudy week,
I should still have enough battery storage for everything I need to charge. And obviously
this one battery should work for a lot of situations. The expansion modules just top
this one off as the power is being used. And they all fit very comfortably inside of my
little cabinet. The solar will finish topping them off in about 29 minutes.
I did try plugging in my wife's Tesla to the 30 amp port out in front of the power bank,
but apparently electric vehicles need some kind of earth ground which we could probably
jerry-rig the plug in some way to get that, but I'll save that for another video. Either
way, the 30 amp plug is probably still good for an RV or some other kind of recreational
vehicle with a big power draw. Ecoflow also has a pretty cool app that can monitor the
input and the output of the power in real time through wi-fi. Overall I'm pretty excited.
It's nice having a power system connected to the barn that's independent of the city.
Any power outage that happens with the city won't affect the barn because we have our
own power source as well as battery storage. All hidden away in a nice little cabinet.
I'll leave a link for everything I talked about today, the Ecoflow Delta Pro, down in
the video description. And if you have any questions, also leave them down in the comments
and I'll try to answer as many as possible. Come hang out with me on Instagram and Twitter.
I will be doing updates on this system over on Instagram. And thanks a ton for watching.
I'll see you around.