With the recent grid issues in the United States, individuals are increasingly looking for whole home backup battery options. In this blog, we’ll discuss a system that allows you to build it out over time as your budget permits. At the core of this whole home integration is Ecoflow’s Smart Home Panel. This is a setup that allows you to power lines in your house instantly if the grid goes down and can provide an unlimited power source when coupled with solar panels. It’s a very fascinating system that’s modular, transportable, expandable, and programmable. So let’s jump in.
If the grid goes down, Ecoflow’s Emergency Power Source (or EPS) provides power nearly instantly in just 30 milliseconds. As shown here, the light in the background is plugged into a wall socket and after shutting off the main breaker, it does not flicker. Most household devices will do fine with the EPS, but that’s something you need to be aware of in case you have sensitive equipment like computer servers.
You can expand the battery capacity of the Delta Pros to a total of 25 kWh by adding their smart batteries. Shown here, we have 1 add-on smart battery connected to one Delta Pro. Each Delta Pro and smart battery has a capacity of 3.6 kWh each. If the grid were to go down, you can connect up to a total of 3200 watts of solar panels to charge these. Additionally, if you connect these with their Dual Fuel Smart Generators, the Delta Pros can automatically start up the generator to have it charge the batteries and then turn it off when the batteries charge to a level you define with the app. Overall, it’s a well-thought-out setup for emergency power backup.
Additionally, for those that live in areas where the time of use or power arbitrage is an option through your local power company, you can program the smart home panel to provide power to the 10 lines, thus reducing your power load during hours when your power company may charge a higher rate for power usage which is typically in the evening, thus saving you money. This is commonly referred to as power arbitrage. Just to be clear on this point, this setup does not send power directly to the grid, but rather to the 10 lines that you connect to in your house.
As shown here, we can set up 10 lines in our house. We can see their daily usage which is a powerful tool to allow you to monitor usage in your home. We can see the status of battery, charging input and percentage charged. You can define the depth of discharge on the battery and you can program it to automatically start up the dual fuel generators when the batteries are too low. You can schedule automations instructing it when to charge the batteries and when to discharge them (and from what source – solar, generators, or the grid) to power devices on the 10 lines. You can define the priority of the lines to be powered. We received this whole setup several months ago and never released a video on it as the app was a bit glitchy. We provided them a lot of feedback and to their credit, they listened to our feedback (and we’re sure others) and they have made several large changes to the app resulting in a solid app and system.
One last thing to bring up. When Ecoflow sent us the SHP, we did spent quite a lot of time trying to get it to work with 2 older Delta Pros we had. We programmed various automation into the app and the system just would not work, which is why this video was not released back in the summer. Ecoflow ended up sending us 2 new Delta Pros and when we connected them, they immediately worked right away with the SHP and app. We only bring this up because if you have older Delta Pros and you’re considering this setup, you may want to talk with their team first to ensure you won’t have this issue.
Overall, we like the setup a lot, especially the backup dual-fuel generators. If we had 1 piece of feedback for Ecoflow, it would be to roll out new Delta Pros upgrading the solar input capability. With each Delta Pro only being able to handle 1600 watts, they’re on the low end of solar input. We will say in their defense that these models are about a year and a half old and they were really the first to pioneer this level of ability in portable devices. We know they’re going to be presenting updated products in Vegas next month at CES, so you will probably want to watch for that to see what they come out with.
If you have any questions, please post those in the comment section below.
As always, stay safe out there.