Recently the power went out for a short while at my house. This was on a Sunday, and I was getting ready to make breakfast. Fortunately, the coffee was already made.
I have several small SoGens, so I started setting them up around the house to run different things, like my toaster, my internet router and wi-fi, and so forth.
SoGens, or Solar Generators, are basically battery packs with power inverters that can run both D.C. items, like phone chargers, or A.C. appliances with a typical two or three pronged wall plug, like a toaster.
Greatly over simplified… D.C., Direct Current, is essentially battery power; while A.C., Alternating Current, is what comes out of the wall. More info here… The War of the Currents: AC vs. DC Power!
While having my little Sunday morning adventure, I texted a good friend about my ongoing saga of no power, SoGens and soForth. Obviously, I thought to myself, “This would make a good blog post!” So here we are…
First things first… fire up the bidet! I got the bidet when I was about to have rotator cuff surgery a few years ago, as one of my flippers was going to be inop for a while. Once you go bidet… you’ll never go back! 😉
Next important thing… keep the internet running. This SoGen is a Bluetti AC70, which is a little bigger SoGen.
Time for some breakfast. Some appliances, like toasters require a lot of power to run. This SoGen is the Bluetti EB3. Its nominal output is 600 watts, while the toaster draws 750+. It immediately shut down when I tried to make toast.
Fortunately the Bluetti has a “power lifting” mode accessible via their app. This increases the watt output, though drops the voltage some. This is useful for “dumb” devices like toasters, but would likely damage anything more complex.
Toasting accomplished.
Things were starting to get a little bit warm. Fortunately, I have a lot of Greenworks electric yard and power tools that run on lithium batteries.
The Greenworks ecosystem is pretty neat. They have a lot of other things that run off the same batteries. This is a 24volt fan that takes the same batteries as my cordless driver/drill.
I actually think I might get another one of these fans. Pretty handy in this hot climate.
I have a couple of old school lead acid battery UPS (uninterruptible power supply) hooked up to my computers and wi-fi hub. Modern electronics require continuous flow of clean electricity or they will shut down or reboot. A UPS typically keeps the power coming when the juice from the wall drops off for any amount of time. Most UPS will switch to battery power within 20 milliseconds.
Lead acid UPS’ are relatively primitive when compared to modern lithium power supplies (SoGens). Many (but not all) SoGens can function as a UPS.
By the way… SoGens are called SoGens because they are designed to easily hook up to portable solar panels. I have three 200 watt fold up solar panels for this purpose.
The power came back after about an hour. I recently bought the small EcoFlow Wave2 heat pump for emergency use, so this was as good a time to practice setting that up. I just got it a few weeks ago, and had not read the manual or done much else besides unbox it.
It was really easy to set up, and I still didn’t read the manual. Ha!
Left: Wave2 ready to start up! Middle: intake hose (outside) temp (81F). Right: exhaust hose temp (116F).
The difference in temperature is basically energy being tranferred from inside the room, out the window.
The Ecoflow Wave2 worked amazingly well as an air conditioner! It only drew about 700 watts under continuous load/use, on the coldest setting (60F). Ideally, in an emergency situation, the widow gaps would be tightened up, and I’d wrap/insulate the outlet hose to keep it from shedding heat back into the room. I should also probably cut out a piece of plywood to fit perfectly in the window.
In total, there was 5,255 Watt/hours (Wh) of power represented in the system shown here, including… 1159 Wh from the Wave2’s battery, 2048 Wh from the AC200Max, and 2048 Wh from the B230 add on battery. This means I could run the Wave2 for 7.5 hours continuous (5,255 watt hours / 700 watt draw = 7.5 hours, at full blast).
There is some inefficiency or power lost in converting from D.C. to A.C., so the run time is likely a bit less than the optimal numbers above. However, I should be able to run the Wave2 off of a D.C. power connector to the SoGen, which would be a bit more efficient.
Of course, if I set it to 74F, properly sealed the window, insulated the exhaust hose — the Wave2 would not be running continuously, because the unit would stop cooling when the room temperature reached the thermostat set temperature. From watching online videos, with this set-up I could probably run the Wave2 for a good 12 hours or more, before having to recharge.
If I set up my 3 solar panels outside and ran the line back through the window (also part of the plan), then I’d have 600 watts of power to run the unit or charge the battery during the day. Solar panels only put out fully rated watts in a lab setting. Real world, they put out something like 80-90% of stated watts, which is still a lot of power.
The main reason to have a portable heat pump, like the Ecoflow Wave2, and a big SoGen battery to run it, like the Bluetti AC200max, is because it is quite literally emergency life support equipment in this climate. If the grid were to go down in the summer, many people will be in serious trouble due to the heat.
AND because it’s a heat pump and the heat pump circuit can run in reverse, it can also be used as a heater in the winter if the power goes down, like it did in the winter of 2022 here in Texas.
I bought this system one piece at a time, and it cost me about $3,800 all in. That’s a lot, though the prices have come down since then. But deadly heat is no joke, especially in a world that’s just going to get hotter, and with wilder swings in temperature. Also, the whole system is portable, just in case.
This post is just meant to show what is possible. There are probably less expensive options, like leaving town during a grid-down, heat wave. I have a friend who’s plan consists entirely of “I’m gettin out of town.” LOL! Whatever works, and that is really not a bad idea if you can swing it.
Which battery company is better, Ecoflow or Bluetti?
Both companies are top tier and make excellent products, primarily made in China and sold around the world. I generally like the Bluetti feature set, but I also enjoy Ecoflow products, and Ecoflow is the only major SoGen company so far that makes a portable heat pump like the Wave2 (the Wave 3 has just been released). The Ecoflow app is also top notch, giving you access to additional features on your soGen.
If you read various forums, both rapidly expanding companies have customer service issues, but Ecoflow seems to be a bit more responsive. I have had Bluetti support techs that went out of their way to be UNhelpful, whereas Ecoflow tech support is always very respectful. There are other excellent companies out there, such as Jackery or BougeRV, and many, many other knockoffs, that are also very good, like Allpowers.
If you want to learn more, check out the many reviews of different SoGens, solar panels and other gear on YouTube. I like these guys… Professor Hobo and Jasonoid.
There’s a concept I learned of recently, and that I hope to write about here in the future — the idea of a “climate safe room”. Instead of backing up power to your whole house, insulating your whole house, putting new energy efficient windows on your whole house, and so forth, which is obviously very expensive — instead you make one room of your house a climate safe room. One room that is well insulated, maybe has it’s own cooling, and so forth. This is a concept that started in Australia I believe, but obviously people have been doing this forever without giving it a name.
Thanks for reading, and I would love to answer any questions or hear your thoughts, so please comment below.