I've been thinking for a while now that someone needs to build a configurable boost/buck converter that includes various adapters to basically turn any battery into expansion power (via charging) for virtually any power station.
Yeah I feel this isn't something that you plan to lug around at this size and wattage. Especially if you are adding one or two EB3000's. So having the brick around doesn't bother nor affect me at all... only downside I'd say is to do fast charging you have to buy a second brick.
5:51 yeah, which makes these even less cumbersome to actually transport. I see it as a pro seeing as it is one of the only LiFePO4 (and power stations in general) that had the foresight to say, "Let's make the least cumbersome, lowest weighing ~2000watt." Well done.
Finally, someone takes a voltmeter to the expansion port on one of these to determine if it's a direct connection to the internal battery bus or not. If it is, it means you can easily expand the capacity of the unit with any external 24V unit - just make sure to match the voltages up as close as you can before hooking them up, to avoid a high current "dump" from one into the other. The only question is whether the electronics have any assumptions built into them about the battery capacity (if there's any setup process you have to do with this Pecron when you've added one of their batteries, this is almost certainly the case). For much of the discharge cycle, LiFePo (unlike the regular 3.7V nominal Li-ion chemistries) has a pretty flat discharge curve, and voltage alone doesn't really tell you much about how much juice is in the unit, except at the ends when it's nearly full or nearly empty. The unit may rely on current in/out over time in the middle of the graph to estimate how much charge is remaining in the unit. That requires an assumption about the battery capacity, which will be way off with any substantial capacity expansion. Any unit doing it that way, based on an assumed capacity, will get confused about current state-of-charge as the battery seems to take much longer to charge and discharge than it "should", until the voltage input starts signalling empty/full. So you might not have accurate charge level indications until the unit reaches near empty when in use, or near full when charging.
Just to comment on his surprise when there wasn't a huge spark - the spark is caused by huge amounts of current rushing in when there is a large voltage differential between one side and the other. Since both batteries were relatively close in voltage there was no big void for current to rush into.
I'm wondering if it would be easier, and maybe safer for your solar generator, to charge through their official extra battery? You would have a level of protection between your regular batteries and the solar generator, and I would think this kind of hook up to the extra battery would be simpler.
I don't see having the charging brick outside the unit as a prob. It would be heavier and bigger. Under50 lb. is nice. Don't see why you would want to charge faster than the one 600 watt brick gives unless your doing it with say a gas generater. Unless you need to charge fast for some reason, a slower charge is going to be better for the life of battery cells and heat is about the worst thing for electronics too. I've been looking at alot of inverters, solar "generaters, all in ones like growatt, etc. usually run 80-85% efficency, were the Pecron rans around 90% in both ac and 12v dc. That's like 5-10% more battery and less waste also means it is running cooler and that's one of the reasons I'm thinking about getting a Pecron and price too. One thing that I'm a bit concerned about is one review showed the sone wave a bit fuzzy, but a couple others, the sinewave looked real clean, so maybe a bad contact in his, maybe bad shipping? Does anyone know of other inverters with around 90%E?
I agree, when you get to this size and watts you are not backpacking or traveling with this big thing. It's 50 pounds. This isn't going in a rucksack. It's staying at home, or it's going in a truck to the camp site. Which makes the size really less of a problem. Yes I would love to not pay an extra $160 for another charger to reach full A/C charging potential... but this comes at a low cost which is what I'm looking for most. Also the UPS would be nice, but that would add in size and weight. I have the 2000 and I'm happy. It can run my fridge, phones, USB lights, USB fans, regular fans, and even window A/C for short times (longer with solar during peak hours). This bridges the gap of my generator which will run in the day and run my A/C and the night when I want to be silent for the neighbors. Also can charge this with solar in the eventuality that I run out of gas and I need to run this during the day.
If I just want to run my fridge microwave and just things around my apartment will the 2000 work. I don't want to have to by more battery packs just the unit and 400 solar panels. I'm hoping it will charge as fast as it uses.
Would be good to see how it behaves when connected to your external battery bank with pulling 1000 to 1500 watts out of it, I feel like that would be a better test for how most people would use it
I don't like the large external brick either but the Pecron E2000lfp is a little smaller and lighter because of this design element. Would love to see some testing when the external batteries are available.
Talk of a diesel shortage and rolling blackouts lately... I was looking for a quick plug and play setup to run a freezer in the event of electrical outage. The Pecron paired with a Harbor Freight 3500 Predator inverter generator means quick storage of 2000 amp hours of power. I plan to add 1,500 watts of solar when time permits. This should result in a stable power setup to keep thing in the freezer frozen. Thank you for the video.
Question for you about your battery setup. I'm guessing that you have 2 sets of 12v hooked up in series to create 2x 24v and the parallel 1x 24v 100ah parallel to create a 24v 300ah battery bank ?? How long did you have the hook up running ?? I'm very interested.
It doesn't read it from the external device because there is an extra conductor in the connector/cable that is used for the power station to "talk" to the Pecron battery.
Just snagged one of these for $1100 shipped. At that price it was hard to pass on. First major battery purchase for me. Figure it’ll help in an emergency, can be expanded, and I can add some Solar to help recharge in serious emergencies like hurricane outages
Lol can get a Bluetti AC200max with an RV plug for around $1200-1300 on prime sale (or just random sales). It has 2000 wh lifepo4 battery, 2200 watt inverter, 900-1400 watts of PV input and a name brand that will be here in 5 years. Oh did I mention you can hook up 12v-48v of battery to charge through the PV input or get a DC assist charge block and run it into the AC input. Just a better system with more options.
That LFP would be awsum if it stood for (low frequency power) but then it would cost at least twice as much, and it would be repairable. That said, I wouldn't push that to the limit very often, cause those chips will fry, and then ya just have a paper weight
Just spend a couple hundred more on a Bluetti AC200max. More options. Can plug an external battery into the PV. With a DC charge enhancer you can plug it into the AC port. $1200-1300 on sale pretty regularly (prime day, Black Friday - 🎵 oh the waiting is the hardest part). Don’t pay full price. Too much.
At the 16 minute mark I asked myself " ... and the point of this is ... ?" Like that Chemistry class in Grade 11 with the new teacher. LOL. You got me - I'm a new subscriber
I paid $854 at the end of August for the E2000 LFP a really UNBELIEVABLE deal. Was thinking about adding the extra battery, but i am unsure.... does it or does it not perform a balanced draw under low load?
The test with the external battery was a bust because Pecron requires (when you connect an extra battery E3000) that the internal settings be adjusted to even let the unit even see it! You connected to nothing...🤣
9:02 this unit has 1920 kWh. 800 watt solar panel. So, 1920/800=charge time. Which is 2.4. The battery charging will slow down at ~80-90%, therefore instead of taking ~2.4 hours, it should take ~3 with that kind of solar panel. Solar panel knowledge havers, correct me if I'm wrong.
I believe the current spec - July 23, EACH PV input is rated at 600 watts x2 =1200 watts + the 100 watts via the DC5521 connector for a total of 1300 watts.... I understand the "nominal recommended" charge/discharge rate for LiFePO4 batteries is .5C...... So, using the 600 watt included power brick which seem like a hell of a high charge rate, is really only a ~ C.3 charge rate.
For home backup and for small cabins it would be a good idea to make so the brick should be an option to allow you to buy it without the brick making it cheaper to buy after all if you are charging it from solar and you don't have the grid with a decent 12/24 volt DC charger you wouldn't use 120 volt AC charging and if the solar input is decent how can it tell the difference between 12/ 14 volts from a solar panel and 12/14 volts from an alternator as far as I know there is nothing in the solar panels that says to the unit hey I'm a set b solar panels professor hobo quite often cheats an uses 120 to 12 volts and higher to test the quality of the solar charging system a 60 amp alternator putting out 14 volts is 840 watts and for those who have school bus conversion if they're like my old one it's a 100 amp that's 1400 watts and I if they're 100 amps at 28 volts that's a whopping 2800 watts just have to wire in the lines from the battery since most alternators have built in regulators you'd probably have to put in a selenoid so it wouldn't drain the battery when the engine is off I built a charger years ago using an old gas powered snow blower and a dodge altinator it had a regulator so I wired it so as long as the motor was running and the alternator was putting out power it was on when the motor ran out of gas it shut off so it run my battery power back into the alternator and kill my battery and fry the alternator with the size of the gas tank it ran about an hour which charged my two big cat batteries. now there are videos on utube for building good gas powered chargers just go to the wreckers and find a big alternator and hook it to a gasoline motor if you want to make it better convert it to propane or natural gas if you have that so one thing I'd like you reviewers to do is to hook up a set of wires from your vehicle battery to a set of mc4 solar panel connectors and see how they do with charging from a car every RVer has has a vehicle so has that ability to charge as they go down the road some already have DC TO DC chargers so could use them to charge the unit now I just have to find out the price of the unit in Canadian dollars and how much is shipping cost
Does this have its own app to control the unit like an EcoFlow? I dont mind external charger as long as you can also use with non-branded controllers and DIY battery packs. I like having things that have more than a singular purpose like charging multiple things.
The new champion of 2000w power stations, The Anker Powerhouse 767 as it was almost painful watching you holding on to an out dated power station. Also charging from a battery using a 12 to 24v converter works wonders
ALWAYS HOOK UP + FIRST, THEN -... When you d/c a battery, remove - FIRST then + LAST... So NEG is always first to d/c and last to reconnect... This is the std for automotive applications. I would follow those same rules for this setup too... Unless it is otherwise for this time of setup..
They have a new E2000lfp model for $849 that doesn't need the power brick. Like all their new stuff they've revamped every size kind of like EcoFlow did.
20:33 Pecron, if you take his advice here, make sure you make that OPTIONAL if possible, please. I like it as is because of the external bricks, and I also understand why Byte My Bits appreciates the internal.
Having the charger EXTERNAL of the main unit is really better. When the 600 watt charger is being used, it is "normally" at a home base where the use of the power brick is of no real concern. WHY CARRY THE EXTRA WEIGHT? DUH.......
those extra batteries are more or less an extra power station minus functionality. They have an inverter and step up volt converter so it can power up the other device. LOL,
OK am I calculating things wrong but isn't it volts times amps equals watts, so14 times 60 amps equals 840 watts so why do they limit the 12 volt input to 100 watts I can see with) most of the vehicles no longer have a cigarette lighter plug in the vehicle just an axillary port and they'll melt with any major draw but it's easy enough to either go to the wreckers and find an old vehicle with one or better idea would be to sell a special plug to wire in directly to the battery or altinator
I've been thinking for a while now that someone needs to build a configurable boost/buck converter that includes various adapters to basically turn any battery into expansion power (via charging) for virtually any power station.
Having the charging brick on the outside helps keep the size of the power station smaller.
Yeah I feel this isn't something that you plan to lug around at this size and wattage. Especially if you are adding one or two EB3000's. So having the brick around doesn't bother nor affect me at all... only downside I'd say is to do fast charging you have to buy a second brick.
5:51 yeah, which makes these even less cumbersome to actually transport. I see it as a pro seeing as it is one of the only LiFePO4 (and power stations in general) that had the foresight to say, "Let's make the least cumbersome, lowest weighing ~2000watt."
Well done.
Finally, someone takes a voltmeter to the expansion port on one of these to determine if it's a direct connection to the internal battery bus or not.
If it is, it means you can easily expand the capacity of the unit with any external 24V unit - just make sure to match the voltages up as close as you can before hooking them up, to avoid a high current "dump" from one into the other.
The only question is whether the electronics have any assumptions built into them about the battery capacity (if there's any setup process you have to do with this Pecron when you've added one of their batteries, this is almost certainly the case).
For much of the discharge cycle, LiFePo (unlike the regular 3.7V nominal Li-ion chemistries) has a pretty flat discharge curve, and voltage alone doesn't really tell you much about how much juice is in the unit, except at the ends when it's nearly full or nearly empty. The unit may rely on current in/out over time in the middle of the graph to estimate how much charge is remaining in the unit. That requires an assumption about the battery capacity, which will be way off with any substantial capacity expansion.
Any unit doing it that way, based on an assumed capacity, will get confused about current state-of-charge as the battery seems to take much longer to charge and discharge than it "should", until the voltage input starts signalling empty/full. So you might not have accurate charge level indications until the unit reaches near empty when in use, or near full when charging.
Did you try connecting an external battery to the input as a way of charging?
Just to comment on his surprise when there wasn't a huge spark - the spark is caused by huge amounts of current rushing in when there is a large voltage differential between one side and the other. Since both batteries were relatively close in voltage there was no big void for current to rush into.
Mad Scientist videos are why I come back.
I'm wondering if it would be easier, and maybe safer for your solar generator, to charge through their official extra battery? You would have a level of protection between your regular batteries and the solar generator, and I would think this kind of hook up to the extra battery would be simpler.
I don't see having the charging brick outside the unit as a prob. It would be heavier and bigger. Under50 lb. is nice. Don't see why you would want to charge faster than the one 600 watt brick gives unless your doing it with say a gas generater. Unless you need to charge fast for some reason, a slower charge is going to be better for the life of battery cells and heat is about the worst thing for electronics too. I've been looking at alot of inverters, solar "generaters, all in ones like growatt, etc. usually run 80-85% efficency, were the Pecron rans around 90% in both ac and 12v dc. That's like 5-10% more battery and less waste also means it is running cooler and that's one of the reasons I'm thinking about getting a Pecron and price too. One thing that I'm a bit concerned about is one review showed the sone wave a bit fuzzy, but a couple others, the sinewave looked real clean, so maybe a bad contact in his, maybe bad shipping? Does anyone know of other inverters with around 90%E?
I agree, when you get to this size and watts you are not backpacking or traveling with this big thing. It's 50 pounds. This isn't going in a rucksack. It's staying at home, or it's going in a truck to the camp site. Which makes the size really less of a problem. Yes I would love to not pay an extra $160 for another charger to reach full A/C charging potential... but this comes at a low cost which is what I'm looking for most. Also the UPS would be nice, but that would add in size and weight. I have the 2000 and I'm happy. It can run my fridge, phones, USB lights, USB fans, regular fans, and even window A/C for short times (longer with solar during peak hours). This bridges the gap of my generator which will run in the day and run my A/C and the night when I want to be silent for the neighbors. Also can charge this with solar in the eventuality that I run out of gas and I need to run this during the day.
If I just want to run my fridge microwave and just things around my apartment will the 2000 work. I don't want to have to by more battery packs just the unit and 400 solar panels. I'm hoping it will charge as fast as it uses.
Would be good to see how it behaves when connected to your external battery bank with pulling 1000 to 1500 watts out of it, I feel like that would be a better test for how most people would use it
I don't like the large external brick either but the Pecron E2000lfp is a little smaller and lighter because of this design element. Would love to see some testing when the external batteries are available.
What kind of fire suppression system do you use in your house?
You can do it. I think you just haven't tried enough ways. Have you tried a step up converter or an inverter ?
Talk of a diesel shortage and rolling blackouts lately... I was looking for a quick plug and play setup to run a freezer in the event of electrical outage. The Pecron paired with a Harbor Freight 3500 Predator inverter generator means quick storage of 2000 amp hours of power.
I plan to add 1,500 watts of solar when time permits. This should result in a stable power setup to keep thing in the freezer frozen. Thank you for the video.
Thank you. I enjoy your "mad scientist" videos. Keep 'em coming but Stay Safe!
Question for you about your battery setup. I'm guessing that you have 2 sets of 12v hooked up in series to create 2x 24v and the parallel 1x 24v 100ah parallel to create a 24v 300ah battery bank ?? How long did you have the hook up running ?? I'm very interested.
It doesn't read it from the external device because there is an extra conductor in the connector/cable that is used for the power station to "talk" to the Pecron battery.
Just snagged one of these for $1100 shipped. At that price it was hard to pass on. First major battery purchase for me. Figure it’ll help in an emergency, can be expanded, and I can add some Solar to help recharge in serious emergencies like hurricane outages
Lol can get a Bluetti AC200max with an RV plug for around $1200-1300 on prime sale (or just random sales). It has 2000 wh lifepo4 battery, 2200 watt inverter, 900-1400 watts of PV input and a name brand that will be here in 5 years. Oh did I mention you can hook up 12v-48v of battery to charge through the PV input or get a DC assist charge block and run it into the AC input. Just a better system with more options.
How about using your batteries to recharge through the DC charging ports?
That LFP would be awsum if it stood for (low frequency power) but then it would cost at least twice as much, and it would be repairable. That said, I wouldn't push that to the limit very often, cause those chips will fry, and then ya just have a paper weight
its $1099 now. is that a good deal or not? How does this compare to the ecoflow delta2 which is $999?
Just spend a couple hundred more on a Bluetti AC200max. More options. Can plug an external battery into the PV. With a DC charge enhancer you can plug it into the AC port. $1200-1300 on sale pretty regularly (prime day, Black Friday - 🎵 oh the waiting is the hardest part). Don’t pay full price. Too much.
At the 16 minute mark I asked myself " ... and the point of this is ... ?" Like that Chemistry class in Grade 11 with the new teacher. LOL. You got me - I'm a new subscriber
The point is that you can use customized extra batteries made by your own for much less cost and connect them to this powerstation
I paid $854 at the end of August for the E2000 LFP a really UNBELIEVABLE deal. Was thinking about adding the extra battery, but i am unsure.... does it or does it not perform a balanced draw under low load?
The test with the external battery was a bust because Pecron requires (when you connect an extra battery E3000) that the internal settings be adjusted to even let the unit even see it! You connected to nothing...🤣
9:02 this unit has 1920 kWh. 800 watt solar panel. So, 1920/800=charge time. Which is 2.4. The battery charging will slow down at ~80-90%, therefore instead of taking ~2.4 hours, it should take ~3 with that kind of solar panel. Solar panel knowledge havers, correct me if I'm wrong.
I believe the current spec - July 23, EACH PV input is rated at 600 watts x2 =1200 watts + the 100 watts via the DC5521 connector for a total of 1300 watts.... I understand the "nominal recommended" charge/discharge rate for LiFePO4 batteries is .5C...... So, using the 600 watt included power brick which seem like a hell of a high charge rate, is really only a ~ C.3 charge rate.
can this be connected to the house using a switch?
For home backup and for small cabins it would be a good idea to make so the brick should be an option to allow you to buy it without the brick making it cheaper to buy after all if you are charging it from solar and you don't have the grid with a decent 12/24 volt DC charger you wouldn't use 120 volt AC charging and if the solar input is decent how can it tell the difference between 12/ 14 volts from a solar panel and 12/14 volts from an alternator as far as I know there is nothing in the solar panels that says to the unit hey I'm a set b solar panels professor hobo quite often cheats an uses 120 to 12 volts and higher to test the quality of the solar charging system a 60 amp alternator putting out 14 volts is 840 watts and for those who have school bus conversion if they're like my old one it's a 100 amp that's 1400 watts and I if they're 100 amps at 28 volts that's a whopping 2800 watts just have to wire in the lines from the battery since most alternators have built in regulators you'd probably have to put in a selenoid so it wouldn't drain the battery when the engine is off I built a charger years ago using an old gas powered snow blower and a dodge altinator it had a regulator so I wired it so as long as the motor was running and the alternator was putting out power it was on when the motor ran out of gas it shut off so it run my battery power back into the alternator and kill my battery and fry the alternator with the size of the gas tank it ran about an hour which charged my two big cat batteries. now there are videos on utube for building good gas powered chargers just go to the wreckers and find a big alternator and hook it to a gasoline motor if you want to make it better convert it to propane or natural gas if you have that so one thing I'd like you reviewers to do is to hook up a set of wires from your vehicle battery to a set of mc4 solar panel connectors and see how they do with charging from a car every RVer has has a vehicle so has that ability to charge as they go down the road some already have DC TO DC chargers so could use them to charge the unit now I just have to find out the price of the unit in Canadian dollars and how much is shipping cost
You have got to wonder why project solar nixed the ups back up.
Does this have its own app to control the unit like an EcoFlow? I dont mind external charger as long as you can also use with non-branded controllers and DIY battery packs. I like having things that have more than a singular purpose like charging multiple things.
The new champion of 2000w power stations, The Anker Powerhouse 767 as it was almost painful watching you holding on to an out dated power station. Also charging from a battery using a 12 to 24v converter works wonders
ALWAYS HOOK UP + FIRST, THEN -... When you d/c a battery, remove - FIRST then + LAST... So NEG is always first to d/c and last to reconnect...
This is the std for automotive applications. I would follow those same rules for this setup too... Unless it is otherwise for this time of setup..
I think you would have better success connecting your battery to the PV port.
Naw cause it only wants 32v+....
This battery is now selling for $850, which for that price, is incredible.
They have a new E2000lfp model for $849 that doesn't need the power brick. Like all their new stuff they've revamped every size kind of like EcoFlow did.
20:33 Pecron, if you take his advice here, make sure you make that OPTIONAL if possible, please. I like it as is because of the external bricks, and I also understand why Byte My Bits appreciates the internal.
Having the charger EXTERNAL of the main unit is really better. When the 600 watt charger is being used, it is "normally" at a home base where the use of the power brick is of no real concern. WHY CARRY THE EXTRA WEIGHT? DUH.......
You won't be able to run it with the cover on. No air vents on the left and right.
Good info.
Byte My Bits, excellent review!
Of course the next question is "What happens if you add in 3 or 4 extra batteries?"
those extra batteries are more or less an extra power station minus functionality. They have an inverter and step up volt converter so it can power up the other device. LOL,
This guy doesn't know his tush from toilet seat......
1400 watts solar input*
OK am I calculating things wrong but isn't it volts times amps equals watts, so14 times 60 amps equals 840 watts so why do they limit the 12 volt input to 100 watts I can see with) most of the vehicles no longer have a cigarette lighter plug in the vehicle just an axillary port and they'll melt with any major draw but it's easy enough to either go to the wreckers and find an old vehicle with one or better idea would be to sell a special plug to wire in directly to the battery or altinator
Solar project 101 copy
First, s**k it Nate!!!
First
Of course you are first