7mo ago

EcoFlow’s $200 PowerStream is so clever, you might buy a $4,000 solar generator

www.theverge.com EcoFlow’s $200 PowerStream is so clever, you might buy a $4,000 solar generator

A plug-in balcony solar system for uncertain times.

Title reads like at ad, but this is a new way to reach energy independence. I actually have a small EcoFlow device and it’s pretty good for the price.

I hope this tech can be made available in the US soon.

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117 comments

Plug-in systems are built around a microinverter that feeds solar energy back into the home via a standard wall jack.
What the actual fuck?
The PowerStream has three proprietary ports: one that connects to your MC4 solar panels
Disqualified.
- First part is classic stuff right?
  
  Yeah. My grandfather (former electrician and electrical inspector) had a specific outlet he’d plug a gas generator in to back feed power into the house. This was in the 80s and 90s.
  He also pointed out that he turned the main off so it did not back feed into the grid and power lines that a lineman is expecting to not be live.
  
  From the article:
  And when there’s a power outage, the PowerStream will turn off automatically to ensure there’s no electricity in the wires in order to protect line workers from shock. The PowerStream will only turn back on when the grid power returns.
  
  But isn’t a power outage the time you need it?
  
  I think its more that you can supplement you normal power draw so your electricity bill isint so high
  
  Then you can just use the sockets already present on the device.
  
  Transfer switch is the proper tool for this and is a fairly simple install.
  
  Yeah my parents house had an rv/generator hookup and it had a huge bar across both the breakers so power could only flow in one direction. If you hooked up a generator it would cut the house off from the mains.
  
  Your grandfather's extra outlet for the alternate feed was the other half of a switch that flipped over when the mains power died. It shuts off the power connection to the house by flipping over and ensures no power goes back over the line, among other things. We have these - albeit the size of a washing machine - in really big datacenters.
  
  If you're gonna do dumb shit, do it smart
  
  Yes as your granddad points out, you can’t just plug a power source into any old outlet at any time. Selling a system like this on Amazon to apartment dwellers seems to encourage just that behavior.
  
  You cannot plug in any old power source, but you can with special micro inverters.
  
  Thanks for the info, very interesting!
  I wonder if just plugging a power source in a socket would work in a more modern setting?
  Had all electricity redone last year, there was some crazy stuff from the fifties, a hot line going everywhere, just plug into it and ground it, power everywhere 😵‍💫. Guess I could have plugged some power in anywhere (cutting off the mains).
  Now there are differential and fuses for every applience etc.
  
  If you want to power your house independently from the grid, your house has to be independent from the grid.
  Anything where you sell your excess power back to the grid is in tight cooperation with the grid operators.
  Standard house wiring is not set up to accommodate back feeding the grid nor independently powering.
  So you will need a changeover switch professionally fitted if you want an independent power source, or your solar panel installers will fit the appropriate equipment to back-feed the grid.
  Anything else will likely involve deaths, fires, broken equipment, criminal prosecution, insurance invalidation and all that nasty stuff.
  
  insurance invalidation
  For clarity, if you do a stupid job at your DIY solar installation and it burns your house down, that is likely a covered cause of loss. There isn't a policy exclusion for stupidity, unfortunately.
  There may be an exclusion for the panels themselves since you could argue that improper workmanship was the proximate cause of loss, but the ensuing damage would likely be covered.
  A similar scenario would be an improper plumbing repair flooding your house. Insurance won't pay to redo the plumbing that was wrong, but it will pay to fix the water damage.
  
  As your own story shows, even in today’s modern times, there is planet of aging wiring still out there and in use.
  If you’re asking whether it’s possible to build a home that can work this way, it’s been possible forever and it doesn’t require anything fancy, just a properly rated input outlet (not the same as a regular old bedroom wall plug) and a switch to disconnect from the mains so you aren’t electrifying the grid while workers are repairing it. Whole house generators have been a thing forever. You just have to take some elementary precautions. You don’t just plug some dynamo you bought off Amazon into any old bathroom outlet and say “tada!”
  
  Should not be via a standard wall jack. As far as I know.
  
  Depends on electrical code which depends on, most of all, your standard plugs. In Germany Schuko is deemed non-optimal, but acceptable, for up to 800W.
  ...no issues regarding exposed prongs, if the inverter doesn't see AC to sync to it doesn't output anything. It's not a dumb spinny magnet generator we're talking about here.
  Most people don't have an outlet on their balcony, though, and weather-proofing the thing is an issue in any case so while you're at it you can just as well put in a proper Wieland outlet. 20 bucks or so, the expensive part will be the electrician not the outlet.
  
  In Germany Schuko is deemed non-optimal, but acceptable, for up to 800W.
  In the UK our everyday plug is rated for 13A - nearly 3KW. The plug on my phone charger is the same as the one on my tumble dryer and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bag thing.
  
  Schuko is rated for 16A continuous for one hour, 3680W, I think the UK plug would actually take quite a bit more you're just being conservative. Or something odd about ring circuits I don't want to think about.
  In any case practically nothing in a household actually uses 3kW. A stove, yes, but that's connected to three phases and without a plug (usually 3x20A over here -- CEE plugs can do that but they're chonkers and how often do you move your stove). Newer dryers should stay under 1kW, the standard high load appliances are kettles and hair dryers.
  
  Eh, that's pretty standard where I live. Didn't even know there were non standard wall jacks lol
  
  If it has anti islanding at least it's unlikely to be a shock hazard.
  That said are there any other concerns I'm missing?
  
  You don’t want to be sending current up into the grid while workers are repairing it during a power outage. If you just plug some shit into your bedroom outlet, that will happen. You need to disconnect your house from the mains. Whole house generators are old news, but no, your bedroom wall plug isn’t rated to power your whole house, and no, you aren’t just electrifying your own wiring if you try to do so. Whole house generators aren’t hard but they aren’t this easy. And you should be suspicious at how magically simple it sounds to just plug a dynamo into your wall to power everything. It’s the kind of thing we would love to be true because it’s so elegant but there’s a little more to it.
  
  This particular product says it's 800W max. Most residential wall outlets installed in the last 30 years should be able to handle that (in the US). Also, it's a product only available in Europe at the moment where they do 220 through the wall, so less than 4 amps which is stupidly low.
  Yes, being able to power your whole house through a single outlet is insane. Unless your house draws less than 800W
  
  That's what anti islanding is.
  Prevents power from going into the grid when it's down.
  Way I read it is it puts surplus into the grid to keep you elec bills down.
  800 watts isn't exactly going to set an outlet on fire.
- I’m also against proprietary systems but is there an open alternative?
- Plug-in systems are built around a microinverter that feeds solar energy back into the home via a standard wall jack.
  What the actual fuck?
  What's wrong with that? That's how basically any balcony solar system works.
  
  The cables in your walls are designed for a certain maximum current before they start to heat up. This current is limited by your breaker.
  Now if you introduce a plug in solar setup your current is limited by your maximum breaker capacity + whatever your solar setup can generate.
  So if I'd use the specs from the article and apply it to a normal dutch home situation: 16A breaker, + 800W at 230V, which means ~3.5A = 19.5A max. which is probably still fine for short durations.
  But now some genius doesn't read the fine print and hooks up 2 or 3 on the same circuit. There is no electrician that tells him that's dangerous because it's all self installed and he doesn't know any better. And all of a sudden you are up to 26.5A and you got glowing, smoking wires in your walls...
  
  But now some genius doesn’t read the fine print and hooks up 2 or 3 on the same circuit. There is no electrician that tells him that’s dangerous because it’s all self installed and he doesn’t know any better. And all of a sudden you are up to 26.5A and you got glowing, smoking wires in your walls…
  Ok sure, that makes sense. This might actually be an issue.
  
  Your breaker will pop. Just like if you were to run a hair dryer on each outlet.
  
  The breaker only sees the current flowing through the breaker though. Not the additional current provided by the solar panels since those don't flow through the breaker. So it will pop later then that the cables are rated for, therefore introducing an overheat and fire hazard.
  
  Maybe for a same-circuit device that’s consuming more than the breaker can provide? I don’t know enough about this tech but would expect this can be accounted for in some way.
  
  There are ways to somewhat fix it for circuits with a single use.
  Fixing the same example: A 16A breaker for the solar feed in, a single 16A breaker for all the consuming appliances on that circuit. And another 16A breaker on the feed in for that circuit is an example that is sometimes used in the Netherlands to add a feed in to an existing circuit with a single outlet connected to it. Meant for washingmachines for instance.
  This ensures that the circuit on all circumstances has a maximum current of 16A flowing over any wire by also measuring the outgoing current of both feed in circuits. But if you have multiple outlets you'd still need to stiol measure at a single place or use low enough breakers per outlet that the total stays below the 16A. Which the UK might have if I recall correctly.
  Then again this is not a normal setup and requires change in the electric circuit of the home. Which most consumers won't even realize. Like I said, if everyone keeps to the fine print this thing probably has and limits the extra plug-in solar panels to 1 per circuit, it's unlikely to actually cause issues because of overdimensioning of the wires. And the safety margin built in which is likely how they have gotten approval. But ignoring or not reading that text and plugging multiple in on the same circuit can and will cause a fire hazard with heavy consumers on the same circuit.
  
  Also, emergency service hazard. The PV won't turn off if firefighters take out the mains, which makes a house potentially inaccessible during an emergency.
  
  Surprisingly, no. Most inverters in the EU must come with island protection. Meaning that if there is no AC from the grid it immediatly switches off the inverter or the battery, there is no stand alone operation.
  There are some systems that allow it but they are rare here and require the mains side to be fed trough the inverter itsself ensuring it's never back feeding into the grid when there is no power with the same island protection, or less commonly there is a transfer switch of some kind also eliminating the issue. And either should obviously have a main kill switch on the breaker board for emergencies that also switches off the in home power with 1 action.
  But most importantly, either of those options is not plug and play and will require an electrician that hopefully does know what he's doing.
  
  Does the island protection with if you have two inverters running independently? (legally or not)
  
  Yep, I'm not exactly sure on the technical details but it works with multiple inverters. Otherwise having a street full with solar panels on every roof would still be a hazard if the power went out at a distribution junction for said street and repairs would have to be made.
  If there is no powerplant feeding some energy, all inverters should shut off. Fixed installs and plug and play variants alike. I'm actually amazed that there are parts in the world where this isn't common.
  
  Yes, because the frequency of the grid is also a trigger for shutting off the inverter. Inverters generate a frequency which indicates a "non healthy grid" that trigger the shutoff of connected inverters.
  
  I looked into these before and believe the inverters shut off if the mains shuts off. The DC side of the circuit would still be potentially dangerous though.
  The inverters need there to be power in the mains circuit because they convert DC to AC and match the phase of the AC power they are generating to the mains supply.
- That happens quite a bit in a lot of areas. It sounds stupid but your toaster does not care where the electricity it is using comes from.
  As long as the sine waves are in sync with each other then you have nothing to worry about.
  It's probably not standard in America because the technology is newer and the regulations haven't caught up.
  
  2 problems….
  If you forget to turn off the mains, it could really make a lineman unhappy.
  Most of these setups require a reprimand dangerous “ suicide cord”
  
  The first problem is solved by line sensing technology. If there is not power coming in and off of the switch then the inverter will not pump energy back into the system, at least on the ones that are not $12 cheap Chinese junk off of taobao.
  And rather than suicide cords they generally have an IEC connector (standard rhombusy shaped computer power connector) on one end and a normal prong on the other.
  But you are right that it is dangerous and not recommended to anyone, especially the people that are not smart enough to take the appropriate concerns and considerations into mind before using it.
  
  I’d be super disappointed by owning a solar cell and not being able to use it during a power outage.
  
  That's a pretty standard issue with grid tied solar systems. You save a lot of money by not having batteries, but when the neighborhood goes down you go down with it.
  Plus you don't want to be pumping electricity into a downed power system, you could actually end up hurting a line man who is working on the system.
  However, and both of these issues can be resolved by adding in a generator and a whole house cut off system.
  In a power outage scenario, all you would have to do is throw the crossover switch and crank the generator. The generator would produce enough energy to reactivate the solar system.
  
  Yea with solar and a transfer switch you only need a small battery powered inverter to kick on the solar juice
  No need to run a generator when the sun is out
  
  I know enphase micro inverters have "anti-islamding" tech that disables output when they lose grid connection. I would expect any reputable manufacturer to also have the same tech.
  I don't expect that for backup generators, but the proper way for them is via a transfer switch. You can wire in a properly made cable instead of a suicide cable. The transfer switch would prevent the inlet connector to the house from ever being live. (And since it is a proper cord from the generator, there would be no exposed ends coming from it.)
  
  I agree on all points, but honestly I’d be pretty upset if I got a solar setup that didn’t work when the power was out haha
  
  There is still a solution for that, solar + battery. I would love to have one myself, but solar alone can be a bit expensive on its own.
  
  Sure, but this solution isn’t that.
  
  Yes it is if you read the article, that's exactly how he had it set up, and then you just have to manually move the battery where power is needed. You just can't use your wall outlets when there's an outage.
  
  A battery is ~$8300 - 10k. It's amazing how many places will try to charge $16k.
  
  48v 100ah battery with Bluetooth BMS built in is around 700$ on ali express... Slightly more direct from Amazon in the USA if you want it fast. Will store close to 5kwh which I guarantee you beats out this solution. Of course you'd still need to buy the grid sync inverter (available in many places) as well as a solar mppt charger and solar cells. Still will come below this cost - or you'll simply blow by the capacity of what you would have paid for this solution. But gotta have the old noggin on straight to do it yourself.
  
  If it was that easy to do it right, you'd have small businesses offering to do it for thousands, instead of the current going rates, which is tens of thousands.
  
  I don't disagree for sure, but at some point the price will become more competitive as other companies see dollar signs...
  
  A LOT are like that though. They just get you a smaller bill by sending power bank to the grid, rather than making you grid-independent.
  
  Yeah this is not an emergency backup at all. It’s an attempt to add some local storage to the grid and lower your bill. Everything about it is wrong for a power outage. I’m SURE they make this clear on the box!! ;D
  
  You're also likely to repeatedly trip whatever breaker that outlet is connected to unless it's a big one like you'd have for a central AC unit, but then you'd likely also know enough to have a proper transfer switch.
  
  This is only supplying like 3.5 amps, so not going to trip any breakers.
  
  Yes, but not at 800W
  
  Whole house generators have been around for a long time and they are usually wired, at the junction, into a few specific lines to essential appliances like refrigerators because it’s hard to produce as much current as the grid on your own, and you want to spend what you can generate on site wisely. Trying to power your whole house through some bedroom outlet is not going to work well. Your TV will sit there sucking some of that power listening for your remote to turn it on while your lights will flicker and your fridge will chug chug chug and not stay cold.
- Disqualified.
  Why?
  
  Because proprietary.
  
  You realise it's new tech and probably needs a proprietary connection?
  Did you disqualify ebikes too when they appeared?
  
  LOL, no, pretty much nothing ever "needs" a proprietary connection these days. Certainly not a fucking plain old power connection for a solar panel!
  
  It's not just for the panel though, it's for switching between feeding an outlet and supplying an appliance, looks pretty intelligent to me
  But I live in the EU, if they make it proprietary for no reason, they'll get told to fuck off rather quickly 😂
  
  There are a TON of standardized power connectors available that enable compatibility with off-the-shelf parts. Seriously, just look on Mouser or DigiKey. The only reason for proprietary connectors in this case is to try to obtain vendor lock-in.

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