I Bought a $1,000 Solar Setup

0:00 I just bought this $1,000 solar generator setup so the goals for this video find out what can you run for $1,000 get a sense for how long you can run your devices and appliances and figure out is a setup like this worth the money so what did I get for $11,000 well for starters two 200 W rear energy

0:21 solar panels which I'll be able to connect together for 400 W of solar next is an extension cable for more freedom of movement with my panels This plus the solar panels cost me $46 and finally the power station I went with one of the most popular options in this price range the blue ID ac180 I got

0:40 it on sale for $523 bringing my total for this entire setup to about $930 but I'm crazy y'all I also bought a second power station which should be arriving very soon so we'll be able to test out to $1,000 setups and compare them head-to-head setting everything up is incredibly easy you don't need any

0:59 tools I just connect these two solar panels in series by connecting the positive cable on one panel to the negative cable on the other connecting solar panels in series together adds their voltages so they each have a voltage of 23 volts connected together in series that's 23 + 23 equals a

1:14 combined 46 volts to make sure I don't damage my power station I'll quickly make sure that that voltage is within its solar voltage range which is 12 volt to 60 volts so I can safely connect these 400 watts of solar panels to my power station to do that I just connect the solar adapter cable which came with

1:34 my power station and then the extension cable I bought this power station uses dc7 99 connectors not xt60 carry this cable over to my power station I turn on the power station by pushing this button and then I just plug the solar cable right into the solar charging port and almost instantly the solar panel starts

1:53 solar charging it my 400 watts of solar panels are maxing out at a rate of around 261 Watts it's December and you might not be able to tell but there is some shade on the panels currently and there's an estimated 2.1 hours until it's fully charged it's literally that easy to set this all up now I'm just

2:10 going to wait an hour to see how much the solar panels charge the power [Music] station oh yeah look what just arrived it's the power station for the second $1,000 setup that I mentioned it's also a very popular option it's called the ecoflow Delta 3 plus and it cost me $79 why is it nearly $200 more than the

2:34 ac180 I'm not sure but we'll do lots of head-to-head testing to find out but because of the Delta 3 Plus's higher price tag you'd have to get four 100 watt solar panels to stay around a $11,000 budget for instance this four pack from ecoworthy is currently around $200 on Amazon which is just insane so I

2:53 pulled out 4100 wat panels I already owned plus a couple solar adapter cables with xt60 connectors the panels Plus the adapter cables currently cost around $300 last I checked which would bring the total for this second setup to about $1,010 it's been 1 hour of solar charging for the first setup

3:10 unfortunately the shade as you can probably see came in and covered the panels pretty quickly after I started but let's check it anyways the power station started at 55% now it's at 66% that's not great but in good sign I'd expect these two solar panels to be able to charge the power station from 0 to

3:27 100 in as little as 3 hours but before we find out what you can run for $1,000 and before we test these two setups head-to-head we need to talk about how to solar charge this second solar setup with four solar panels at once the easiest way to do this is to connect the first two solar panels in series and

3:47 then the last two solar panels in series because 100 wat solar panels tend to have a voltage of around 20 volts and a current of around 5 amps this creates two series strings each with a voltage of around 40 volts and a current of around 5 amps then I connect the solar adapter cables to each series

4:06 string now here's one of the cool things about the Delta 3 plus and maybe one of the reasons why it's $200 more than the ac180 it has not won but two solar charging ports on the back each with a 60 volt and 15 amp limit so we can plug both of our series strings into their own solar charging port on the back I

4:29 put everything out in the sun in the four solar panels started charging the power station at a rate of 290 Watts but here's the thing each of these solar charging ports can handle up to 500 watts so how would you connect these four solar panels to just one of the ports because that should be possible

4:46 Right unfortunately you can't just connect them all in series again around 20 volts per panel in series that's a combined 80 volts definitely exceeds the 60 volt limit on these ports you can't connect them all in parallel either again a current of around 5 amps per panel all connected in parallel that'd

5:02 be 20 amps and the product manual explicitly States the short circuit current shouldn't exceed 15 amps so we can't do all series we can't do all parallel we're going to have to do series parallel the easiest way to do this is to once again connect the first two and last two solar panels together

5:18 in series then you'd connect these two series strings in parallel and if your solar panels had a 10 amp series fuse rating like those e worthy panels that I mentioned earlier you'd grab a couple 10 amp solar fuses and connect them to the positive cable of each series string then You' pick up a pair of Branch

5:36 connectors and use them to connect your two series strings in parallel by connecting both of the positive wires to the branch connector so now you have one positive connector for all four solar panels and then do the same with the two negative wires so that you have one negative connector for all four solar

5:52 panels now they're all connected together they have a combined voltage of around 40 volts combined current of around 10 amps both of which are within in the Delta 3 Plus's current and voltage limits then I just connect the solar adapter cable like normal and now I'm able to plug all four of the solar

6:08 panels into one of the solar charging ports the sun was gone from my yard by that point in the day so I put everything out the next morning and the four solar panels started charging the Delta 3 plus at a rate of 360 Watts I also quickly compared that to the two 200 watt panels and they were outputting

6:22 390 Watts so they seem to have a little bit better output but I don't know if they're worth all the extra money I paid for them now it's time to find out what can you run with this size Power Station more importantly how long can you run your devices and appliances for and how did these two top options compare

6:40 head-to-head like why did the ecoflow Delta 3 plus cost me $200 more than the AC 180 so what can they run well they've both got continuous AC outputs of 1,800 Watts which essentially means they can run almost every device and Appliance in your home from small things like lights and Wi-Fi rouers to TVs and kitchen

7:00 fridges all the way up to power hungry appliances like microwaves window AC units electric stov tops and small electric space heaters everything you see here both of these power stations can run both of them also have a surge rating and what I'll call extra power modes which let you run devices over

7:18 1,00 Watts but they're really only intended for devices with heating elements like electric space heaters and stov tops what can't they run really it's just the big appliances in a house things like your own oven dryer or water heater but how long can they run your appliances for so they differ slightly

7:36 here the ac180 despite being cheaper has a slightly bigger battery 1,152 W hours compared to the Delta 3 Plus's 1,24 W hours they both give you these helpful time remaining estimates when you start running a device off them so I went around my house and plugged in a lot of devices and appliances and

7:53 recorded the runtime estimates and here are the results these estimates aren't that helpful when it comes to fridges so for a 12vt chest fridge and kitchen fridge I added in my estimates based on tests I've done for previous videos but I know what you're thinking these are solar setups so how does adding in the

8:09 solar panels affect these numbers it's obviously going to increase the run times but by how much there are so many variables that affect solar panel output like weather the angle of your panel how much shade it gets that we're going to have to use some rules of thumb for this but let's first see a real life example

8:24 using this small space heater estimated runtime off battery is a little under 2 hours so let's see how that changes when I plug in the solar panels I'm getting right around 300 watts of solar which has more than doubled my runtime to 4.1 hours but how do you know how long your device will run off of a $1,000 solar

8:42 setup one rule of thumb I like to use is that 100 watts of solar panels will produce around 300 to 500 W hours per day on average you can actually see this on maps of average solar production so the places where my viewers tend to live get around 3 to 5 kilowatt hours per kilowatt of solar scale that down to 100

9:01 watts of solar and you get 300 to 500 W hours per day and I got similar results in a previous video testing this so with 400 watts of solar panels in a sunny location where they won't get shaded that much you could expect to get between 12200 to 2,000 wat hours per day on average so if your device can run off

9:19 of the battery alone for a day or more then during stretches of sunny weather you could more or less run it off of a setup like this indefinitely because the solar panels will charge the power station up each day but once there's a stretch of Cloudy weather then the solar panels will produce very little energy

9:35 on those days and the power station will eventually run out of battery the final question we have to answer is why did the Delta 3 plus cost me nearly $200 more they have similar power output the ac180 has a little bit more battery capacity is the Delta 3 plus somehow more efficient there were two ways I

9:54 tested for quote unquote efficiency first I tested out each power station's self-c consumption by leaving the AC outlets on for 8 hours and I was quite surprised actually to find the both at 87% battery when I returned and we can break that down to an average power draw uh in terms of watts and see that

10:10 ecoflow is maybe a little bit more efficient but pretty similar self-c consumption from both of them second I tested out their AC efficiency by discharging them both with a heat gun and measuring how much energy I actually got from the battery for the ac10 it worked out to 84.8% of its total capacity and for the

10:27 Delta 3 plus it worked out to 88.1% % so it seems a little bit more efficient okay well can it charge faster we know it cons solar charge faster thanks to the 1,00 watt solar input rating which is double the AC 1880s which is great frankly the Delta 3 plus was noticeably quieter when I tried fast charging both

10:46 of them which was nice and it did charge from 0 to 100 about 12 minutes faster than the ac180 if that sort of thing matters to you but is there anything else yes now you may think I'm referring to some of the more technical differences like the Delta 3 Plus's faster switch over time on its ups or

11:03 how its battery has a greater cycle life but that's not what I'm talking about the other main difference that stood out to me which might tip the scills for some of you is an overlooked part of the ecoflow app and I'm not talking about run-of-the-mill stuff like I don't know having more control over charging speed

11:19 or something like that I'm talking about these operating modes that let you use the Delta 3+ in novel ways compared to other brands of power stations time of use mode let you add in your rate plan so I just input an example one where energy is a lot more expensive from 4 to 900 p.m. and then it will optimize the

11:38 time of day it charges the battery based on your electricity rates I actually tried a Jerry rigged form of this in a previous video and it can potentially save you money on your power bill depending on your rate plan I think self-powered mode is even cooler though so you set your backup Reserve which is

11:55 the percentage at which the battery stops discharging and it starts pass passing through grid power so I just set it to 20% Which means when the battery is above 20% Then the power station only charges and uses solar power this essentially turns your solar setup into a small version of the grid tide systems

12:15 that people get professionally installed in their homes it could make it easier to solar power a small space like a room and I plan to experiment with it in future videos these modes are both meant for the Delta 3 plus to be plugged into the wall so they turn a solar generator setup something that up until now has

12:33 basically been an occasional use sort of thing into something that you might use on a daily basis to lower your power bill and use more renewable energy and I think that is very cool those are the main differences I spotted between these two power stations so let me know if you think these solar setups are worth

12:53 $1,000 and which one you liked better links to all the parts for both setups will be in the description below thanks for watching