We currently have whole home solar with battery backup. We are planning on moving and will eventually get whole home solar again, but want something interim incase of power outages.

I know nothing about the smaller systems available.
I don't really want to spend more than $5k since this will be temporary, and is $5k doable?
looking at maybe spending a little more for a EcoFlow Delta Pro? worth it?

EcoFlow seems to be the best. I have been researching for 6 months or so.

Pecron for the biggest bang for the $$$. Wait for a sale and then you can put together a 5kWH sysem for under $2k, 8kWH for under $3k.

Memorial Day sales last year were excellent.

never understood calling a battery pack a 'generator'.

No kidding!

Bluetti is another worth looking at.

https://www.bluettipower.com/

I have been pleased with my ecoflow delta 2. I have two of them. One is dedicated to my CPAP and the other I have set up on my Network equipment. I need to get some solar pannels for both of them soon.

Build your own, that way it can be serviced and upgraded if you need to.

100 ah lipo4 battery $251 bucks
1000 watt inverter 179
mppt solar charger 67
state of charge meter 40
120 volt charger 30-120 depending on how much you want to use it to charge ( better quality and reliable and faster charging costs more )

this gives you a 1300 wh battery and everything needed for under 600, less that the 1000 wh jackery which costs 1k even. and you can expand it with another battery at any time and still be cheaper than the jackery.

edit just looked at the ecoflow delta, its not a bad deal at all. Similar cost, expandable and bigger inverter

Edit 2, I am kind of curious how the ecoflow gets a 1800 w inverter to run. unless thats just surge, which a 1000 watt inverter can do. Its above what most would recommend the max discharge rate of a 12 volt lifepo4 battery is.

I would build my own. For $5k I would look at two EG4 48v 5kwh batteries and an EG4 inverter/charge controller. You can mount them on a lawn cart or hand truck if you want to keep it mobile. Then mix it with enough panels to cover your needs.

I'm using Eg4 batteries and inverters for my whole home system. I've got 30kwh of batteries and two 6000xp inverters currently.

IMO it's a reasonable use of the term as long as it's capable of taking solar input and providing useable power output.

I have a fair bit of Bluetti product.

AC200P - Used for powering my travel trailer.  Love this thing, I boondock all the time and never have issues, don't even bring the gas-powered generator anymore.

Dual AC300+B300 systems - allows 240V split phase bonding, which will power my well pump/house in the event of a grid down scenario.  My whole home Honeywell generator runs on natural gas, so only a temporary solution if shit goes completely sideways.

Bunch of their panels that come with the packages.

Very happy with their products, simple to use, stout, very capable.

Yep.

Have a  Pecron E1500lfp
sitting next to me right now. On sale for $799 is not a bad deal, I paid a little less than that but not more than $100

Recommend Professor Hobo on YouTube for reviews

Take a look at an Anker Solix f3800. 120/240 split phase. 6000w. 3840Wh battery which is expandible. Some pretty good reviews on You Tube.

I’ve been very pleased with my EcoFlow Delta 2 with Delta Max extra battery for about 3,000wh. In a power outage the other day I was able to log into the cameras and see I had power while my neighbor was in the dark.

If I had $5k to spend, I would probably do what Jaqufrost suggested and get a couple of server rack batteries and an EG4 all in one.

That said, when the Memorial Day sales hit, the Delta Pro will be the easy button.

Bluetti is what I have.  Very happy with it.  They have multiple options and sizes.

A couple of my thoughts on Build vs Buy.

For anything 2kw and below, I would buy. You have a warranty, and less individual components, so it's more mobile. The real factor FOR ME, is ease and speed of charging. A lot of people that advocate home built systems don't take into account the cost the anything more than a trickle charger, or maybe they're okay with that. A chargeverter or all in one unit is going to start out at around $350 and only go up. An EcoFlow Delta 2 or similar Bluetti 1kw can routinely be found for about $600/$650.

For 2kw to 5kw, it's a wash on Build Vs Buy and dependent on your specific needs and wants. Cheaper systems like the Pecron are great, if you understand and can live with their limitations. Heck, the Anker unit mentioned above is $3,000 right now and while expensive, it offers 240v right away, no second unit and is inder $1.00/kw, which used to be the norm. Building a handtruck out of a EG4 all in one and 48v, 100ah battery is also a great option and anyone interested should check out Will Prowse's great videos. I would say that even at this size, mobility could be a factor for some.

Over 5kw and the current options through Ecoflow/Jackery/Bluetti/Goal Zero are all uber expensive compared to building a system out. For now. And here is where individual components come into play as a real positive. If you spend $6,000.00 at Signature Solar, you can swap out the charge controller/inverter or diagnose a bad battery out of the battery bank. If you spend $5,000 on the EcoFlow Delta Ultra and something goes down, it all goes down.

Anyway, those are my few thoughts on the matter.

Make sure you figure out what solar panels you want to use with the generator before you buy the generator.

A lot of cheap ones have very low input voltage, so that may limit the amount of panels you can hook up.


Build your own is probably the best right now as you can get a EG4 6000XP and 5 KWh of batteries for around 2.6K now which beats the hell out of anything that is pre-packaged.

You really need two 5kwh batteries to support the amount of power the 6000xp can put out.

The selection also involves how much "portability" do you want. Do you want to be able to pack everything up into a car and set up camp someplace else and have power? How much power do you want to have available at any one given time?

I've used multiple brands (and sizes) of portable power stations. There's one (Bioenno?) I've had since 2017 that is still going strong. It and the ONN ones that I got at Walmart on clearance for $25 are about 250Wh and are li-ion cylindrical cells. The Pecron and EcoFlow units that I have are LiFePO4 cells and should last a lot longer than the Li-ion cylindrical cells units. The Pecron units (600 and 1500) have higher solar input charging capabilities than other brands in that capacity range. The EcoFlow has a much better app to be able to control things like charge rate (dialing down the charge rate some can help extend battery life). Some of the larger units now can let you daisy-chain more batteries to extend your run time. Some of the biggest ones are big and heavy enough to need to be on wheels. They are also starting to get to whole-house backup capability and even 220V. I may look into those once I get back into a house.

A similar discussion can be had on the solar panel side. "Transportable" vs portable vs fixed-location, etc. I've got a folding 600W "portable" that weighs 28lbs and is roughly 6ftx6ft. It puts out the power but it is definitely a behemoth and not something I would want to lug very far.

Thanks for bringing up connectivity Plane. In the event of one of the many possible disasters that might befall us, do we really want to risk having any of our critical infrastructure connected via an app?? Follow me on this, we have all seen how well Microsoft updates go on our computers, or Android undates go on our phones. Sometimes they screw the pooch and have to do patches to fix their mistakes. Now most of these solar generators are made in China (not our choice, it's just how the cookie crumbles). Their apps are all created with backdoor provided to the CCP because thats how they roll. So in the event that there was conflict, you have to believe that one of their lines of defense would be to shut down as many connected devices as possible by doing an update and bricking the device.

Why would we willingly have apps or connectivity on things that we are going to need at a critical moment?? Shouldn't we want the devices that are air gapped from everything?

This is one of the reasons that I chose the Pecron E600LFP and the E2000LFP.

+100%

It's a battery bank, usually with a built in inverter. Period.

A solar panel is a solar panel. Hell, it's more of a "generator" than the battery bank.

I went with Ecoflow delta pro. Wanted something for power outages to keep the fridge and freezer going since I’m in hurricane territory. Slowly started expanding it so I can also run a window unit. I’m up to two delta pros with two extra batteries. I should be able to run those indefinitely with the solar panels I have. The only down fall of the delta pros is the low input of Solar allowed at 1600 watts. Ecoflow has an eBay store with refurbished units at a hood discount.

Yeah, it's also why I shut all that connectivity crap off on my units. One of them came from the factory wanting to connect to my Wifi so ET could phone home. Yeah, no. Not now, not ever. The Ecoflow unit didn't do that. I connected to it via Bluetooth to adjust the charging rate then shut off the Bluetooth from the menu. There is no legitimate reason why a portable battery needs to connect to the internet.