Portable Residential Batteries
Part III of a series on Residential Batteries
Intro
This note is part of a series on residential batteries. Part I provides some context on the new landscape, while Part II provides a list vendors and products. This post dwells a bit on the new trend of using portable batteries in residences.
As usual, I’m writing to learn more of a topic. Additions, corrections, feedback are always very appreciated.
Growing up a New Market
Several vendors have recognized the potential of consumer-owned electrical assets and are creating new products to leverage these opportunities. This is happening in multiple countries; I’ve seen it reported in European articles (Germany and the UK in particular) and also in the USA.
In this note I cover Anker and Ecoflow. Both companies have core expertise in batteries and chargers and are expanding from there into additional consumer-owned energy assets. Both vendors also have “traditional” residential stationary batteries, which I mentioned in Part II, but here I want to go into more detail on how they are leveraging portable products.
Anker
Anker is a very well known brand in mobile charging; its chargers, cables, and backup batteries are prevalent (we own several). Anker has been expanding from that core into new areas, including portable coolers, solar panels, inverters, and larger portable batteries, expansions and combinations. All these products are marketed under a new brand, Anker Solix, using a common modular architecture and LFP batteries.
Ecoflow
Ecoflow has a set of products similar to those of Anker. They seem to be less strong in some areas though they have additional powered appliances, including portable air coolers and, in some markets, they also have a robotic lawn mower (one of the founders of Ecoflow came from the drone company DJI).
Consumer-Owned Electrical Assets
Anker and Ecoflow recognize the potential of consumer-owned electrical assets. They now have
Portable Batteries that can be used to power AC-connected appliances
Modular Batteries that can be used to expand the capacity of these batteries
Portable Inverters that can be connected to Solar Panels
Solar Panels that are portable and foldable, plus some that can be hung in balconies
Appliances like coolers and A/C that are all-in-one appliance, battery and optional solar inverter
Home “Power Panels” that can be used to inject energy from these portable batteries behind the main grid panel.
Scenarios
The above products can be used in some new scenarios.
Solar Power
Here is a picture of an Anker Solix bundle that includes some portable Solar Panels (2, foldable), a “Solar Generator” (inverter with some basic battery), and an “expansion battery” (2.5kWh).
Ecoflow has similar solutions.
You can use this setup while camping, say to charge your battery-powered cooler, or for resilience, or whatever.
Portable (Smart and Expandable) Batteries
The portable solutions can also be used inside the house. Here is an example, an Anker Solix FB3800, just using an AC outlet to charge the battery.
These base FB3800 has a capacity of 3.8kWh but an expansion can add 3.8kWh more, all the way to 53.8kWh, while delivering 6kW. Any electrical load connected to the AC outlets in a FB3800 will be served from the grid or from the battery. The unit can switch to the battery when the grid is unavailable, or when the price of grid energy is too high. The warranty is 10 years or 3000 cycles.
The solution is like the old-style UPS battery packs… just with much larger capacity and a smarter device.
The maximum size of the FB3800 allows it to be used in additional scenarios…
Whole (or Partial) House Backup… or Time-Shifting
With a sufficiently large battery and with enough power, the next question is whether it can be used to serve the whole house, or some subset of outlets. These are the scenarios that Anker provides for the FB3800 (I believe EcoFlow has equivalent modes):
From the right:
The rightmost scenario corresponds a plain “power station” - just connect your AC loads to the FB3800, which will manage the source, grid or battery, depending on availability, or time-shifting cost (TOU rates). This is the scenario from the photo above, the one with the battery in the living room.
Second from the right is a F3800 serving some essential loads with a manual transfer switch for resilience. The power to those loads (e.g. A/C, refrigerator, etc) will turn off when the grid goes down but just flip the switch and the power comes back on.
The last two use the “Home Power System” component to do either time-shifting or resilience automatically,
The diagram below from Anker shows the set-up using the Home Power System, with or without an essential loads subpanel. As the diagram shows, the home panel unit is downstream from the main panel, roughly behaving as “just a subpanel”, except that the Home Power System can choose when to transfer based on the price of the electricity, and that there is an automatic transfer switch.
From a permitting perspective, I think all this means you may need a permit from the city to approve the subpanel but nothing more than that; unlike a stationary battery that requires extra permits. It also should mean a relatively cheap bill from the electrician.
The EcoFlow equivalent links are these portable units and their “Smart Home Panel”. This is the Ecoflow “diagram” also showing some appliances and a couple of portable batteries.
Europe is Different
The regulation in Europe is different than in the US and I believe the battery can also provide power to the house directly, see this article on DIY solar power. The set-up is: balcony solar panels, connected to a (EcoFlow in the picture) inverter that has a battery, connected to the house. If you have access to the NYTimes, check this article.
Parting Thoughts
Companies like Anker and Ecoflow are disruptors. If the price of their offerings is right and their quality is high, these companies are going to introduce more people into the values of electricity (an electric cooler) and of consumer-owned energy resources.
Solutions like the portable generators make it easier to implement the concept of Batteries-First to provide time-of-use shifting and resilience. Some portable solar panels, in the garden or while camping, or in a balcony, adds the ability to generate your own solar power.
Some customers will want larger installations, and both companies already have large stationary batteries. Anker has also announced they will sell micro-inverters and EV chargers later this year.
These companies are moving very fast and this area will continue to evolve quickly. We will see how it looks in the next years but I strongly believe that the future will have more consumer-owned energy assets!
We own the Ecoflow.