You see. The trick is to take that big battery to someone else home to recharge or at work so its getting charged up for free during the low cost times.
When I was a poor student I used to charge a similar contraption that I DIYed on the train (there are sockets there), so I could save on the power bill
@@BryanTorokwell if you are business is going to get upset over you charging 13 cents of electricity, then you probably don't want to be working there anyway. And that's what 1,000 Watts cost. That's about 20 lb. Now if you're rolling 45 lb of batteries into work to get 39 cents worth of electricity 5 days a week.. Well the same thing really applies.
This is why solar kicks ass... You can spend $1,000 on panels for your roof that charge the battery, then never pay a bill again if you have a big enough battery.
It may not save you money on energy cost, but if there's a power outage it'll still save you the cost of replacing the food... which I've had to do 3x in the last 5 months.
So this is my use case. I have a 1 KW hour battery that will keep the refrigerator and freezer going until the next day after the disaster when I can start up my propane generator. I have enough solar panels to charge about 900 watts per day. That's enough to run the refrigerator 1 hour per 3 hours and keep it going for about 12 hours. Or to charge my devices or to keep a small fan going or to keep a small massage table pad going or to provide light in areas away from the lights I have plugged into my generator. I use propane because there's almost no maintenance and the tank of propane will stay good indefinitely.
Oh yes and twice this year it has saved me at least $200 worth of food. I can also charged the battery at my house and then take it over to a friend's house who has lost power and give them power for their refrigerator or freezer.
@@rogerwilco2 areas that get severe thunderstorms, derechos, tornados, and hurricanes, and ice storms, really bad floods (8 ft plus) So basically places that are within 100 mi from the coast, tornado alley, near rivers, the lee side of mountain ranges, areas that have seen rapid population growth, areas that see forest fires, areas with long transmission lines from power generation sites. It's actually more where is this remarkable place you live that doesn't meet one of those criteria.
One thing you didn't realize is probably the power loss by converting the energy from AC to DC and then DC to AC. That's why in some scenarios this setup up does not make sense at all. There's also power loss from just the battery charging itself, so there's enough inefficiencies there. Plus, one of the worst items to test this on is a fridge because they already run pretty lean and low on power once it's up an running with enough thermal mass inside. This would have been better to test on things that consume significantly more power ~100W or more and have to stay on all the time. Your fridge not only consumes less than that when running, but also does not run full tilt all the time.
The thing you're not seeing is that the grid power is far less efficient at peak time. In some cases as much as half the efficiency.The grid has to start up generators to cover the extra load usually CCGT plants, but CCGT have about half the efficiency for the first hour or two. The grid operators are actually installing huge grid batteries to handle this, the big brother of this box.
Unfortunately, the fridge is about as good as it gets for running on rechargeable battery power. Heavier loads will overload the battery circuits, and higher kWH means paying more for higher capacity batteries. What you'd really want this for is a heat pump, but that's also the hardest and most expensive to run on a personal grid. The economics just don't make sense on a single-household scale. Say you run 1500w worth of appliances, peak-shaving five hours per day: even if you're saving 50c per kWH by peak-shaving, that's only saving you $3.75/day. It'd take easily half a decade to recoup the cost of the setup, before you even start to consider battery degradation. Same issue with personal-scale solar. You just can't beat the economies of scale (and government subsidy) that utilities benefit from. It's cool tech, and I hope it improves. Right now, the cost doesn't make sense unless you're a hobbyist or have unreliable power. When you take into account the environmental impact of battery production, it's hard to even claim it's better for the environment than improving efficiency of existing power grids.
I have this Anker C800 as well. Be careful with it when the battery depletes, when you start charging it again it does NOT return power to the AC plugs. You have to manually turn the inverter on.
So it looks like this is not really worth it to do, however, if you could somehow wire the power station up to charge by solar, then it probably would make sense.
On the scale of a single refridgerator, the answer is no it's not worth it. But more efficient equipment on a whole house system is a different question. You also have the added benefit of having a backup for when the electricity goes out.
Here in NL this feature is standard if you have a home battery. Here you can get a "dynamic" contract with prices defined per hour. But those are available one day ahead. So you need a smart component to save €€, based on if you buy the power for the grid or take it from the solar panels. If you do it right you can save like 30-50% of you energy bill. And that without solar power (Winter/clouds ). And calculate the loss of loading and discharging the battery. Depending on the inverter quality it can be between 85%-95% so you need to add a 10% loss in your calculation.
Solar is the way to recharge and get it off the grid entirely or at least getting the bulk of the energy via solar. A 200w panel on this fridge would change that spread sheet entirely. 200 watt panels are about $100 right now
Just a hint but those smart plugs draw 3-5watts alone. Also add a small 50w ish solar panel to that battery use the app to limit A/C charging to 70% and let solar top off and base the numbers off a 1 week time line
The problem is the Power stations idle power usage. To get the most out of the cheaper power price, you would want to run multiple things during the increase $ time block as long as the power stations capacity is enough to run everything without needing charging during that time. Some people with get multiple smaller power stations - one for the fridge, one for router, computer, tv etc. The problem is each power station is using 1- 3% of its battery capacity per hour just being on. Having 3 power stations would be using %6 per hour VS 1 power station just using 2% per hour.
Also part of the problem is you are running something small like the fridge? If you want to make a dent in your power bill during the summer figure out how to run all the A. C. That the house needs? But it will still cost you a ton of money. But that is what I wish I could run and save money the A. C.
Rather than trying to time the exact peak hours, perhaps run the max on battery, only charging during off peak times. If it only takes 2 hours to charge, 8 to 10 hours off-grid should be beneficial. I like your approach and I have both the Anker C1000 and smart plugs as well as Kasa control over the plug. I have to interface the Bluetooth reading of the battery feedback and intelligently control the plug. Thanks for the project ideas!!!
If you're running solar power this might make sense otherwise it doesn't because the more you deplete the battery the more you're cycling the battery and the faster you're wearing the battery out so you're better off only using battery power when you absolutely have to
Enjoyed the video. I considered this test but our electricity is pretty low to where you live. It would be interesting to see the increase in savings if you used solar panels to recharge your anker unit vs using grid power. If you are using grid power either way during peak and non peak times, you still are using grid power , so 1kw of grid power to charge unit vs 1kw of solar power to charge unit, for example.
Thanks for the realistic conclusion. I wish there is a device that can get the AC energy from these power stations and injected back to your house without the need of solar and grid tie inverters. That way you can at least offset a bigger portion of your overall consumption during those peak times
Yes. Because the fridge only draws 55 watts, the savings from shifting the demand is small, and doesn't pay for the power station. If you had a plugin device that drew hundreds of watts, your savings would be much larger and the payback period would be reasonable.
A good ROI calculation would also involve the MTBF of the added components and the effect of the added heat generated by the power unit (typically bad because of the need to cool the area where the power unit is kept).
Btw, I take a similar approach with a Jackery. But instead I plug appliance that’s always on (modem, WiFi). I charge it at the lower rate hours 10pm to 5am. Then turn off the switch during daytime (more expensive)
That's not out smarting the power company, hold my beer. I purchased a sub $25K Chinese EV with V2L. I charge at night 20kwh for FREE, 7am switch on V2L via a change over switch, use about 7kwh from 20kwh of car battery night charge, use 13kwh for car journeys during day, and repeat. I am retired and live in New Zealand. I save about $800 on electricity, and $3,000 on fuel and vehicle maintenance. Note fuel here is $7 a US gallon.
How do you get electricity to charge your car for free? Is that some sort of government subsidy to encourage EV use? As for the charging, what voltage and current do you need to power the charger.
Anytime you invert AC to DC or DC to AC you will lose energy! Plus the Power Station uses energy itself just to be ON! My peak 4-8PM is 37 cents and Midnight - 6AM is 2.2 cents.
i did the same test on my fridge. SCE tou prime rates. pretty much just broke even. but, if one was to do that they would have a back up on their fridge for when a power outage might happen. the reason it doesn't work for a fridge is because the inverter has to stay on constantly. i moved it to my dishwasher and - with a smart plug - it only charges and passes electricity through from the grid during lower cost times. it uses the battery when the costs are higher. the difference is that we turn on the ac outlet of the solar generator manually every time we use it instead of leaving the inverter on constantly and it is programmed to turn off the inverter automatically after 30 minutes of non use. we used to only run the dishwasher when the rates were low, but my wife wanted to be able to use it whenever she wants and this allows us to do that without using higher cost energy. it is slightly higher because of conversion losses and idle battery drain but the convenience is worth it to us. we didn't buy the thing to try and save money on tou rates but wanted something to run our fridge in case of power outage and use as portable energy source. this way, though, it doesn't just sit around waiting to be used once a year for a 2 hr. power outage but, instead gets used regularly which is better for the battery health.
I tried the same experiment and came to the same conclusion that it takes too long to break even although I have portable power stations located throughout the house to keep critical devices powered in the event of a power failure. Most notably the fridge and freezer, internet equipment, NAS, and my entire home office.
As a couple of other folks pointed out you need to stack benefits, like avoided food spoilage. But when my area had time of use rates the more effective savings were actions like time-shifting your energy use, like washing clothes, dishes, and bodies (Showers) after the price drops back down for water heating, cloths drying, etc. (If you do this without electric interlocks using hot water right before the price goes up could result in reheating your hot water tank at the higher prices). And looking at ways to make similar shifts in other large energy-use activities, like air-conditioning, dehumidification, cooking, … .
To be fair, those smart plugs were not 'engineered' for use with that specific power unit. They were designed for typical wall sockets, which are oriented vertically relative to each other, rather than the horizontal configuration of the power unit. Your critique could just as easily be turned around to ask why the power unit wasn't properly engineered for that specific smart plug.
i got a 12v dc fridge, the largest size they make for about 88 bucks. i think 55liters. added al foil tape to reduce ambient IR absorption, and then hacked it to run on 25v from a new usbc pd3.1 gan power supply. it uses 130wh/day, so little power consumption that its actually saving me money on my fridge because the main fridge isnt being opened so often and loosing all its cold air each time. and theres more room in the fridge. theres also some knock on benifits to lower ac cost in the summer. idk seems more practical and more utility. the power consumption for refrence is less than one of those smart meters lol
Some power stations have the grid control included in the controls available through the app. Only saves on the smart plug, but ir you already have the power station for other reasons, you only have to save on the power cost arbitrage.
If you have an electric hot water heater, turning that off during certain periods of the day, and then running it at night and running it to a hotter temperature and or adding a mixing valve (One way to expand "capacity" of a hot water heater is to increase the temperature and then use a mixing valve.) If you are not home in the day, it can run then at night on cheaper electric.
I liked your science, you did an excellent job presenting the information. edit - I'm curious how the numbers would work if you only ran the fridge during the lower rate periods and had the smart plug disconnect the fridge for the 4 hour peak period. I think a well insulated fridge would not lose to much temperature over 4 hours.
I use my power banks during peak times mainly for my power-hungry technology. And I use portable/flexible solar panels to recharge the power banks. Free energy.
I totally expected that to pan out differently, bummer! Thanks for doing the work so I don't have to 😆 BTW, Method makes arguably the best stainless steel cleaner and the bottle lasts a VERY long time 😉
A lot of people have a power station for other reasons, and if they were to use them for 'other reasons' were on weekends for recreational camping, or for emergency power, then your suggestion makes more sense. The power station consumes a lot of power for the inverter. If your frig is DC, that I gess would be a huge saving. A smaller, or optimally-sized inverter will make a big difference. I recently saw a review for a power station with a 2500Watt inverter and the loss was 20% over a 10 hour period. So, I guess the opportunity is there for a smaller 'multifuel' frig, but those tend to be less efficient. There are exceptions though.
always remember that the inverter that are on these power supplies take power to convert dc to ac. that is why you see an increase in usage in this case. currently my ecoflow ultra pro, runs my tv's and my home computer system. and i have set it to use 50% of the battery before it will start to charge from the grid. on days like today where it is cloudy my panels are not going to be enough to get it to charge. I'm still testing its limits as i just got it this past month, this summer will be interesting as i will be able to power more with it.
And exactly what would that accomplish? Power companies do not have unlimited electrical capacity. They can, and will, meet demand when they can. But at a certain level, they either don't have the electricity to give or they are limited by the infrastructure to carry that electricity.
@@zsi You might want to rethink your opinion after researching the truth of what PG&E (for example) has done and not done to control the availability and price of electricity.
One thing you should be aware of if you were to do this is that those smart plugs may have lower load ratings than the receptacle they're plugged into and a power station can potentially draw more current (to charge) than the plug can (safely) provide. Just make sure you match them up once way or another so you don't risk starting a fire the the smart plug overheats.
It would be interesting to adjust the calculations to assume you drain the battery almost completely before the switch turns on - to see the theoretical maximum benefit if you plug in as much stuff into it as possible. Fridges don't really use much power once they reach temperature so that probably hurt the calculation a lot. I would try lamps and tv/media center and laptops/PC if possible.
The video has an interesting concept for a quick work around. My not very extremely well thought out work around for this problem could be what if you could plug the fridge into a splitter which would be very dangerous to make. 1 split plugs into the smart plug in the wall and the other half of the split plugs into the power bank smart plug. You can time which end of the split draws power using the smart plugs as long as that doesn't also get dangerous. The only loss I could see is whatever the power bank uses when it runs and charges. Then again a fridge doesn't use all that much energy but the perfect appliance could maximize the savings. Hey this isn't a bad idea.
Saving money on electricity costs by manipulating the time of use depends entirely on your prices at each time of use. Little price difference -little saving. Which as you demonstrate may not cover the energy lost in the storage and recovery. Where I live (UK) the low rate is always 1/3 of the main rate so there is a big saving to be had. I'm looking into a system with possibly 15 - 20 KWh of storage. That way I can draw all my daily consumption at low rate and use it at peak rate times.
I did the same thing with the C1000 and a smart plug running my office computers. I then added one, then two, and now 6 100w solar panels. My C1000 is now only connected to AC power from 11pm to 4am. Does it pay for itself? Probably not in my lifetime but I don't pay peak prices and (at least try to) stay under my baseline allowance because PG&E finds a way to charge you more anyway they can...
Peak shaving I believe refers to really big commercial users of power who get charged extra for using more that their contracted usage and the batterys help reduce those peaks
You're not outsmarting the power company. They offer lower rates at off-peak times to ENCOURAGE exactly what you're doing. A WIN-WIN if you think about it.
The trick here is you dont need the power bank, just a basic timer. With enough thermal mass like 2- liters of frozen water in your freezer you can cool your fridge for 3 hours with a power outage as long as you can cycle in 4 hours after words you can cheat alittle bit but it takes energy to get energy so really its penny wise or penny foolish depending on the situation.
The Anker 767- will run the fridge 24/7 if connected to solar all of the electricity cost for the fridge. It’s a better way to shave money off of your electric bill because the solar and the fridge match each other almost perfectly 600 watts of solar will run a large fridge for ever! but cloudy days either require more solar or something like a 10 kW battery
A lot of you are suggesting connecting to a solar panel to keep the battery charged. Think about it. It's a refrigerator. Do you really want wires hanging off the ceiling/walls, or running across the floor? Maybe doing it if your device was on an outside wall.
I do not recommend using this with fridge and freezers because of how the pump works, it can wear out the battery quickly if this is always in use. Fridge also use very little power. This however is a good backup power solution if there are frequent power outages and other problems of that nature. But it would be better to use hardware that is not internet dependent. Because the internet goes out in a massive power outages and then nothing works.
Really useful info. I guess there will only be a potential for $$ saving if your power source includes solar PV - as a way of stretching the use of PV power this would be excellent. My other comment would be that if I were to build this DIY I would aim for an inverter that could comfortably support the typical running load of maybe a few hundred watts but use a LF inverter design that could run a 300% or more overload for a few secs during motor startup You want the most efficient inverter at typical power draw and an over-specc'd design will not do that..
I have heard of electric vans doing this so when they return to the yard its peak time so sell everything left on thier battery and they then recharge at the cheapest time ready for work the next day
In Ontario Canada, Hydro One has a few different power plan options. 2 of the major ones are: "Time-of-Use" which has a On-Peak, Mid-Peak and Off-Peak prices, and also offer a "Ultra-Low Overnight" plan. So I've been curious what a return-on-investment would be like to charge up a battery bank overnight at the very low rate and have it discharge during the day.
Savings are more of you charge with a simple 100w panel or even 200 everyday and it'll run 24/7 and not use grid dramatically increasing savings but also increase payback time for panels and cabling.
Several things here first you're using a pretty expensive power bank you can buy an EB3A for about 150 bucks and it will handle 600 Watts just be careful it's only about $219 watt hours effective capacity so you need to make sure that has enough capacity to run your device until the rate changes back to a lower rate that means about 4 hours for a fridge worst case scenario My problem is I need 6 hours which would probably be enough I would have to test it My high peak is 4:30 to 10:30 and that's year round in the winter time they add an additional high peak window which I believe is 6:30 to 9:00 in the morning so I would need to set up to schedulings for on and off You did notice the increase in power consumption don't even think of attempting to running off DC power because the DC converter in these boxes is less efficient than the AC converter so you're better off using AC power except for USB USB is very efficient Now something to consider you can run multiple fridges off that unit so for example I have a fridge and four freezers that big box you have could probably run all five and do it for 6 hours while you're 12 watt overhead will be about the same so the less you run off that box the less you're going to save because you're eating it up with the operating cost of the box itself so if you add more things to the box without going past your time limit which for you is 5 hours then you'll maximize your savings by spreading out that 12 watts over more savings Your biggest problem however is going to be the box itself wear and tear on the box itself is huge and these companies don't like warrantying these boxes usually it's the cooling fan that fails and then of course the unit safety's itself at least that's my experience they're just not really meant for continuous duty cycles like this you would really need to design your own little off-grid set up for it and you'd pay a lot less than 700 bucks Where I am you can choose whether to have one rate for power or time of use I chose time of use because my big monsters of power consumption water heater electric dryer and electric car are all things where I can control when they run What were essentially doing is time shifting power without even trying to initiate any kind of cost savings simply time-shifting power reduce my electric bill 50 bucks a month My Nissan leaf I can actually program it and tell it don't turn on until 10:30 so when I get home and plug the car in it doesn't charge it just sits there and waits until 10:30 when the price of power goes down and then it turns on and starts charging Because of the hard water we have we do not run the hot water heater continuously I have a small 7 gallon unit under the sink that gives us 24/7 hot water it cost $3 a month to run Yes I have a meter on it so I know exactly what it cost to run it the big 50 gallon water heater I only turn that on when we need it and only for 1 hour if I ran it continuously I would destroy the elements in less than a month by only turning it on when we need it I get about two and a half 3 years out of the elements Yes we have very very hard water The same with the clothes dryer I simply turn it on only during off peak time so my sister knows that you can't start the dryer if it's past 3:30 because it takes 1 hour to complete a cycle and that would take you past 4:30 l otherwise you just leave the clothes in the dryer until 10:30 and then hit the start button Just doing that kind of thing reduced my power bill by $50 a month As far as what you're trying to do which is essentially time shifting power consumption it doesn't work that great on a small scale like that these battery boxes are too expensive and don't last long enough do not even think of trying this for all you people at home completely abandon any thought of trying this unless at a minimum you're using lithium iron phosphate batteries I have had a lithium ion or lithium polymer battery light off in my house yep it was shooting out little hand grenades of cells going off and I had to grab that thing rip the wires out of it and chuck it out into the front yard almost lost my house to one of those So now indoors only lithium iron phosphate is allowed to be plugged in continuously This would never have an ROI with anything but that the Am iron phosphate you don't have enough charge cycles on all of them ion or lithium polymer to ever recoup your costs However in general you need to maximize the power that your drawing from the box in order to spread the boxes own power consumption over time plus you're converting power twice You're converting power by charging the box and then converting power again by running your device so you're savings has to be large enough to account for that Basically you can only use boxes that have a built-in charger so they can charge fast and you need to figure out how many hours you need to run divide that by your effective capacity not the rated capacity of your box for example the EB3A is rated for 291 hours but you effectively only get about 220 watt hours out of it My window is 6 hours which means I can only draw about 40 watts from the box because 40 * 6 is 241 hours so more like 36 watt hours I use it more for preserving equipment we have very poor power here lots of surges and browns and lots of momentary power outages so pretty much everything is on a UPS
This is cool but doesnt seem practical. The cost of just one of those things offsets any price loss from the power company over months of use-age. Let alone having to buy multiple for different places in the house that use the most power.
It might actually be practical for him to do this if he lives in the high price area where that would save him 21 cents a day? If he were to run five equivalent loads off of that device assuming he would still get 5 hours of runtime that's $1 per day or $365 per year The ROI is 2 years That's actually not bad that's a really good ROI in fact His problem is he's only running the fridge on it he needs to also plug the freezer into it and a few other things into it
There is also an additional benefit depending on where you live so if you have poor power where you live if you could break even with an ROI on the box itself then basically you have a free UPS which is very nice when the power goes out or in my case where the power flickers surges and browns an awful lot like literally daily I have 14 UPSs in my house just because otherwise the power would fry all my stuff The core problem is if you maximize the box your ROI is two or three years which is really not bad The question is will that box last 3 years? The battery yes if it's a lithium-iron phosphate battery that battery will last 10 or 15 years The problem is the electronics in the box itself the inverter of the cooling system the BMS will those last typically these boxes really aren't made for continuous duty cycle and those components aren't the best quality components My EB3A boxes are very nice except the damn cooling fan always fails on them
Yes yes and yes.. I do this with my EV. I go to a free charger - fill it up and then connect the house to it - 74Kwh for free lasts me a week and a half.I also do this every day with a ac200l and 2 large batteries
well if u attached the power station to a bigger load, so maybe combining the frige, a tv and maybe a fan or two the inverter would've probably been more efficient and the setup would've been more money saving
The real way to outsmart the power company is to put magic rectangles on your roof and much bigger boxes like this in your garage or basement. Grid-optional solar PV + LFP energy storage. I just had a $0.92 bill in Michigan.
Before investing a heap of money into something like this talk to your electricity retailer and see if they offer flat rate tarriffs so that you don't have this problem at all. It might be a slightly higher rate but it will remain the same all day. If your current retailer doesnt offer flat rates check your other options you might find one that does. Either way you'll save yourself in the run as you won’t have the maintenance costs nor the mid to long term outlay lf having to replace the power station every 5 or 10 years...
This would probably work better with a larger load that runs more, say a window AC unit. You might need a larger battery bank and inverter to handle the start up load of the compressor motor.
Wow, nice video and all the useful links are really helpful. I think you are pretty smart, educated when it comes to solar, any chance you might want to come to Georgia and guide me, help me with a nice setup? Lol
Sounds good, but doesn't work. Why? Because batteries don’t store energy with 100% efficiency, and inverters also aren’t 100% efficient. The losses can be as high as 25-40%. On top of that, the cost of a power bank wouldn’t pay off even in 10 years.
This isn't outsmarting the power company. They basically want you to do this, that's why the cost is lower sometimes. It's cheaper for you, and all the other customers.
I think a big factor you are forgetting about here is also the energy conversion losses. AC->DC, Battery storange, DC-->AC. Each of these steps can be 5-10% loss even in a high quality system, resulting in 20-25% total round-trip loss for anything you store in the battery. This would very quickly eat away at most of the benefits of off-peak charging. It's somewhat less of an issue if you have your own solar or other energy production locally as that energy is "free", and the problem usually becomes more about having enough storage - because batteries are damn expensive. The most logical way to integrate home-productiion into society that I have seen is when power companies allow you to release your surplus power into the grid and pay you for that amount. It alleviates the need for huge, massively expensive and honestly - not all that safe battery packs in every home. Instead the power companies that handle this stuff at the high-level by leveraging other power sources (nuclear, thermal, hydro) in off-hours when solar and wind production falls. The money you save on a home battery can go into much more power production instead. Ideally you would have lots of small local power producers all over adding to the grid in peak (daylight mostly) hours, and that would not only be more efficient but also lower the stress on the grid infrastructure a lot. It still requires the power companies play ball and make it viable - not adding so many fees to enrich themselves that it eats up all the savings again. This is the sort of thing legislation/regulation probably needs to solve.
I've wondered about this for EV chargers. Our utility gives us rebates for each KWh used by our smart EV charger during off-peak times. But ultimately home EV chargers are pretty dumb with a basic protocol to communicate and agree on amperage for charging. The is no reason I don't think, that you couldn't make nearly any 240v device run off of a adequately sized home charger.
As some have pointed out, there are a number of flaws in your system. The worst is possibly the use of smart plugs. Most may overheat and burn out if heavy loads are switched (like hairdryers, space heaters, toaster ovens or high charge rate batteries) Second, the smart plugs themselves consume about 1 watt continuously, the anker also continuously consumes energy. And lastly, you lose up to 15% of your energy in the charge/discharge cycle - about 9% at minimum. Given all those constraints, testing a rather low power, low duty cycle appliance like a fridge won't have a great outcome. Indeed, a more cost effective way to save money on the fridge power is to use the smart plug to switch the fridge off (and don't open it). This could backfire if the signal to turn it back on gets lost however!
Glad my power utility has no peak hours charge. It costs .14 kWh no matter the hour of day. I'd still like to get one of these Anker units in the event of a power failure.
My question is If using the power bank on say 300w an hour, such as a TV and computer would your savings be worth it? Would the higher power draw mean much more money savings during the "peek hours," offsetting the battery bank's own power draw? Edit: not to mention having the Battery as a backup UPS to save your Pc and such during a power/brownout.
Am I right in thinking the lack of savings is due to lack of inverter efficiency vs the cheap/expensive electricity rates? Is there a way to smart way to change the power source between solar to grid when solar is available?
You made my mistake thinking you can save money on your fridge. Your fridge is a ghost. When Helene came through, I used a similar power station to run my apartment. (I live alone, so my utility requirements are low.) I used the power station to power my essentials, translated, computer station, lights, microwave and fridge. I only plugged my fridge in for 30 minutes every 3 hours. Then I topped the battery off using my gas generator. I did not lose anything in the fridge for over 3 days (we got our power back). Three days ago, I thought the same thing, could I save power taking the fridge off-grid? The answer is NO! After 48 hours on a Kill-A-Watt, my fridge only used 800 watts! It turns out that my fridge only uses 1/2 of what the paper work says it uses. I could have just left it on the power station the whole time. I have been considering going to the variable power rates, like you have, but much cheaper. The peak times (and possible "critical" times) are usually the same 3 hours each week day that is not a designated holiday. We also have 5 hours of discount rates every day of the year, and 2 additional hours during the 7 non-summer months. My fridge can stay unplugged for 3 hours, so I don't need to power it during peak. I could just throw the breaker. The hot water heater kept water hot for 2 days after power loss. So, it doesn't need to be on during peak. The electric heater/AC, on the other hand, I can turn off during summer and survive, but during winter, peak hours are 6-9AM. The first two hours of that are the coldest hours of the day. It can get pretty cold here and I'm not sure the heat will remain 3 hours. So, that's my concern, here. Also, you can take your timer/controller off-grid, too. Get a normally closed relay and put in line with your power station. Plug the timer into your PS and set it to come on just before peak and turn off just after peak. Going off grid is too expensive. It takes years, if not decades, to recoop the costs unless you get some kind of grant and DIY. I'm in it for the power outages, especially long-term outages. I might be able to put up 3 or 4 100w solar panels. That will extend the life of time of the power station during outages. since I have this system, I'll use it to reduce my power bill. Why not?Z Depending on how well I do with the heat this winter, I may switch over to variable billing. If you want to save money during peak, figure out how to automate turning off your hot water heater and program your thermostat to reduce usage during peak. I have a solar setup to recharge all my rechargeables. I have rechargeable lights in all my rooms. (I still sometimes need grid lights.) but the rechargeables are all off-grid. My ham station and computer station are next. Then, my fridge and microwave. I doubt I'll ever take my laundry, water heater or H/AC off grid. But, every little bit helps. In case of long term power outages, I'm pretty well prepared.
You might want to check that "smart plug" switch to see what the max power draw it supports. I'm willing to bet that power station is going to end up burning out that plug with the amount of power it draws when recharging.
Put it in your car and charge it off the system while your driving to and from work and running errands It's energy that will be expended anyway. Put a solar panel out the window and charge it that way.
hint...if power gets expensive at 4 pm, set timer to switch to battery at 3:59, if you go one second over the power companys cut off time you WILL BE CHARGED the next full hour! Same with switching back to cheap power company power. Jump back in at 9:01 on the cheap rate or you will lose ONE FULL HOUR if you switch back one second before 9:00 pm. Enjoy the savings, I know I do!
Well, hopefully, in the future more of our appliances will be smart enough to basically act like a batteries, cool your house before the peak power rate cooler fridge before the peak power rates charge up a battery on a lamp before the peak power rates lately I’ve been wondering why there’s AC in the house at all except for motors because everything gets converted to DC seems like such a waste and that in the future houses will come with DC wiring and AC will become an oddity because everything is converted to DC except for motors anyway the AC is noisy, in terms of EMF and waste, electricity
Hi, please for your answer... My 52V 11.7kW battery is powered by 2kW panels and I Am charging with it an Ecoflow DP 48V 3.6kW battery via xt60. When BG battery completely discharged, the voltage in the BG battery cells are slightly above 2.7V. In this state of the cells, can I leave the minimum charge from the BG battery to DP battery when the minimum charge started from panels to the BG battery?. Example: BG battery is charged from panels with a power of 40W, the cells have a voltage of 2.7V Can the obtained 40W be forwarded to another battery or is it better to stop charging until the BG battery cell voltage increases above 3V or more??
I would double check your Con-Ed calculations. That 1300% price difference has to be more than 21 cents. If that was my electricity provider, I would be filling a 10 or 20 KWh battery up at 2 cents ann hour every day.
The Real Trick is a 10KWH 14 Volt Battery Bank and 2,000 Watt Solar Array and a 50 or 60 Amp Charge Controller that charges and sends Powder to the 24 Volt Low Frequency Pure Sine Wave Victron Inverter to Power Your Heavy Demand Appliances and Forgot About It.
You see. The trick is to take that big battery to someone else home to recharge or at work so its getting charged up for free during the low cost times.
That too! Lol
@@vincentsgamingI heard of someone doing just that with their electric motorcycle (charging at work, not at home) and almost lost his job!
When I was a poor student I used to charge a similar contraption that I DIYed on the train (there are sockets there), so I could save on the power bill
Yes, stealing from your employer is always a god idea. That is, until you get caught, fired, and maybe even prosecuted.
@@BryanTorokwell if you are business is going to get upset over you charging 13 cents of electricity, then you probably don't want to be working there anyway.
And that's what 1,000 Watts cost.
That's about 20 lb. Now if you're rolling 45 lb of batteries into work to get 39 cents worth of electricity 5 days a week..
Well the same thing really applies.
This is why solar kicks ass... You can spend $1,000 on panels for your roof that charge the battery, then never pay a bill again if you have a big enough battery.
It may not save you money on energy cost, but if there's a power outage it'll still save you the cost of replacing the food... which I've had to do 3x in the last 5 months.
So this is my use case. I have a 1 KW hour battery that will keep the refrigerator and freezer going until the next day after the disaster when I can start up my propane generator.
I have enough solar panels to charge about 900 watts per day.
That's enough to run the refrigerator 1 hour per 3 hours and keep it going for about 12 hours.
Or to charge my devices or to keep a small fan going or to keep a small massage table pad going or to provide light in areas away from the lights I have plugged into my generator.
I use propane because there's almost no maintenance and the tank of propane will stay good indefinitely.
Oh yes and twice this year it has saved me at least $200 worth of food.
I can also charged the battery at my house and then take it over to a friend's house who has lost power and give them power for their refrigerator or freezer.
@@macmcleod1188 I used that same power station along with 800W of solar panels to survive for months after a hurricane. Definitely doable.
What shitty place do you live where the power goes out that often?
I haven't had a power outage in over a decade.
@@rogerwilco2 areas that get severe thunderstorms, derechos, tornados, and hurricanes, and ice storms, really bad floods (8 ft plus)
So basically places that are within 100 mi from the coast, tornado alley, near rivers, the lee side of mountain ranges, areas that have seen rapid population growth, areas that see forest fires, areas with long transmission lines from power generation sites.
It's actually more where is this remarkable place you live that doesn't meet one of those criteria.
One thing you didn't realize is probably the power loss by converting the energy from AC to DC and then DC to AC. That's why in some scenarios this setup up does not make sense at all. There's also power loss from just the battery charging itself, so there's enough inefficiencies there. Plus, one of the worst items to test this on is a fridge because they already run pretty lean and low on power once it's up an running with enough thermal mass inside.
This would have been better to test on things that consume significantly more power ~100W or more and have to stay on all the time. Your fridge not only consumes less than that when running, but also does not run full tilt all the time.
The thing you're not seeing is that the grid power is far less efficient at peak time. In some cases as much as half the efficiency.The grid has to start up generators to cover the extra load usually CCGT plants, but CCGT have about half the efficiency for the first hour or two. The grid operators are actually installing huge grid batteries to handle this, the big brother of this box.
Unfortunately, the fridge is about as good as it gets for running on rechargeable battery power. Heavier loads will overload the battery circuits, and higher kWH means paying more for higher capacity batteries. What you'd really want this for is a heat pump, but that's also the hardest and most expensive to run on a personal grid. The economics just don't make sense on a single-household scale. Say you run 1500w worth of appliances, peak-shaving five hours per day: even if you're saving 50c per kWH by peak-shaving, that's only saving you $3.75/day. It'd take easily half a decade to recoup the cost of the setup, before you even start to consider battery degradation.
Same issue with personal-scale solar. You just can't beat the economies of scale (and government subsidy) that utilities benefit from. It's cool tech, and I hope it improves. Right now, the cost doesn't make sense unless you're a hobbyist or have unreliable power. When you take into account the environmental impact of battery production, it's hard to even claim it's better for the environment than improving efficiency of existing power grids.
I have this Anker C800 as well. Be careful with it when the battery depletes, when you start charging it again it does NOT return power to the AC plugs. You have to manually turn the inverter on.
So it looks like this is not really worth it to do, however, if you could somehow wire the power station up to charge by solar, then it probably would make sense.
Very true. Plus, battery inverters are about 90-80% efficient. So you're gonna lose those small gains over time anyway.
On the scale of a single refridgerator, the answer is no it's not worth it.
But more efficient equipment on a whole house system is a different question.
You also have the added benefit of having a backup for when the electricity goes out.
Here in NL this feature is standard if you have a home battery. Here you can get a "dynamic" contract with prices defined per hour. But those are available one day ahead. So you need a smart component to save €€, based on if you buy the power for the grid or take it from the solar panels. If you do it right you can save like 30-50% of you energy bill. And that without solar power (Winter/clouds ). And calculate the loss of loading and discharging the battery. Depending on the inverter quality it can be between 85%-95% so you need to add a 10% loss in your calculation.
Solar is the way to recharge and get it off the grid entirely or at least getting the bulk of the energy via solar.
A 200w panel on this fridge would change that spread sheet entirely. 200 watt panels are about $100 right now
By far the best power station experiment on RUclips. I do use the Kasa smart plugs for my current Christmas light setup. Cheers.
Just a hint but those smart plugs draw 3-5watts alone.
Also add a small 50w ish solar panel to that battery use the app to limit A/C charging to 70% and let solar top off and base the numbers off a 1 week time line
I used a bunch of sonoff switches that include wifi and energy monitoring and according to my kill-a-watt, they use 0.9 watts.
The problem is the Power stations idle power usage. To get the most out of the cheaper power price, you would want to run multiple things during the increase $ time block as long as the power stations capacity is enough to run everything without needing charging during that time. Some people with get multiple smaller power stations - one for the fridge, one for router, computer, tv etc. The problem is each power station is using 1- 3% of its battery capacity per hour just being on. Having 3 power stations would be using %6 per hour VS 1 power station just using 2% per hour.
Also part of the problem is you are running something small like the fridge? If you want to make a dent in your power bill during the summer figure out how to run all the A. C. That the house needs? But it will still cost you a ton of money. But that is what I wish I could run and save money the A. C.
Rather than trying to time the exact peak hours, perhaps run the max on battery, only charging during off peak times. If it only takes 2 hours to charge, 8 to 10 hours off-grid should be beneficial. I like your approach and I have both the Anker C1000 and smart plugs as well as Kasa control over the plug. I have to interface the Bluetooth reading of the battery feedback and intelligently control the plug. Thanks for the project ideas!!!
If you're running solar power this might make sense otherwise it doesn't because the more you deplete the battery the more you're cycling the battery and the faster you're wearing the battery out so you're better off only using battery power when you absolutely have to
Enjoyed the video. I considered this test but our electricity is pretty low to where you live. It would be interesting to see the increase in savings if you used solar panels to recharge your anker unit vs using grid power. If you are using grid power either way during peak and non peak times, you still are using grid power , so 1kw of grid power to charge unit vs 1kw of solar power to charge unit, for example.
He has a video where he runs a room off a solar panel for a day using the same power station as in this video
Thanks for the realistic conclusion. I wish there is a device that can get the AC energy from these power stations and injected back to your house without the need of solar and grid tie inverters. That way you can at least offset a bigger portion of your overall consumption during those peak times
What if you connected more items to the battery instead of just the fridge?
Yes. Because the fridge only draws 55 watts, the savings from shifting the demand is small, and doesn't pay for the power station. If you had a plugin device that drew hundreds of watts, your savings would be much larger and the payback period would be reasonable.
A good ROI calculation would also involve the MTBF of the added components and the effect of the added heat generated by the power unit (typically bad because of the need to cool the area where the power unit is kept).
I've been doing this week 6kw of batteries for the last year. It's saving me about £700 per year.
Btw, I take a similar approach with a Jackery. But instead I plug appliance that’s always on (modem, WiFi). I charge it at the lower rate hours 10pm to 5am. Then turn off the switch during daytime (more expensive)
That's not out smarting the power company, hold my beer. I purchased a sub $25K Chinese EV with V2L. I charge at night 20kwh for FREE, 7am switch on V2L via a change over switch, use about 7kwh from 20kwh of car battery night charge, use 13kwh for car journeys during day, and repeat. I am retired and live in New Zealand. I save about $800 on electricity, and $3,000 on fuel and vehicle maintenance. Note fuel here is $7 a US gallon.
Niiice
How do you get electricity to charge your car for free? Is that some sort of government subsidy to encourage EV use? As for the charging, what voltage and current do you need to power the charger.
Very nice. Unfortunately we’re still waiting for V2H in the US.
Anytime you invert AC to DC or DC to AC you will lose energy! Plus the Power Station uses energy itself just to be ON! My peak 4-8PM is 37 cents and Midnight - 6AM is 2.2 cents.
i did the same test on my fridge. SCE tou prime rates. pretty much just broke even. but, if one was to do that they would have a back up on their fridge for when a power outage might happen. the reason it doesn't work for a fridge is because the inverter has to stay on constantly. i moved it to my dishwasher and - with a smart plug - it only charges and passes electricity through from the grid during lower cost times. it uses the battery when the costs are higher. the difference is that we turn on the ac outlet of the solar generator manually every time we use it instead of leaving the inverter on constantly and it is programmed to turn off the inverter automatically after 30 minutes of non use. we used to only run the dishwasher when the rates were low, but my wife wanted to be able to use it whenever she wants and this allows us to do that without using higher cost energy. it is slightly higher because of conversion losses and idle battery drain but the convenience is worth it to us. we didn't buy the thing to try and save money on tou rates but wanted something to run our fridge in case of power outage and use as portable energy source. this way, though, it doesn't just sit around waiting to be used once a year for a 2 hr. power outage but, instead gets used regularly which is better for the battery health.
I tried the same experiment and came to the same conclusion that it takes too long to break even although I have portable power stations located throughout the house to keep critical devices powered in the event of a power failure. Most notably the fridge and freezer, internet equipment, NAS, and my entire home office.
As a couple of other folks pointed out you need to stack benefits, like avoided food spoilage. But when my area had time of use rates the more effective savings were actions like time-shifting your energy use, like washing clothes, dishes, and bodies (Showers) after the price drops back down for water heating, cloths drying, etc. (If you do this without electric interlocks using hot water right before the price goes up could result in reheating your hot water tank at the higher prices). And looking at ways to make similar shifts in other large energy-use activities, like air-conditioning, dehumidification, cooking, … .
I love how the smart plug blocks the use of another outlet. Now thats brilliant engineering.
To be fair, those smart plugs were not 'engineered' for use with that specific power unit. They were designed for typical wall sockets, which are oriented vertically relative to each other, rather than the horizontal configuration of the power unit.
Your critique could just as easily be turned around to ask why the power unit wasn't properly engineered for that specific smart plug.
i got a 12v dc fridge, the largest size they make for about 88 bucks. i think 55liters. added al foil tape to reduce ambient IR absorption, and then hacked it to run on 25v from a new usbc pd3.1 gan power supply. it uses 130wh/day, so little power consumption that its actually saving me money on my fridge because the main fridge isnt being opened so often and loosing all its cold air each time. and theres more room in the fridge. theres also some knock on benifits to lower ac cost in the summer. idk seems more practical and more utility. the power consumption for refrence is less than one of those smart meters lol
Some power stations have the grid control included in the controls available through the app. Only saves on the smart plug, but ir you already have the power station for other reasons, you only have to save on the power cost arbitrage.
If you have an electric hot water heater, turning that off during certain periods of the day, and then running it at night and running it to a hotter temperature and or adding a mixing valve (One way to expand "capacity" of a hot water heater is to increase the temperature and then use a mixing valve.) If you are not home in the day, it can run then at night on cheaper electric.
I liked your science, you did an excellent job presenting the information.
edit - I'm curious how the numbers would work if you only ran the fridge during the lower rate periods and had the smart plug disconnect the fridge for the 4 hour peak period. I think a well insulated fridge would not lose to much temperature over 4 hours.
I use my power banks during peak times mainly for my power-hungry technology. And I use portable/flexible solar panels to recharge the power banks. Free energy.
I totally expected that to pan out differently, bummer! Thanks for doing the work so I don't have to 😆
BTW, Method makes arguably the best stainless steel cleaner and the bottle lasts a VERY long time 😉
A lot of people have a power station for other reasons, and if they were to use them for 'other reasons' were on weekends for recreational camping, or for emergency power, then your suggestion makes more sense. The power station consumes a lot of power for the inverter. If your frig is DC, that I gess would be a huge saving. A smaller, or optimally-sized inverter will make a big difference. I recently saw a review for a power station with a 2500Watt inverter and the loss was 20% over a 10 hour period. So, I guess the opportunity is there for a smaller 'multifuel' frig, but those tend to be less efficient. There are exceptions though.
always remember that the inverter that are on these power supplies take power to convert dc to ac. that is why you see an increase in usage in this case. currently my ecoflow ultra pro, runs my tv's and my home computer system. and i have set it to use 50% of the battery before it will start to charge from the grid. on days like today where it is cloudy my panels are not going to be enough to get it to charge. I'm still testing its limits as i just got it this past month, this summer will be interesting as i will be able to power more with it.
I have a better idea…
Break up draconian power entities like PG&E.
And exactly what would that accomplish? Power companies do not have unlimited electrical capacity. They can, and will, meet demand when they can. But at a certain level, they either don't have the electricity to give or they are limited by the infrastructure to carry that electricity.
@@zsi You might want to rethink your opinion after researching the truth of what PG&E (for example) has done and not done to control the availability and price of electricity.
One thing you should be aware of if you were to do this is that those smart plugs may have lower load ratings than the receptacle they're plugged into and a power station can potentially draw more current (to charge) than the plug can (safely) provide. Just make sure you match them up once way or another so you don't risk starting a fire the the smart plug overheats.
It would be interesting to adjust the calculations to assume you drain the battery almost completely before the switch turns on - to see the theoretical maximum benefit if you plug in as much stuff into it as possible. Fridges don't really use much power once they reach temperature so that probably hurt the calculation a lot. I would try lamps and tv/media center and laptops/PC if possible.
The video has an interesting concept for a quick work around. My not very extremely well thought out work around for this problem could be what if you could plug the fridge into a splitter which would be very dangerous to make. 1 split plugs into the smart plug in the wall and the other half of the split plugs into the power bank smart plug. You can time which end of the split draws power using the smart plugs as long as that doesn't also get dangerous. The only loss I could see is whatever the power bank uses when it runs and charges. Then again a fridge doesn't use all that much energy but the perfect appliance could maximize the savings. Hey this isn't a bad idea.
A fridge was like the worst possible test for this.
Buy Ecoflow and schedule your AC charging for all off-peak hours. Done deal. No Anker product nor smart plug needed
Saving money on electricity costs by manipulating the time of use depends entirely on your prices at each time of use. Little price difference -little saving. Which as you demonstrate may not cover the energy lost in the storage and recovery. Where I live (UK) the low rate is always 1/3 of the main rate so there is a big saving to be had. I'm looking into a system with possibly 15 - 20 KWh of storage. That way I can draw all my daily consumption at low rate and use it at peak rate times.
I did the same thing with the C1000 and a smart plug running my office computers. I then added one, then two, and now 6 100w solar panels. My C1000 is now only connected to AC power from 11pm to 4am. Does it pay for itself? Probably not in my lifetime but I don't pay peak prices and (at least try to) stay under my baseline allowance because PG&E finds a way to charge you more anyway they can...
Peak shaving I believe refers to really big commercial users of power who get charged extra for using more that their contracted usage and the batterys help reduce those peaks
You're not outsmarting the power company. They offer lower rates at off-peak times to ENCOURAGE exactly what you're doing. A WIN-WIN if you think about it.
Why doesn't the power company invest in power storage?
The trick here is you dont need the power bank, just a basic timer. With enough thermal mass like 2- liters of frozen water in your freezer you can cool your fridge for 3 hours with a power outage as long as you can cycle in 4 hours after words you can cheat alittle bit but it takes energy to get energy so really its penny wise or penny foolish depending on the situation.
The Anker 767- will run the fridge 24/7 if connected to solar all of the electricity cost for the fridge. It’s a better way to shave money off of your electric bill because the solar and the fridge match each other almost perfectly 600 watts of solar will run a large fridge for ever! but cloudy days either require more solar or something like a 10 kW battery
A 10 _kWh_ battery.
Thank you for this analysis.
A lot of you are suggesting connecting to a solar panel to keep the battery charged. Think about it. It's a refrigerator. Do you really want wires hanging off the ceiling/walls, or running across the floor?
Maybe doing it if your device was on an outside wall.
I do not recommend using this with fridge and freezers because of how the pump works, it can wear out the battery quickly if this is always in use. Fridge also use very little power. This however is a good backup power solution if there are frequent power outages and other problems of that nature. But it would be better to use hardware that is not internet dependent. Because the internet goes out in a massive power outages and then nothing works.
Buying a power bank on sale and getting solar panels for $700 seems like a more economic option. Got any buying plans or suggestions for Black Friday?
Here off is 6.7 cents in winter and is 12.7 cents in summer Solar never pays. I still have it, but it's a hobby.
I believe the main benefits of solar are independence & reliability.
Your power is cheap, run a Bitcoin Miner for heat.
Really useful info. I guess there will only be a potential for $$ saving if your power source includes solar PV - as a way of stretching the use of PV power this would be excellent. My other comment would be that if I were to build this DIY I would aim for an inverter that could comfortably support the typical running load of maybe a few hundred watts but use a LF inverter design that could run a 300% or more overload for a few secs during motor startup You want the most efficient inverter at typical power draw and an over-specc'd design will not do that..
I have heard of electric vans doing this so when they return to the yard its peak time so sell everything left on thier battery and they then recharge at the cheapest time ready for work the next day
In Ontario Canada, Hydro One has a few different power plan options. 2 of the major ones are: "Time-of-Use" which has a On-Peak, Mid-Peak and Off-Peak prices, and also offer a "Ultra-Low Overnight" plan. So I've been curious what a return-on-investment would be like to charge up a battery bank overnight at the very low rate and have it discharge during the day.
Savings are more of you charge with a simple 100w panel or even 200 everyday and it'll run 24/7 and not use grid dramatically increasing savings but also increase payback time for panels and cabling.
Several things here first you're using a pretty expensive power bank you can buy an EB3A for about 150 bucks and it will handle 600 Watts just be careful it's only about $219 watt hours effective capacity so you need to make sure that has enough capacity to run your device until the rate changes back to a lower rate that means about 4 hours for a fridge worst case scenario My problem is I need 6 hours which would probably be enough I would have to test it
My high peak is 4:30 to 10:30 and that's year round in the winter time they add an additional high peak window which I believe is 6:30 to 9:00 in the morning so I would need to set up to schedulings for on and off
You did notice the increase in power consumption don't even think of attempting to running off DC power because the DC converter in these boxes is less efficient than the AC converter so you're better off using AC power except for USB USB is very efficient
Now something to consider you can run multiple fridges off that unit so for example I have a fridge and four freezers that big box you have could probably run all five and do it for 6 hours while you're 12 watt overhead will be about the same so the less you run off that box the less you're going to save because you're eating it up with the operating cost of the box itself so if you add more things to the box without going past your time limit which for you is 5 hours then you'll maximize your savings by spreading out that 12 watts over more savings
Your biggest problem however is going to be the box itself wear and tear on the box itself is huge and these companies don't like warrantying these boxes usually it's the cooling fan that fails and then of course the unit safety's itself at least that's my experience they're just not really meant for continuous duty cycles like this you would really need to design your own little off-grid set up for it and you'd pay a lot less than 700 bucks
Where I am you can choose whether to have one rate for power or time of use I chose time of use because my big monsters of power consumption water heater electric dryer and electric car are all things where I can control when they run
What were essentially doing is time shifting power without even trying to initiate any kind of cost savings simply time-shifting power reduce my electric bill 50 bucks a month My Nissan leaf I can actually program it and tell it don't turn on until 10:30 so when I get home and plug the car in it doesn't charge it just sits there and waits until 10:30 when the price of power goes down and then it turns on and starts charging
Because of the hard water we have we do not run the hot water heater continuously I have a small 7 gallon unit under the sink that gives us 24/7 hot water it cost $3 a month to run Yes I have a meter on it so I know exactly what it cost to run it the big 50 gallon water heater I only turn that on when we need it and only for 1 hour if I ran it continuously I would destroy the elements in less than a month by only turning it on when we need it I get about two and a half 3 years out of the elements Yes we have very very hard water
The same with the clothes dryer I simply turn it on only during off peak time so my sister knows that you can't start the dryer if it's past 3:30 because it takes 1 hour to complete a cycle and that would take you past 4:30 l otherwise you just leave the clothes in the dryer until 10:30 and then hit the start button
Just doing that kind of thing reduced my power bill by $50 a month
As far as what you're trying to do which is essentially time shifting power consumption it doesn't work that great on a small scale like that these battery boxes are too expensive and don't last long enough do not even think of trying this for all you people at home completely abandon any thought of trying this unless at a minimum you're using lithium iron phosphate batteries I have had a lithium ion or lithium polymer battery light off in my house yep it was shooting out little hand grenades of cells going off and I had to grab that thing rip the wires out of it and chuck it out into the front yard almost lost my house to one of those
So now indoors only lithium iron phosphate is allowed to be plugged in continuously
This would never have an ROI with anything but that the Am iron phosphate you don't have enough charge cycles on all of them ion or lithium polymer to ever recoup your costs
However in general you need to maximize the power that your drawing from the box in order to spread the boxes own power consumption over time plus you're converting power twice You're converting power by charging the box and then converting power again by running your device so you're savings has to be large enough to account for that
Basically you can only use boxes that have a built-in charger so they can charge fast and you need to figure out how many hours you need to run divide that by your effective capacity not the rated capacity of your box for example the EB3A is rated for 291 hours but you effectively only get about 220 watt hours out of it My window is 6 hours which means I can only draw about 40 watts from the box because 40 * 6 is 241 hours so more like 36 watt hours
I use it more for preserving equipment we have very poor power here lots of surges and browns and lots of momentary power outages so pretty much everything is on a UPS
This is cool but doesnt seem practical. The cost of just one of those things offsets any price loss from the power company over months of use-age. Let alone having to buy multiple for different places in the house that use the most power.
This was just a fun test. Nobody said it was practical lol.
It might actually be practical for him to do this if he lives in the high price area where that would save him 21 cents a day?
If he were to run five equivalent loads off of that device assuming he would still get 5 hours of runtime that's $1 per day or $365 per year The ROI is 2 years That's actually not bad that's a really good ROI in fact
His problem is he's only running the fridge on it he needs to also plug the freezer into it and a few other things into it
There is also an additional benefit depending on where you live so if you have poor power where you live if you could break even with an ROI on the box itself then basically you have a free UPS which is very nice when the power goes out or in my case where the power flickers surges and browns an awful lot like literally daily I have 14 UPSs in my house just because otherwise the power would fry all my stuff
The core problem is if you maximize the box your ROI is two or three years which is really not bad The question is will that box last 3 years? The battery yes if it's a lithium-iron phosphate battery that battery will last 10 or 15 years The problem is the electronics in the box itself the inverter of the cooling system the BMS will those last typically these boxes really aren't made for continuous duty cycle and those components aren't the best quality components My EB3A boxes are very nice except the damn cooling fan always fails on them
Yes yes and yes.. I do this with my EV. I go to a free charger - fill it up and then connect the house to it - 74Kwh for free lasts me a week and a half.I also do this every day with a ac200l and 2 large batteries
Super interesting! thanks !
You also need to calculate the wear and tear on the battery which will eventually wear out and need replacing.
well if u attached the power station to a bigger load, so maybe combining the frige, a tv and maybe a fan or two the inverter would've probably been more efficient and the setup would've been more money saving
The real way to outsmart the power company is to put magic rectangles on your roof and much bigger boxes like this in your garage or basement. Grid-optional solar PV + LFP energy storage. I just had a $0.92 bill in Michigan.
Before investing a heap of money into something like this talk to your electricity retailer and see if they offer flat rate tarriffs so that you don't have this problem at all. It might be a slightly higher rate but it will remain the same all day. If your current retailer doesnt offer flat rates check your other options you might find one that does. Either way you'll save yourself in the run as you won’t have the maintenance costs nor the mid to long term outlay lf having to replace the power station every 5 or 10 years...
This would probably work better with a larger load that runs more, say a window AC unit. You might need a larger battery bank and inverter to handle the start up load of the compressor motor.
Wow, nice video and all the useful links are really helpful. I think you are pretty smart, educated when it comes to solar, any chance you might want to come to Georgia and guide me, help me with a nice setup? Lol
I mean typically a fridge uses about 1.5 units over a course of the day. Fridge running on this wouldn't really save much.
I outsmarted the power company by plugging into my neighbors outlet.
Sounds good, but doesn't work. Why? Because batteries don’t store energy with 100% efficiency, and inverters also aren’t 100% efficient. The losses can be as high as 25-40%. On top of that, the cost of a power bank wouldn’t pay off even in 10 years.
man on peak here in arizona is like 38 cents, feel so bad for you in cali
Unfortunately Seattle doesn't have a pricing structure that would allow this. Great idea though.
This isn't outsmarting the power company. They basically want you to do this, that's why the cost is lower sometimes. It's cheaper for you, and all the other customers.
I think a big factor you are forgetting about here is also the energy conversion losses. AC->DC, Battery storange, DC-->AC. Each of these steps can be 5-10% loss even in a high quality system, resulting in 20-25% total round-trip loss for anything you store in the battery.
This would very quickly eat away at most of the benefits of off-peak charging. It's somewhat less of an issue if you have your own solar or other energy production locally as that energy is "free", and the problem usually becomes more about having enough storage - because batteries are damn expensive.
The most logical way to integrate home-productiion into society that I have seen is when power companies allow you to release your surplus power into the grid and pay you for that amount.
It alleviates the need for huge, massively expensive and honestly - not all that safe battery packs in every home. Instead the power companies that handle this stuff at the high-level by leveraging other power sources (nuclear, thermal, hydro) in off-hours when solar and wind production falls.
The money you save on a home battery can go into much more power production instead. Ideally you would have lots of small local power producers all over adding to the grid in peak (daylight mostly) hours, and that would not only be more efficient but also lower the stress on the grid infrastructure a lot.
It still requires the power companies play ball and make it viable - not adding so many fees to enrich themselves that it eats up all the savings again. This is the sort of thing legislation/regulation probably needs to solve.
Power monopoly where I live so its always as expensive as possible 😂
I've wondered about this for EV chargers. Our utility gives us rebates for each KWh used by our smart EV charger during off-peak times. But ultimately home EV chargers are pretty dumb with a basic protocol to communicate and agree on amperage for charging. The is no reason I don't think, that you couldn't make nearly any 240v device run off of a adequately sized home charger.
As some have pointed out, there are a number of flaws in your system. The worst is possibly the use of smart plugs. Most may overheat and burn out if heavy loads are switched (like hairdryers, space heaters, toaster ovens or high charge rate batteries)
Second, the smart plugs themselves consume about 1 watt continuously, the anker also continuously consumes energy.
And lastly, you lose up to 15% of your energy in the charge/discharge cycle - about 9% at minimum.
Given all those constraints, testing a rather low power, low duty cycle appliance like a fridge won't have a great outcome.
Indeed, a more cost effective way to save money on the fridge power is to use the smart plug to switch the fridge off (and don't open it). This could backfire if the signal to turn it back on gets lost however!
Glad my power utility has no peak hours charge. It costs .14 kWh no matter the hour of day. I'd still like to get one of these Anker units in the event of a power failure.
Can you do this again with the one difference of using solar panels instead of grid power
Power company wants you to do this.. It saves them from having to make big system-wide expansions which would only be utilized during peak hours.
My question is If using the power bank on say 300w an hour, such as a TV and computer would your savings be worth it?
Would the higher power draw mean much more money savings during the "peek hours," offsetting the battery bank's own power draw?
Edit: not to mention having the Battery as a backup UPS to save your Pc and such during a power/brownout.
also consider if its a pure sine wave to protect the motor
It's what we do with EV charging so yah; unless you have too many losses.
I have the F3800 and I swear that inverter uses about 100W.
Am I right in thinking the lack of savings is due to lack of inverter efficiency vs the cheap/expensive electricity rates? Is there a way to smart way to change the power source between solar to grid when solar is available?
You made my mistake thinking you can save money on your fridge. Your fridge is a ghost.
When Helene came through, I used a similar power station to run my apartment. (I live alone, so my utility requirements are low.)
I used the power station to power my essentials, translated, computer station, lights, microwave and fridge. I only plugged my fridge in for 30 minutes every 3 hours. Then I topped the battery off using my gas generator. I did not lose anything in the fridge for over 3 days (we got our power back).
Three days ago, I thought the same thing, could I save power taking the fridge off-grid? The answer is NO! After 48 hours on a Kill-A-Watt, my fridge only used 800 watts! It turns out that my fridge only uses 1/2 of what the paper work says it uses. I could have just left it on the power station the whole time.
I have been considering going to the variable power rates, like you have, but much cheaper. The peak times (and possible "critical" times) are usually the same 3 hours each week day that is not a designated holiday. We also have 5 hours of discount rates every day of the year, and 2 additional hours during the 7 non-summer months.
My fridge can stay unplugged for 3 hours, so I don't need to power it during peak. I could just throw the breaker.
The hot water heater kept water hot for 2 days after power loss. So, it doesn't need to be on during peak.
The electric heater/AC, on the other hand, I can turn off during summer and survive, but during winter, peak hours are 6-9AM. The first two hours of that are the coldest hours of the day. It can get pretty cold here and I'm not sure the heat will remain 3 hours. So, that's my concern, here.
Also, you can take your timer/controller off-grid, too. Get a normally closed relay and put in line with your power station. Plug the timer into your PS and set it to come on just before peak and turn off just after peak.
Going off grid is too expensive. It takes years, if not decades, to recoop the costs unless you get some kind of grant and DIY. I'm in it for the power outages, especially long-term outages.
I might be able to put up 3 or 4 100w solar panels. That will extend the life of time of the power station during outages. since I have this system, I'll use it to reduce my power bill. Why not?Z
Depending on how well I do with the heat this winter, I may switch over to variable billing.
If you want to save money during peak, figure out how to automate turning off your hot water heater and program your thermostat to reduce usage during peak.
I have a solar setup to recharge all my rechargeables. I have rechargeable lights in all my rooms. (I still sometimes need grid lights.) but the rechargeables are all off-grid. My ham station and computer station are next. Then, my fridge and microwave. I doubt I'll ever take my laundry, water heater or H/AC off grid. But, every little bit helps.
In case of long term power outages, I'm pretty well prepared.
You might want to check that "smart plug" switch to see what the max power draw it supports. I'm willing to bet that power station is going to end up burning out that plug with the amount of power it draws when recharging.
The TPlink KP125WP lists max 15A 1800W. So no problems at all.
Put it in your car and charge it off the system while your driving to and from work and running errands It's energy that will be expended anyway. Put a solar panel out the window and charge it that way.
MANY YEARS TO SAVE MONEY.
at least you have the doohicky for power outages.
hint...if power gets expensive at 4 pm, set timer to switch to battery at 3:59, if you go one second over the power companys cut off time you WILL BE CHARGED the next full hour!
Same with switching back to cheap power company power. Jump back in at 9:01 on the cheap rate or you will lose ONE FULL HOUR if you switch back one second before 9:00 pm. Enjoy the savings, I know I do!
What app are you using, and how are you configuring it to control that smart switch to turn on and off on a schedule? Thanks!
Maybe as an experiment you could do video about using those in a vehicle with solar to charge a EV
Wouldnt it be better to run the AC/Heat off a battery power station as im sure its that which cranks up the costs. A Fridge these days is minimal
Well, hopefully, in the future more of our appliances will be smart enough to basically act like a batteries, cool your house before the peak power rate cooler fridge before the peak power rates charge up a battery on a lamp before the peak power rates lately I’ve been wondering why there’s AC in the house at all except for motors because everything gets converted to DC seems like such a waste and that in the future houses will come with DC wiring and AC will become an oddity because everything is converted to DC except for motors anyway the AC is noisy, in terms of EMF and waste, electricity
Have you considered a different type of battery? Instead of a lithium-based battery, have you tried a supercapacitor-based battery?
Hi, please for your answer... My 52V 11.7kW battery is powered by 2kW panels and I Am charging with it an Ecoflow DP 48V 3.6kW battery via xt60. When BG battery completely discharged, the voltage in the BG battery cells are slightly above 2.7V.
In this state of the cells, can I leave the minimum charge from the BG battery to DP battery when the minimum charge started from panels to the BG battery?.
Example: BG battery is charged from panels with a power of 40W, the cells have a voltage of 2.7V
Can the obtained 40W be forwarded to another battery or is it better to stop charging until the BG battery cell voltage increases above 3V or more??
I would double check your Con-Ed calculations.
That 1300% price difference has to be more than 21 cents.
If that was my electricity provider, I would be filling a 10 or 20 KWh battery up at 2 cents ann hour every day.
Simple and brilliant
I learn so much every time 😄
The Real Trick is a 10KWH 14 Volt Battery Bank and 2,000 Watt Solar Array and a 50 or 60 Amp Charge Controller that charges and sends Powder to the 24 Volt Low Frequency Pure Sine Wave Victron Inverter to Power Your Heavy Demand Appliances and Forgot About It.
Your 9w difference is the second smart plug.
I wonder how much power the 2nd unneeded smart switch consumed.
Any chance for products like this with a solar hybid feature?
Payback would be faster if you used all the battery. Ie didn't turn it back on until just before rhe battery would run out