IMA SOL MAN
Flashlight Enthusiast
Finally got all the circuitry in-place for using my pair of Pecron E1500LFP's each with the max of 2 cascaded batteries attached. Each one has about 5.7 KW "usable", 7680 raw capacity. The full/true sine wave inverter is rated at 2200 Watts with a surge of 4000 Watts. All batteries are automotive style Lithium Iron Phosphate chemistry good for 3500 cycles to 80% of original capacity. I am connecting them utilizing a basement located second whole house generator connector that is in Parallel with my existing exterior whole house generator inlet but wired for only one phase. The whole house connector located outside is for my Honda 7000i and also for my Honda 2200 inverter generator. When I installed my new Square D 225 AMP service entrance panel 2 years ago, I gave the electrician a breaker-by-breaker assignment for the circuits so that the circuits I wanted on single/120V phase stand-by power would all be on one phase while staying reasonably balanced with the two phases. I installed the factory Square D generator interlock. The furnace ended up on the non-powered 120V phase so I am using the second Pecron to run that with a simple extension cord. This also puts less load on the primary Pecron so it will last longer. I began our test run today at 10 AM. At 430 PM, I have 57% remaining on the whole house unit and 89% remaining on the furnace unit. This includes a 40 minute Breville countertop oven run using 1600 Watts on the whole house unit. I watched the consumption of the main unit when the Breville was started. It quickly increased by about 1600 Watts through preheat. Then the oven regulates power to stay at temperature. It does not cycle to maintain temp. I like that feature. The food stays very close, if not right on temp. I also got lucky when I bought our Profile frige 13 years ago. It utilizes a DC driven, soft start compressor. There is no high inrush current, it just slowly spins up. It uses about 125 Watts when running. There is very little fan noise in the basement from the two units and zero fan noise throughout the house. I think conservatively we will get 10 hours normal "day" use out of the main unit and close to 3 days out of the furnace dedicated unit depending on outside temps. What's also nice is that the Pecrons can be charged while being used. They have an on-board 1400 Watt charger and can utilize generator power to charge the batteries and also that power can be passed through into the AC output. So my idea is to use my Honda 2200i during long-term outages to recharge the main unit when its running and hits 20% remaining capacity. I won't be running the genny and using a lot of gas to power 400-500 Watts for many hours. I'll run it for about 3.5 hours at a 2000 Watt load to recharge and pass through power to satisfy the load and then shut it down. These units have 2 separate solar charge controllers built in good for 1400 Watts combined and as with house charging power, can be charging and feeding load while the unit is in operation. There are tons of DC output connectors on the front panel. Cig outlet, 6 USB outlets, some high power, some not and an XT60 connector good for 30 Amps of DC current output. Even a wireless charger platform on the top for your phone. There's a phone ap to monitor the status of the units. I have not found any feature to turn them on or off, just to monitor output and remaining capacity.
In my future, Pecron is releasing their E3000LFP in the next few months. It has an on-board 3072 Watt Hour battery and it's inverter is rated at 3600 Watts. An additional 4 each, 3072 Watt hour cascaded batteries can be accommodated giving a gross KWh capacity of 15.4 and a net capacity of 12.3 KWr. This is what I plan to use for the whole house unit. I'd estimate this will give me about 24 hours of "day" use between charges so probably two running days. The E1500LFP furnace unit will stay in that usage mode. The spare E1500LFP will probably come in the house for whatever use crops up although pretty much everything is covered except the built-in Profile oven with attached microwave. But that entire unit is 240 Volt so out of the picture with any of my battery backup systems. That's the reason for the Breville oven.
Yes, I have a ton of backup options. I decided to add the Pecron system only because I just love playing with batteries. I get a lot of enjoyment watching the clean and silent system work. I would love a roof solar system with battery backup and automatic transfer switch but I refuse to have any holes put in my pristine roo
Yeah, I know that the BF Goodrich tires that Walmart sells are not sold by BF Goodrich dealers, they are manufactured strictly for Walmart, and exclusively available from them. I tried to warranty a Walmart BFG tire at a BFG dealership, and got schooled on the matter. Not sure how I feel about that, but there are a lot of Walmarts nationwide, so getting them warranteed isn't a problem, but I imagine they are manufactured to Walmart specs to hit a certain price point/profit margin. I imagine it would be the same type of thing with Harbor Freight gensets.Curiously, It would be fun to know if the HF generators being made at the well known American name generators factory are being made using the same specs and parts as the American brand or just being made in the same factory which really means little. Would be interesting to see if you can find that out and report back.
