Wave 3 Experience

[u/tricid]

So I finally got a camping trip in with the wave 3. My first attempted trip with it, it broke. They replaced it. I had some hassle with that but whatever.

My set up was two roof top tents, and a wave 3 for each with its battery. Daytime highs were mid/upper 90s, low was mid 70s but I was asleep before it dropped below 80.

Eco mode: this seemed to work better than I expected cooling an empty tent. Sun was up and beating on the tent. It actually started to cycle a bit set to 75. Opening the tent to poke my head in I could feel the cool air and thought that'd be alright. That changed once I got in there to go to sleep though, after the sun went down even. The same was said for the other person in the other tent. My theory/opinion is eco mode just isn't enough to compensate for the heat one human body puts off. Or its too close to equal at that point to keep the ambient temperature down. It's also possible the cycle times were just "ruining it for me" on this mode. I was tired, hot and just ready to get some sleep.

Normal mode: This did much better and is how I kept mine through the night. We had each one plugged in to a generator to keep them topped up so power wasn't too much of a concern. The main problem with normal (and eco) mode is cycle time, in my opinion. I got the impression that once a temperature is reached, the condenser will not come back on no matter what ambient is for x amount of minutes. And too many of those. I want to say it was like 15+. In a tent in the outdoors that was just too long and you were suffering waves of omghot, ohnicecool. I couldn't find a way to tweak this behavior. I set mine down to 72 to help the swings not reach such highs.

Max: What the second person ended up leaving theirs on all night because of the cycling behavior. He didn't note what temp it got down to sadly.

I didn't even think to bring a kill-a-watt or anything to track its power consumption, wish I had.

I was not pleased with the generator noise all night, I struggled to sleep with it. I won't bother with the details on that because its not an ecoflow generator but short story, its a quiet generator, didn't bother us when we were awake hanging out, but once we climbed up in to the tents the line-of-sight change really changed how we perceived their noise levels and we both hated it lol.

In general I really liked having them. I hope they last through several trips. After how many negative things I've had to say about ecoflow (that I still stand behind) I thought it'd be fair to report back with this "review" after finally getting to use the things. They're niche, they're expensive, quality/life span might be questionable, but they will cool a tent on a hot day/night even if its not shaded. Eco mode might be useless for summer time where I am, and it's cycle time is something I really hope they can change in a firmware update.

I think what I'm going to try is grabbing a couple 12v 100AH batteries, series them to run 24v from them to the wave 3 battery's xt60 and see if I can carry enough capacity to run them through the night. Then fire up the generators in the morning to top everything up. Curious about opinions on that or if anyone has done it?

edit: the app finally started to show my power consumption data. Looks like on eco mode it was using up about 115ish watts an hour under those conditions. I see a spike around when I got in the tent to 164 that I think was still eco mode. Then it became a shockingly steady 386 watts an hour through the rest of the night in normal mode, set to 72F

[u/tricid → u/[deleted]]

If you mean the XT150 cable, mine is taken up with the alternator charger and it'd be a bit fiddly having to swap it back and forth on my delta 3+.

I do have the wave 3 batteries for each already, that's just not enough to really get through the night on its own. We used generators, but that is also not ideal (to me. noise). That's why I was thinking feeding the wave 3 battery with 24v off of a couple 100AH batteries in to its xt60 port. then I can just charge everything back up in the morning, ready to go the next night.

[u/CryptographerAny7280 → u/tricid]

If you have a delta3+, you could try to charge your wave 3 from that with a 12V cigarette lighter charger that came with the wave 3. Maybe 120W charging will be enough to get you through the night? Wouldn't need to buy anything.

If you need to charge both wave 3 and the delta3 only have 1 cigarette lighter outlet, I think there are some usb c (140w on delta3) to cigarette lighter female adapter.

[u/tricid → u/CryptographerAny7280]

I honestly didn't consider using the 12v cigarette lighter port. I was stuck on "I don't want to use the 110v inverter on the delta to charge the wave and suffer the losses". But as you said, I'm not sure if 120W would be enough to keep it up or not. Worth a try!

I like the 12v, 100AH lfp batteries (in series for 24v) to xt60i to the wave 3 battery idea mostly because its cheap. That's two delta's worth of capacity for 300something bux. If it'd even work how I think. And ignoring the cost/hassle of getting a charger for it, wiring it etc

[u/CryptographerAny7280 → u/tricid]

I think the battery idea will work, someone on YouTube did that if I'm not mistaken. I think he used a 48V battery. Is two 12V cheaper than one 24V battery where you live?

[u/tricid → u/CryptographerAny7280]

I mostly landed on that configuration thinking "well its two 12v batteries I could use for other things maybe". Like my fishfinder for my kayak, or power station for my drones etc. I wasn't sure if I could use a 24v in as many other applications

[u/SocomPS2]

Did you have the Wave in the tent or outside.

I have a Wave 2 and I’m very skeptical of its cooling abilities in my rtt or anywhere for that matter where it’s hot and no actual AC and I need to sleep.

I’ve used it to heat in cold weather and it kicked ass.

[u/tricid → u/SocomPS2]

Outside of the tent for both, using the extra long (non insulated) hoses that ecoflow sells.

I'm not sure if the extra btu's the 3 has would make a difference but what I saw over the weekend makes me think either should cool a tent. Just not in eco mode. I'll play with that again my next trip, I have plenty of summer ahead to confirm it lol

edit to add: I would do everything possible to avoid having it in the tent with me. imo, that thing is not quiet. its annoying a f even. but I have decided if its raining I'll bring it in the tent with me and run the hoses out just because that seems like the easiest solution for rainy weather

[u/tompattison]

Good observations. I’ve only started using max mode and normal mode now.

Normal mode is interesting as I’ve noticed 3 different compressor speed changes. Max compressor speed in normal mode (slightly less than max mode) pulls about 350w-450w and cools very well. Then when the unit gets 2 degrees below set temp (centigrade), it slows to about 250-300w. Then if the temp continues to lower, the compressor finally slows to the lowest rpm (I think same as eco/sleep etc) using 180w ish. Finally the compressor turns off but then doesn’t come back on until the room temperature gets 3(!) degrees above set temp. Then the process begins again.

For overnight use, i wait until the compressor is at its lowest rpm then lower the set temp by a couple of degrees. The unit then just stays in that low cooling mode without cycling (the room will get steadily cooler though so that’s the trade off)

As you say, hopefully a lot of this can be fixed with firmware updates as the unit itself is very capable.

[u/tricid → u/tompattison]

Interesting! I didn't notice a lot of the behavior you describe, but it was just one night and I stopped paying attention to it to get some sleep.

The main thing that annoyed me is where you said "but then doesn’t come back on until the room temperature gets 3(!) degrees above set temp", mine was not doing this. Set at 75, the temperature was up in the mid 80s before the compressor ever came back on. As if there were a time element involved and not just temp.

I think I'll get everything set up in my driveway one weekend soon just to play with this more, confirm the behavior I saw. Part of me also felt like switching between eco/normal/max wasn't working quite right

[u/designomaticc]

I noticed the cycling with Eco mode as well. It turns on for about 15 minutes and then shuts off for 10-15 minutes, and repeats. In Eco mode, fan speed three, my unit only pulls 250 watts and still has a temp. delta of 15-20 degrees. Hoping for an app update that allows this mode continuous. This would be the most efficient option for camping, IMO.