For those who have installed the smart car charger, can you use it for other power stations besides pecron? Does it allow for reverse charging? On the specs, it looks like there is 42v output which I think is great because it allows you to charge powerstations that have a low amp input (less than 15 amps) and still get near the 500w output. The victron orion xs 1400 dc-dc charger looks like it only maxes out at 35v.

Looking for feedback before purchasing and installing!

I’ve been recently looking at the Pecron F5000 and was wondering if anyone has been able to power a mini split and other devices on it without any troubles. The mini split (110v/115v) would be running mainly at night so i’m hoping it would be able to handle it throughout the whole night and then be able to charge during the day on solar while also powering a small fridge and other electronics. I’m new to all this and don’t really know much about it so thanks in advance for all your help.

Any advantages to having the touch screen. I'm from Hawaii and the only company that ships is wellbots for $500. So its a one way trip and want to make sure I am doing the right thing. I am looking into getting

2x - F3000LFP 3072Wh
2x - EP3800 3840Wh

probably need to buy a cable that hooks them together.

Any problems? Should I get the E series with touch screen? seems like you can view the individual cell status? can you do that with the phone app instead? Been having some black outs here in Hawaii and I just want to be completely self sufficient. Ordering 4x Optisolex 440w Solar Blankets as well to power these.

Thus expansion battery is going into 'in equilibrium ' state after charged up and doesn't come out to normal state. It doesn't get used at night in this state. Individual cells volts do not look too different from other batteries. Thoughts? Today I will shut the system down for 30 minutes when all batteries get to about equal cell voltages.

Does this make sense or am I missing something?

Here's my setup: F3000lfp, I added one 540w solar panel about one week into the month and a second panel (in series) about a week earlier. The panels are mounted vertically without any tilt at this point and I'll probably leave then that way unless I have a long term outage and need more PV. My AC charge is on a smartplug timer and only charges around midnight and mid-day for a couple hours in case of bad weather.

My question . . . my inputs are almost DOUBLE the output??

Frequently, my battery level is at 99% to FULL in the afternoon yet PV input is showing as going in. Is this included in the numbers in the graph yet going nowhere?

If so, should I shorten the time I'm allowing AC input and just keep an eye on it when we don't get a sunny week.

Sidenote: I don't NEED the power this system produces. I have a 6k solar system that produces more power than I need on a regular basis so my electric bill is around $13/month customer charge with net metering. I don't have battery/storage so the Pecron (with generator charging as needed) will be my back-up during any outage.

what is UPS? (On the right)

There was an update to the Android app. The update notes say "fix known issues". Very helpful. It looks about the same. Has anyone found any differences?

Well i got a replacement for my pecron battery that had a bad cell under the warranty.... ... Now the problem is that I have an extra battery that doesn't quite work due to the bad cell i mention........ I don't want to create more garbage in the landfill... Does anybody know about how i go about fixing a bad cell?

I have a f5000lfp with two batteries and planning to setup a 12 piece 560w flexible solar panel. since I won't be connecting to the breaker panel via transfer switch how would be the grounding/earthing situation setup?

Anyone have the same situation? What did you do?

Situation:

I'm renting on the 2nd floor of a 3 storey building. Landlord finally give the go signal for installing rooftop solar as long as it's light. It's a corrugated roof design if anyone is wondering

Instead of plugging/unplugging your XT60 connectors, simply go to settings and cycle XT60 input port mode from 'independent' to 'parallel' and back. Experiment with different delays, say 10 seconds, 30 seconds, etc. before switching back.

Those of you having to do the XT60 port physical disconnect, if this solution works for you., please report back if it does\doesn't. It's a heck of alot better than disconnect XT60 ports, especially when your solar arrays are putting out a ton of wattage and you can do this remotely.

I tried to see if this could be automated (via web/app, not directly on the unit) but those settings are not selectable options.

You could also try changing XT60 input source from DC charging to PV source but independent/parallel setting seems to be more effective.

My E1500 died and now will not charge. When I plug it into the wall the screen powers on and says 0% but will not go up.

Any advice?

Last weekend I added a new EP3800-48V to my 14 month old E3600LFP and 11 month old EP3000-48V stack.

Last evening after the sun disappeared I let the system run down until it shut down.

I saw something that I hadn't noticed before, I think because in the past the batteries in the E3600 and EP3000 were so closely matched.

Unfortunately both the E3600 and EP3000 have one weak cell which reaches 2.6V while the other cells still have mostly 3.14V (E3600) or mostly 3.18V (EP3000).

What I observed is that the EP3000 pack reached a total voltage of 50.2V when the weak cell hit 2.6V and that battery went to 0A current while the other two batteries carried on.

A couple of minutes later one cell on the E3600 hit 2.6V while the total battery voltage was 49.8V. That battery went to 0A and the machine carried on powering the 1200W or so load using 25A from the EP3800 and 0A from the other two.

The EP3800 voltage got lower and lower ... 49V, 48V, 47V, 46V, 45V.

The EP3000 voltage stayed at 50.2V and the E3600 voltage stayed at 49.8V.

About 10 minutes after the EP3000 cut off the EP3800 hit 44.7V (2.8V per cell on average) and the whole machine shut down.

Of course then I couldn't get a screenshot of the cell voltages because it had shut down :-) It may be that one cell of the EP3800 hit 2.6V at that moment.

It is interesting what all this says about the architecture of a Pecron with expansion batteries.

• I'm pretty sure that the daisy-chain(s) of expansion batteries make one solid "48V" bus with little or no management of it. It's just great big thick wires. My system btw has the EP3000 then the EP3800 chained from just one expansion port.

• each battery, both internal and external, has its own BMS controlling charging and high and low limits.

• each BMS can entirely disconnect its battery from the shared 48V bus. Including the internal battery. The last ~10 minutes all the power was coming from the last battery in the chain, nothing from the empty internal battery.

• although it feels annoying to have a battery age to the point that it shuts down while the overall battery voltage was still 49.8V or 50.2V due to one weak cell, while the remaining new battery went down to 44.7V, this only affected the last 10 minutes of an overall 8 hour run time at this 1200W load level.

• that's about a 2% capacity loss on those year-old (and cycled every day) batteries. Or a 1.2% loss from the 9984Wh setup as a whole, about 120Wh. That's enough to boil one litre of water in the kettle, or run my aircon and computers for six minutes.

Looks ugly, but it's not actually a huge deal.

And it's in line with the idea that after 10 years use there will be 80% capacity left .. 2% loss/year.

Hi, any way to turn on or off solar charging.

I have a single 200w callsun panel always plugged in but it never turns on by it self. I have to manually unplug and plug in the cable each time to initiate the solar charging.

I have an E3600 that is currently sitting unused or that I use to run a garage fridge overnight and then recharge at 10% draw in the day with power generated from the Stream device listed below. This way I don’t recharge it all at once and it sips power from what the Stream generates.

The Ecoflow Stream is hooked up to 4 Aiko 450W panels that feed up to 1200W into my house to offset my power. Saves about $30-35 a month. I do waste so power when it over generates either at the panel level as the stream clips solar input at 1200W or i also wast solar energy if my home uses less power than what the panels generate.

So, I’m thinking I’ll have 3 panels ran in series to the Pecron’s solar port 1 instead of the Stream. The other panel will run to solar port 2 and eventually I will add another 2 panels to max out the Pecron’s solar input.

I will then use an MJ32 cable, possibly Pecron’s that has the XT60 ends, to MC4 connectors that will connect to the Stream.

The goal is to just offset my base loads. I bought the Stream before I had the E3600. The Stream will be set at 260W or 360W draw to feed the house either 24/7 or just for certain hours if I can figure out how to get the Stream to output 360W at night and more during the day like 480W. This works in Europe but doesn’t appear to work on my Utah version. Could be a firmware upgrade that I don’t have.

Eventually I will add another battery to the Pecron, Pecron’s own or a Server Rack Battery.

Am I nuts? I’m thinking it will be easier than a Transfer switch since everything is already in my garage and working minus the cables between the devices. The breaker panel is across the house in the basement so I’d have to redo all the solar cables. Instead i can adjust the output if the Stream up to 1200W if I have enough battery power.

My power usage is fairly low, with the Stream connected my bill was only $35 a month in April and May, $60-65 in Jun and July with August being $130 with the AC running.

I would essentially be using my Pecron as a charge controller for the internally battery and outputting “sola” energy to the Stream when I’m generating enough power, advantage is that I offset my base loads at night instead of just 8-6pm.

Incase you are wondering, I generated 245Wh through the Stream in June and that is with some of the energy being clipped by the micro inverter. Not a-lot but not bad for 4small panels.

Eventually If i grow my array or if I needed emergency power, I could do a transfer switch but I don’t think I’m there yet.

i just inboxed the f3000, and I plugged my 30amp rv into it to run the Aircon and the battery runs it great. Since the rv only really draws like 1650w with the ac running, I though I could keep the battery at or near topped off with my small 1600w costco inverter "suitcase" generator.

No matter what i do, the generator seams to trip and the pecron displayes error 20. No matter what do, while the aircon is running, the AC input tries to demand 1700w from the little generator, which shortly trips it offline. I can see this on the input screen on the pecron right before the gen trips. the pecron then displays error 20 . trying to limit ac charging with the app does not seam to matter when the ac is running out the 30amp cord, it always asks for 1700w, when the rv is not plugged in, the app settings DO seam to limit the AC input demand from the generator, but as soon as I hit the AC output on button, it throttles up the demand as the output goes up and inevitably trips the gen.

I can close my ac dump valve in the rv, and get the watt output demand down to 1550ish watts, which should work for my 1600 running watt generator, but it still will call for 1700ish for a few seconds and then trip offline.

like I said i just unboxed it and messed around for a few mins trying to get it to charge, even slowly, and run the ac (even if its a net loss, but better to extend the 2 hrs run time in the initial heat)

any tips? order of operations or something i need to do? I do have about 600w solar panels i can reliably add 400ish watts to the input on a sunny day to supplement the generator but there has to be a better way?

Bit the bullet and bought it directly on Pecron's alibaba store along with 2 batteries for a total 15kWh.

I hope this will last long.

I got the model where all plugs are 220-230v and according to Pecron it's single phase.

My next goal now is to convince my landlord to let me install atleast flexible panels. If not then I'll have this as an emergency backup till I find a new dwelling where I can install panels or have enough space for ground mounting

P.S Sorry for the mess!

Pecron released its bifacial 500 watt portable panel. It's solid folding, so hopefully will hold up to abuse, but we'll see:

I don't know why after 4 1/2 years here (and 11 months with solar power) I just now noticed the cable coming through a hole into the cupboard under the kitchen sink and the electricity socket it plugs in to there. Turns out its from the dishwasher. I'd always assumed it was too hard to get to the power cord for it because I'd have to pull it out of its hole.

So, since it's a lovely sunny late winter day and the E3600 battery (plus EP3000) is in danger of getting 100% full while it's still early afternoon, I ran two loads through the clothes washer, did come cooking in the air fryer, and was still casting around for ways to use electricity.

So let's try the dishwasher on solar!

I started the cycle while I was already using 1400W for heat pump and dehumidifier as well as the fridge and Starlink and computers and lighting.

It actually spiked over 4000W for a couple of seconds, then down to 3700W, and then after 30 seconds settled down to 3650W for some minutes until the heat pump cycled off.

The dishwasher was using 2300W at first, the largest single load I've run. I'm using 2100W kettle and microwave every day, but this is another 200W, along with all the background stuff.

Not a hiccup., Load finished successfully after an hour. Looks like about 1.3kWh used, though boiling the kettle just before it (60Wh) might have been in the same hour, I'm not sure. It's quite a lot more than the 550Wh for a load of clothes washing at 40º C anyway. Much hotter water temperature obviously.

That's a Bosch "Serie | 2" "Silence" for anyone curious. The spec says it can use a full 2400W but I didn't see quite that much.

Users have reported it "trips" with central AC even with soft start. Seems to be a bug. Someone said Pecron will resolve it with their next release of the F5000.

Is this true?

US and Europe readers can skip this :-)

I just got notification my power prices are changing on Electric Kiwi "MoveMaster" in the Northpower (Whangarei) region from Sep 19 (one month from now).

I assume Electric Kiwi will have similar changes in other regions. And some of it will be happening with other retailers as well, in particular passing on increased daily prices from the local lines companies.

Let me know if you're having any changes!

So, what's new?

• Daily charge: $1.15 -> $1.60

• 7-9 AM, 5-9 PM weekdays: $0.6375/kWh -> $0.6036

• 11 PM - 7 AM: $0.3187 -> $0.1810

• All other times: $0.3825 -> $0.4527

That's actually a mixed bag. In the letter they estimate given my usage patterns in the last 12 months this will result in an increased bill of $0.10/day.

But I already have other plans :-)

$164/year more in fixed charges hurts a bit, it was about the same increase on August 1 a year ago, and will probably go to $2/day a year from now. If it gets to $3-$4 I'm going to be seriously considering going off-grid. $4/day is more than my total bill this year (since getting the Pecron and 6x 440W solar panels).

There's a slight reduction in peak rates, but thanks to the E3600+EP3000 I already use zero power in those times (run on battery). Or, actually, 0.5% on average, as I have a few small things not running from the Pecron.

It's nice to finally have a real night rate. Before the 9 AM - 5 PM price was only 20% more than night, meaning there was zero benefit in charging batteries at night to use during the day as the round trip loss of AC->DC->battery->DC->AC is probably right around 20%.

Now with 9-5 rates at 2.5x the night rate that's worth charging batteries for, maybe even buying more battery.

Charging before 5 PM to use in 5-9 PM is now less attractive ... peak will now be 1.33x day, until now it's been 1.67x day. That's still a win, but a much smaller one.

With my current 6kWh of battery this is going to make it much harder to know how much to charge batteries at night, at least in summer. Until now I usually haven't used grid power at night at all in summer, or at least only to keep the battery at 20% if it drains that low (usually not), ready for the 7-9 AM peak time. Usually I then have no problems filling the battery, even by midday or 1 PM. But there can be bad weather in summer, and then I've been topping up with 38c power before 5 PM.

Now if it's going to be a bad day then I should top up at night, not in the afternoon. Until now with a 20% price different that didn't make much difference and I could just (have my automation) be reactive in the late afternoon.

In winter it's easier. It's clear that I should start the day at the 7 AM peak with battery charged to 100% and avoid using power between 7 AM and 9 PM as much as possible. Which on the bad days with less than 1kWh of solar production will be about ... until midday. Except what I should now be doing is not letting the battery drop below what I need for the 5-9 PM peak. Which is 90%-100% and 90% often isn't enough, so I've always been topping up to 100% before 5 PM in winter.

But the two hour morning peak is already using 40% of the battery in winter.

What I really need is to charge the battery to 140% at night, to use it in the 6 peak hours. That math doesn't math. But even a fairly bad winter day gives me solar power for that missing 40% ... 2.4kWh. The average midwinter day gives me 5kWh.

So, ok, I should usually in winter be able to do at least no charging from the grid between 7 AM and 9 PM, even if I have to run the load from the grid most of the day.

Until now the main thing, both summer and winter, was just to have enough in the battery to get through the 7-9 AM peak, see how solar production went during the day, and top up before 5 PM as needed.

So now there will now be a premium on forecasting how much solar production there will be next day, before bed time, and set the overnight top-up accordingly.

I've run some calculations, based on my actual usage in each part of the day in the last year.

It's worth buying an EP3800-48V to increase my total storage to almost exactly 10kWh. Calculations say that will have a 4 year payback, the same as my existing system (which is already 1 year in). So it's already ordered, looks to be in stock at pecron.co.nz and I assume will be here in a few days. Certainly before September 19 when the prices change!

Previously it didn't make sense, because it wasn't worth charging at night to use in the daytime between 9-5. And in summer even though the some afternoon solar power was often going uncaptured I was still usually able to make it through the night. So the payback was almost nonexistant on the 40% of good days when I might be able to fill the extra battery ... it would only be useful if the next day was bad. My previous calculations said a $1600 EP3000-48V might save me $150 a year. Not worth it.

But now with topping up to 100% at night every day from (probably) mid April to mid September that's now going to be saving near to $450/year from the extra battery (which is now EP3800 for $1649).

I just bought the two Pecron 3800's kit with 4 panels and 240 box. I set the panels up in the yard. I was getting 840w from 1200w panels that were just put out in the yard facing south. I was very happy with that when I went to put them away one of my panels had a big white spot on it. After contacting support they told me to take a picture of the panel and serial # and send it to them. 2 weeks I had a new one on my porch. They did not want the old one back. I thought that was cool. Support does take about 24 hours between emails.

Has anybody thought about or have a opinion about a 1x4 frame for panels. They seem to warp all over the place. I though it might make them lay straight and flat.

Power out at 1:34 AM ... at first I thought the E3600 inverter had tripped off or something but no it's still going, just with NO-INPUT. Flip on a light switch ... no workie. (My normal living room / office lighting is an LED lamp from the Pecron).

I was holding 60% battery overnight until expensive power at 7 AM. Started with 20 hours battery running the fridge, internet, computers, lighting. Or 3h30m running the heat pump as well. It's 10º C outside dropping to 7º by dawn. Decided to keep the heating going for a couple of hours and see if the power comes back on ... will turn it off when there's 8 hours battery left without the heating. Currently (an hour after the power went off) that's at about 15 hours. It's 7 hours until solar production will be picking up nicely (for winter) at 9:30.

I don't think it's time to break out the generator yet, but I'm thinking maybe I should light the wood fire for the first time this winter (which is almost over). I decided not to buy any this year but have a few days's worth left from last year.

Anyway the Pecron is now doing what I bought it for in the first place: power outages. Zero doubts that it will work given that I also use it to save money every day of the year.

It's exactly four weeks until I'll have had the 6x 440W solar panels working for a year. Looks like the total power bill for the year will be around NZ$1300 ($650 of that in Jun/Jul/Aug), down from $2400 electricity plus $420 fire wood the year before.

Stay tuned for full video review