Oupes Guardian 6000

Lots of video reviews of the Oupes 6000 are up now: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=oupes+6000

Dagoth Ur Does Solar said:

I can't speak for the Oupes but I'd imagine a Delta Pro 3 (the single unit that can output 240v split phase) should be able to handle that no problem unless you have a monster well pump, especially since that sounds like it'd be the only thing you're powering with it.

It surges to 8kW and can do 4kW output continuously.

In my experience properly sized well pumps tanks results in surge, running for a bit, then shut off after the tank is full. Surge can be big but in a normal use case scenario they don't run for that long.

When I was measuring my well pump's energy usage, it was quite low over the course of a 24hr period.

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Along those lines, inverters typically use a fair amount of idle power. I'd run conduit and power out to the pump and ask the power company to pull the meter for it. Not expensive or particularly hard to do. No two power bills anymore (and if you are like most, you are probably getting charged $10-40 a month just for service to the meter). Also, then what you are powering your house with, can power the well pump.

The one review I have seen on the Oupes didn't look at idle power consumption, but with the ~83% efficiency, I am assuming relatively high idle power consumption. Usually, it is about 1% of inverter output per hour for idle. A particularly good inverter might be .5% and a particularly bad one might be 2%. The guy accidentally tested it at about .16C rather than .2C. Which let it run for about an hour or an hour and a half longer, which likely knocked down the efficiency 2-4%.

Assume 60w, but could be as high as 90w or as low as maybe 40w. Even at 40w, that is 1kwh per day of idle, and if you aren't watering fields, you are probably only using a couple of hundred watt hours for the well pump. I think I average around 250wh per day for water for my family of 7. You'd need to haul it back and forth at least every 2-4 days to recharge it and haul it back. Seems well worth running power down to the pump. 150ft isn't that far, that is about the distance my well is from my house.

I haven't measured the instantaneous on my current well. My last two was only about 12 amps for 3/4hp pumps (200ft wells, 20 gallon pressure tanks). My crappy Wen 3500w surge generator was okay starting the pumps, even with about 200-300w of load already on the generator, it struggled hard when there was 500-600w of load on the generator for a couple of seconds but ran fine then. My current well is about 200ft with a 20 gallon pressure tank and a 3/4hp pump. So I am assuming similar. Running they only draw about 3 amps.

Last note, if you are running two inverters, that is 2x the idle power draw...

I guess the idle draw is important if you're running the unit nonstop with no solar keeping it charged up. With solar, the idle is only draining the battery at night or maybe in bad weather. But is there any reason to keep the well pump powered all the time? Turn on the unit, run the pump to draw as much water as you need, and turn the unit off again.

I guess it can be a bit of a problem to have low powered stuff in the house constantly drawing power, like clocks or small lights. Maybe that can be addressed with a few careful choices of what to use. Like you could have some 12 volt lighting powered directly from cheap 12volt LFP packs and no inverter. They could be on solar panels too, or you could charge them from the bigger system as needed. This hasn't been an issue for me so far with my little 1kwh box, but I have given some thought to being able to turn it on and off remotely to handle small loads like recharging a mobile phone every few days.

werepuppy said:

I guess the idle draw is important if you're running the unit nonstop with no solar keeping it charged up. With solar, the idle is only draining the battery at night or maybe in bad weather. But is there any reason to keep the well pump powered all the time? Turn on the unit, run the pump to draw as much water as you need, and turn the unit off again.

I guess it can be a bit of a problem to have low powered stuff in the house constantly drawing power, like clocks or small lights. Maybe that can be addressed with a few careful choices of what to use. Like you could have some 12 volt lighting powered directly from cheap 12volt LFP packs and no inverter. They could be on solar panels too, or you could charge them from the bigger system as needed. This hasn't been an issue for me so far with my little 1kwh box, but I have given some thought to being able to turn it on and off remotely to handle small loads like recharging a mobile phone every few days.

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For the user with the well pump, 150ft from the house in northern Idaho sounds pretty miserable to run out there to turn on the well two or three times a day for intermittent water use.

If you can do it from in the house, no worries. I wouldn't want to do that...

And Northern Idaho in the woods sounds like very little solar power in the wintertime. I am struggling with that in central MD with a lot of tree shade in the woods, but I still at least get a couple of hours that the sun is above the trees every day (about 3 right now).

azazel1024 said:

For the user with the well pump, 150ft from the house in northern Idaho sounds pretty miserable to run out there to turn on the well two or three times a day for intermittent water use.

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Yeah I didn't understand how that was supposed to work. Certainly, moving the power source there several times a day sounded silly. But even going out there (or sending Jack and Jill with a pail, like in the nursery rhyme) multiple times a day doesn't sound so great tbh. I guess it depends on the setup. I lost track of the specifics but I hadn't realized it was that frequent.

Yes, understandable about tree cover getting in the way of solar. It varies.

I think I misunderstood, I thought the power station was going to be used for outages to power the well pump which was piped to the house, but powered off a separate meter.

If I had to run water buckets, I'd be looking at some way to pump the water over the 150ft, or a new well.

PedroJ said:

I'm an "Early adopter" for Oupes and I have the Guardian that you guys are talking about, I'm testing it and "I absolutely love this unit", am I biased?, maybe, but I have been with Oupes for a year and their products have not let me down, if anybody has any questions please feel free....but be respectful please, I am not an electrician, just a blue collar american learning the prepper ways.

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I thought this was the greatest power station since man canned beer, as I was reading the pre-release hype. I have watched every video I can find, and even traded messages with some of the reviewers. Now I think this power station is an EPIC FAIL! There does not appear to be anyway to AC charge from either 120v or 240v while discharging 240v split phase. That makes the power station useless for long term power outages. Because you have to disconnect the loads, to charge it with a gas generator. I hope I am wrong. Can you help me understand if i am wrong?

werepuppy said:

I see you can order it with a 4.6kwh external battery for $950 more. Not too bad since the battery nicely physically matches the unit. Product page for the battery gives a $1400 sticker price by itself.

OUPES Guardian 6000 Portable Power Station

Power up anywhere with the OUPES Guardian 6000 – 6000W of reliable energy for home backup, outdoor adventures, and all your devices.

oupes.com

Oh yes it comes with an "emergency bag" of survival stuff, $150 sticker but realistically maybe $50:

OUPES Emergency Bag

oupes.com

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You can get a 5kwh battery for half that these days. I saw one reviewer note that there is battery voltage at the expansion ports. That "should" make it easy to use a 3rd party battery. But I am waiting for the reviewers with free units, to figure that out before I experiment with $1,700

Another thing I notice is in the specs it says the operating temperature is 32F to 104F or something like that. I.e. the power station may shut down completely at 32F. I have heard that some do that, though IDK about this one. You're not supposed to charge the batteries below 32F, but discharging them should be ok, and the SCC and inverter should still work. Bluetti's specs say charging down to 32F, discharging down to around 0F.

Mike Jordan said:

I thought this was the greatest power station since man canned beer, as I was reading the pre-release hype. I have watched every video I can find, and even traded messages with some of the reviewers. Now I think this power station is an EPIC FAIL! There does not appear to be anyway to AC charge from either 120v or 240v while discharging 240v split phase. That makes the power station useless for long term power outages. Because you have to disconnect the loads, to charge it with a gas generator. I hope I am wrong. Can you help me understand if i am wrong?

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I have not dug into this on power stations, but I'm aware there are models from multiple brands that do something similar.

It doesn't seem to be all of them though. I think the newer and larger EcoFlow units can charge from AC 120V/240V while also outputting 240V? And I know some power stations actually have a proper high-amperage DC charging setup. Again, I think the EcoFlows can charge via DC output direct from their smart generators.

But I agree, for me, that would really hurt the utility of the power station if I can't have it outputting 240V while charging. I would think it would at least be able to run in bypass mode to a 240V generator?

As has been mentioned before, if we have access to the internal battery through a battery expansion port then you could connect the unit to bus bars, external batteries, additional charge controllers and battery chargers like eg4's chargeverter.

Having said that, it's pretty clear that this unit was designed for emergency power only.

ycavan said:

you could connect the unit to bus bars, external batteries, additional charge controllers and battery chargers like eg4's chargeverter.

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At that point you could add an additional inverter and then ditch the power station altogether. It does sound like a pretty serious deficiency to not be able to charge from MPPT while drawing 240V output. If that's confirmed then they need a follow-on model.

werepuppy said:

At that point you could add an additional inverter and then ditch the power station altogether. It does sound like a pretty serious deficiency to not be able to charge from MPPT while drawing 240V output. If that's confirmed then they need a follow-on model.

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I think the issue is supplying 240V outputs while charging from AC, not from the MPPT. That seems to be a problem for other 120V power stations based on bi-directional inverter technology, where the inverter also acts as the charger. A pretty serious flaw IMHO. I wonder if this is what is holding up the Pecron F5000. They got a lot of pushback when customers realized they couldn't charge from AC when pairing 2 E3600s for 240V split-phase.

oldnavy said:

I think the issue is supplying 240V outputs while charging from AC, not from the MPPT.

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You mean you want to charge from 120VAC in and simultaneously get 240VAC out? I can see how that might be be difficult for the unit, though it's an odd situation. It means you have only 120VAC grid power, but you want to run some 240VAC appliances (maybe European or whatever) for some reason. I guess that happens, but usually you'd have 240VAC grid power too. If you have 240VAC available to charge with, you could also use that to run the load (bypass mode) and it would just be a matter of some switching.

I can say it is possible to use something like a properly spec'd constant voltage switch-mode power supply into the DC input (the MPPT) on some of these units to charge them.

I've done it with my Anker C1000 unit. But finding a high quality power supply is more the problem.

werepuppy said:

You mean you want to charge from 120VAC in and simultaneously get 240VAC out? I can see how that might be be difficult for the unit, though it's an odd situation. It means you have only 120VAC grid power, but you want to run some 240VAC appliances (maybe European or whatever) for some reason. I guess that happens, but usually you'd have 240VAC grid power too. If you have 240VAC available to charge with, you could also use that to run the load (bypass mode) and it would just be a matter of some switching.

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I was just replying to your post "It does sound like a pretty serious deficiency to not be able to charge from MPPT while drawing 240V output". Charging from MPPT while drawing 240V isn't the problem. The problem with many power stations, including Pecron and apparently this new Oupes 6000, is that you can't charge from any AC source, 120 or 240 while outputting 240 split-phase. According to reviews, the Oupes 6000 does not have 240V passthrough at all. That will be a deal breaker for many people.

You can implement bypass with some switches or relays if you have to, but it's dumb that it's not built into the unit.

Dagoth Ur Does Solar said:

I have not dug into this on power stations, but I'm aware there are models from multiple brands that do something similar.

It doesn't seem to be all of them though. I think the newer and larger EcoFlow units can charge from AC 120V/240V while also outputting 240V? And I know some power stations actually have a proper high-amperage DC charging setup. Again, I think the EcoFlows can charge via DC output direct from their smart generators.

But I agree, for me, that would really hurt the utility of the power station if I can't have it outputting 240V while charging. I would think it would at least be able to run in bypass mode to a 240V generator?

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The only reviewer that I have found to test charging while discharging, (when you get free stuff, there is incentive not to post any negative ) 120v charging shuts down one leg of output and reduces that output to 2,400 watts. 240v charging shuts down output completely

Mike Jordan said:

The only reviewer that I have found to test charging while discharging, (when you get free stuff, there is incentive not to post any negative ) 120v charging shuts down one leg of output and reduces that output to 2,400 watts. 240v charging shuts down output completely

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Crazy. Not having bypass mode would keep me from buying any 240V power station, unless it's going to be some 100% absolutely only solar powered off-grid setup or something.

Maybe this is some technological limitation, but I'm not really sure... Because when I briefly looked into some of the larger EcoFlow units (their big semi-stationary ones) it did seem like they could charge from 120V or 240V while outputting 120V/240V. But manufacturers really don't post that info anywhere. I have not done a deep dive on it because it's not something I'm actually interested in buying, I went the DIY route.

I wish these companies would at least sell an AC->DC charger for these devices. I guess until then I will continue to build my own.

Edit: If Eco-Worthy can sell a 48V 60A charger for $240, these companies could surely make a charger that either plugs into their battery expansion port or custom charging port, or even just a dumb 48V power supply that plugs into the MPPT via X60i.

ycavan said:

As has been mentioned before, if we have access to the internal battery through a battery expansion port then you could connect the unit to bus bars, external batteries, additional charge controllers and battery chargers like eg4's chargeverter.

Having said that, it's pretty clear that this unit was designed for emergency power only.

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If.... your emergency is less that 4,000watts. But if the emergency goes on for days or a week, you are SOL. One reviewer posted power on the expansion port. If I knew today, that I could connect another 48v battery, I would buy the power station today. Because then I could charge while discharging

Dagoth Ur Does Solar said:

I can say it is possible to use something like a properly spec'd constant voltage switch-mode power supply into the DC input (the MPPT) on some of these units to charge them.

I've done it with my Anker C1000 unit. But finding a high quality power supply is more the problem.

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Problem becomes.... the unit can output 6,000w. It can only solar charge 2,100 watts. The math doesn't math. I have 100% shade on my property. I can't use solar anyway. So that limitation does not affect me. Unless... that is the only way I can charge while discharging

Mike Jordan said:

Problem becomes.... the unit can output 6,000w. It can only solar charge 2,100 watts. The math doesn't math. I have 100% shade on my property. I can't use solar anyway. So that limitation does not affect me. Unless... that is the only way I can charge while discharging

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Right, but is anyone pulling 6000W 24/7 from a unit like this? If so it is grossly undersized. The base unit would be depleted in less than an hour.

Maybe it surges that high, but that won't affect charging via a DC input. As long as your DC charging is above your base load, the unit will charge. Obviously there's some math involved depending how frequently you're surging above your base load though.

I think 2100W on the DC input for a unit of that size would be workable.. If a quality PSU existed that could do it without making a lot of noise.

Mike Jordan said:

The only reviewer that I have found to test charging while discharging, (when you get free stuff, there is incentive not to post any negative ) 120v charging shuts down one leg of output and reduces that output to 2,400 watts. 240v charging shuts down output completely

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Yeah, that is awful. I could get how charging off 120v shuts down one leg, and runs that leg in bypass.

But no bypass in 240v, big issue. Ideally, you'd charge off 120 or 240 AND still be outputting from the inverter (inverter not used for charging, separate 120/240v to DC battery charger). A few power stations have that ability (so you can charge off 120v even, and output 240v still).

Actually, the best of the best, would be like what the Bluetti Apex 300 can do. It can run loads off the battery and inverter, and if a load exceeds the inverter, it'll pass through just the extra demand (just like some standalone inverters can).

The Pecron is more than mildly annoying, but at least in a worst case, you can disconnect 240v loads, and run the Pecron's on separate 120v legs and still charge and pass through. There aren't much in the way of power stations that can't at least do pass through charging off AC (120v stations that do hubs for 240v split phase seem to have more issues with charging while in 240v mode, but native 240v and not be able to do pass through seems to be unique).

I wonder if it's a safety thing. Having the device switch to only powering one leg of a 240V appliance could cause potential damage depending what it is, right?

Dagoth Ur Does Solar said:

Right, but is anyone pulling 6000W 24/7 from a unit like this? If so it is grossly undersized. The base unit would be depleted in less than an hour.

Maybe it surges that high, but that won't affect charging via a DC input. As long as your DC charging is above your base load, the unit will charge. Obviously there's some math involved depending how frequently you're surging above your base load though.

I think 2100W on the DC input for a unit of that size would be workable.. If a quality PSU existed that could do it without making a lot of noise.

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I agree on that sizing. So much depends on how you use a thing, but IMHO, if you are planning or needing solar to be your sole source of charging, then you need a minimum of 1/4th the battery capacity for peak charging rates. Anything less, if you need the full battery capacity, then you are likely into needing to charge off a generator (or grid, but if you have grid...I guess if your grid is often extremely intermittent, like a few hours a day all the time of having grid power).

Though the AC charging and no pass through for 240v is a massive handicap, as that rules out generator charging. I guess if you have grid, that is okay, you can just disconnect the load from the power station and reconnect it to grid and revert if you need to. Still inconvenient.

To me, that is one of the limitations of most expandable power stations for anything other than small scale use. Of course, dedicated inverter(s), MPPTs, battery chargers, and standalone batteries, is the way to go for something large. And some of the power stations really are more designed for whole house use, like the EcoFlow Ultra and Ultra X probably really could be used to supply an entire house (at $$$ more than piecing together a system).

Like, it is nice if you can add proprietary expansion batteries to a system, but if you have, say, 1600w of charging and the built in battery is 3kwh, you are probably fine. But add a 3kwh expansion, and now you are at 1.6kw charging, but 6kwh storage. Other than peak summer, you are unlikely to get those batteries fully charged, especially with any use, in a day. If you add another and are at 9kwh, even WORSE. I'll give a bit to Pecron, with a 400w MPPT in each battery, you'd need small scale hook-ups, but at least you could add in 12.5% solar charging capacity per battery, so the imbalance of charging capability and battery capacity doesn't get so bad. And with an E3600, you'd be starting with 2550w of charging capability and adding 400w with each expansion battery. It'll be cobbled together for sure.

Heck, looking at my Delta 2, it is rocking and rolling 500w of solar charging, with my expansion battery, that is 2kwh of storage, with just 500w of charging, that is really pushing the utility if I need to use 2kwh a day as I am almost only going to get that in the summer time, or a PERFECT winter day. I can for sure over panel a bunch to help with that, especially with overcast weather, but there is no realistic over paneling that is going to do much on a heavily overcast day. So, you are going to need to charge back up on a clear weather day.