SeattleSounder
New Member
Newbie here....first question on the forum....please be gentle. I've been researching DC electricity and solar setups for a while now, but am having some problems still understanding a few concepts. I'm hoping you can help me with one.
We had a "major" power outage here in Seattle recently that put a fire under my butt to get my "night time" backup power system in place. I purchased a propane generator about 10 years ago and its worked great every time the power has gone out for longer periods of time, but I don't want to run it between the hours of 10pm and 8am so as to not disturb my neighbors (houses are very close together). I decided last winter that I wanted to have a backup battery system that could run my basic appliances at night (a few LED lights, two refrigerators, and chest freezer and maybe the motor fan on our natural gas furnace). I have a 10 circuit manual transfer switch hooked up for the generator so I was hoping I could hook something up to that for the night time hours. I haven't wanted to go "full in" cost-wise and space-wise for an inverter and battery setup just yet, but then freaked out after this last power outage and purchased an Allpowers S2000 PRO on sale. Probably a stupid move since I now see that there are lots of bad videos and discussion about Allpowers units....also the fact that the first one they sent me was DOA (their customer service was GREAT and they immediately replaced it and new one works great).
So with all that said, I'm trying to figure out the best way to extend the "run" time on the unit so that it will "run" as long as I can get it to (preferably for the 8 to 10 hours I need it) until I can start the generator in the morning. The Allpowers has an XT60 solar input port that I want to be able to plug into with an additional battery setup. I watched a few YouTube videos of people attaching an XT60 cable with alligator clamps to a 12v battery and having it supply power to an Ecoflow. I assume that something like this will work for the Allpowers as well, but haven't tested it yet. I also know that that type of setup will only charge at 120w which is not real great if I'm using between 800w and 1200w. I've also seen videos of people using some DC step up voltage converters to get 36v and triple the charging watts. Seems a bit extra difficult for what I want to do, but is it necessary for safety instead of just using a 36v or 48v battery setup directly?
Here's the crux of the question: The Allpowers specifications says this: (XT60 Solar Input:18-70V, 18A 650W Max)
I'm having trouble understanding the 18A specification. I believe that they are trying to say that there is an 18A maximum for the port, but I'm trying to understand how that relates to how the power or energy or whatever you call it is drawn out of the battery. Does that mean that if I get a battery that has a 20 amp maximum discharge rate that I will be OK? I finally saw a tutorial last week that showed me that a battery doesn't push the energy/power, but the unit needing the energy/power will pull it. So is the Allpowers going to try to pull 18A all the time? How does that relate to the cigarette lighter to XT60 cable that comes with the unit? I think that cable is only going to pull 10A from a 12v battery to get 120watts, but how does it know that it is only supposed to be drawing 10A of power/energy?
How do I get to as close to the maximum 650W input from a battery system (through the XT60) without frying the Allpowers unit and maintaining the safest battery setup possible? Thanks.
We had a "major" power outage here in Seattle recently that put a fire under my butt to get my "night time" backup power system in place. I purchased a propane generator about 10 years ago and its worked great every time the power has gone out for longer periods of time, but I don't want to run it between the hours of 10pm and 8am so as to not disturb my neighbors (houses are very close together). I decided last winter that I wanted to have a backup battery system that could run my basic appliances at night (a few LED lights, two refrigerators, and chest freezer and maybe the motor fan on our natural gas furnace). I have a 10 circuit manual transfer switch hooked up for the generator so I was hoping I could hook something up to that for the night time hours. I haven't wanted to go "full in" cost-wise and space-wise for an inverter and battery setup just yet, but then freaked out after this last power outage and purchased an Allpowers S2000 PRO on sale. Probably a stupid move since I now see that there are lots of bad videos and discussion about Allpowers units....also the fact that the first one they sent me was DOA (their customer service was GREAT and they immediately replaced it and new one works great).
So with all that said, I'm trying to figure out the best way to extend the "run" time on the unit so that it will "run" as long as I can get it to (preferably for the 8 to 10 hours I need it) until I can start the generator in the morning. The Allpowers has an XT60 solar input port that I want to be able to plug into with an additional battery setup. I watched a few YouTube videos of people attaching an XT60 cable with alligator clamps to a 12v battery and having it supply power to an Ecoflow. I assume that something like this will work for the Allpowers as well, but haven't tested it yet. I also know that that type of setup will only charge at 120w which is not real great if I'm using between 800w and 1200w. I've also seen videos of people using some DC step up voltage converters to get 36v and triple the charging watts. Seems a bit extra difficult for what I want to do, but is it necessary for safety instead of just using a 36v or 48v battery setup directly?
Here's the crux of the question: The Allpowers specifications says this: (XT60 Solar Input:18-70V, 18A 650W Max)
I'm having trouble understanding the 18A specification. I believe that they are trying to say that there is an 18A maximum for the port, but I'm trying to understand how that relates to how the power or energy or whatever you call it is drawn out of the battery. Does that mean that if I get a battery that has a 20 amp maximum discharge rate that I will be OK? I finally saw a tutorial last week that showed me that a battery doesn't push the energy/power, but the unit needing the energy/power will pull it. So is the Allpowers going to try to pull 18A all the time? How does that relate to the cigarette lighter to XT60 cable that comes with the unit? I think that cable is only going to pull 10A from a 12v battery to get 120watts, but how does it know that it is only supposed to be drawing 10A of power/energy?
How do I get to as close to the maximum 650W input from a battery system (through the XT60) without frying the Allpowers unit and maintaining the safest battery setup possible? Thanks.
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