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Ecoflow Delta Support / Warranty - Buyer Beware - Will Warned Us

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WanderingAlbatross

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Apr 21, 2020
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The Ecoflow Delta has a solar charging capacity of 400 watts (65 volt and 10 amp maximums). Something happened with the solar connection and the solar controller was unfortunately cooked. Meaning the "magic smoke" came out and it no longer works. The rest of the Delta still works great, minus solar charging which is important for my use case.

The Delta manual states that it has an 18-month warranty, but this does not cover "DIY solar panel setup" repairs for free. In this case, DIY means any other panel or cable beside the cables and folding panels Ecoflow sells. Currently, their panels are on backorder so it is not even possible to order a new Delta and associated folding solar panel to not void the solar charger warranty.

I reached out to Ecoflow regarding this issue and it turns out that not only will they not warranty the solar charger, but they are not willing to fix it for any price. At this point, I have an expensive 31 lb boat anchor and no solution on the horizon. Any feedback on how to encourage better support / warranty for the product would be much appreciated.

Will warned us that support was questionable. I do like the performance of the Delta and supporting start-ups. It is too bad that my experience with their support / warranty has been so frustrating. Ecoflow has been responsive both by phone and email, but the end result has not been ideal.
 
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I might be interested in your services. We'll how things progress.

BTW, why is the SCC not fused in any way? It seems like some of these issues could be avoided.
 
WanderingAlbatross said:
I might be interested in your services. We'll how things progress.

BTW, why is the SCC not fused in any way? It seems like some of these issues could be avoided.
Click to expand...
I know nothing about the unit, nor why they wouldn’t protect it... but installing a new controller shouldn’t be a problem.
 
Wow. That is a crappy warranty to only allow their expensive flexible panels!
What panels were you using when it died?
Watts total and number of panels?
 
Sounds like the software update helped a little with the R600, but still a few lingering issues from what I gather. Maybe there will be another software revision.
 
The last video on the R600 still had problems.
Hobotech has only one R600 to test but will be interesting to get his take on it.

 
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Also, does anyone have suggestions of repair options? I am located in California.

Is there a chance that this SCC could be fixed or would it likely require a new board or a swap with an aftermarket SCC?
 
Never laid hands on one, never seen one in person, but if it's the typical blow up of these sorts of things, main transistors fried, drive transistors/IC fried, it probably can be repaired. If the damage went back to the main microcontroller it's gone, but from what saw of Will's youtube clip, that isn't likely.

Not something for the amateur, tiny SMD component sizes rules that out because inexperienced people definitely won't have the skills or equipment to handle them. Even if you load the parts cannon with the big transistors and driver components, it could well just let the smoke out again.
 
Is it possible to source the parts without a schematic assuming the main microcontroller is functional? For example, is it easy to figure out the part numbers for a Digikey order of the crispy transistors?
 
It might be possible to still read the writing on them, so that would make it easy to load the parts cannon. If not, it is going to come down to experience, ie being able to pull things off the board, convince it to run and look at the waveforms with a 'scope. It's really not something that an inexperienced person is going to have a lot of joy with really.

If you want to see a few youtube clips about a guy without, as far as I can tell, professional training tackling things (note: i'm not saying he's an idiot!) take a look at the barevids youtube channel. Bizarre as it may sound (pun not intended) his switching amp adventures actually map surprisingly well to the MPPT controller world.

It may even be possible to hack a separate basic MPPT controller into it, similar to what supervstech was talking about, but again not something for the amatuer.
 
WanderingAlbatross said:
but they are not willing to fix it for any price.
Click to expand...

Did you offer EcoFlo a million dollars? J/K I don't understand why they won't repair it at your expense. That doesn't make sense to me. Did they give you an explanation? Also the part of the warranty regarding third party solar panels is vague to say the least. Sorry you had a bad experience with them. Maybe write a letter to the CEO and let him know what happened and you would like to have the unit repaired.
 
The current "repair price" appears to be $1,399+tax, AKA the price of a new Ecoflow Delta. I'll push them a bit more and see what I can learn.

If they don't want to cover the SCC under warranty that is one thing, but having a flat rate repair charge seems like the next logical step. It appears that they have had enough problems with the SCC to write it into the manual, but have not come up with a solution. A flat rate repair at a minimum or even better, make the SCC more durable to solar hook up issues would be the best for all parties involved. Also, based on the teardown video, the unit looks to be easily serviceable. I suspect the SCC board could be swapped in twenty minutes or less if the part was available.
 
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I was going to post this earlier but didn't actually click the button by the looks of it so...

Low production runs, might not actually have any spares allocated to 'customer blew it up' repairs so the price of the fix would be a new unit either supply a new unit outright, or pull a board from a new one preventing it from being sold.
 
@gnubie, you might be correct about the limited inventory / spares and they have been pushing hard with the R600 release. I suspect there has been a lot of demand for their product given the pandemic and the PG&E power outages in California. Solar is looking more appealing all of the time!

I emailed the CEO of Ecoflow Eli Harris. We'll see if we get a response.
 
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