Ecoflow River Pro 2 vs 20 year old pellet stove fireplace insert

[SparkyGage]

THIS WAS JUST AN EXPERIMENT AND I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS FOR ANYTHING OTHER THAN AN EMERGENCY.
(and if you saw this in the Cold Temperature Systems subforum, yes this is the same thread - sorry)

Just a quick real world experiment. I purchased an Ecoflow River 2 Pro last summer for some portable power for tools, overnight power on my sailboat and as emergency power along with my generator. Last week we had a rare (for Arkansas) week of sub freezing temps. I decided to see "if" and how long I could run my living room pellet stove off of it.

The overall result is that I was able to run the stove for 1.5hrs to a 15% discharge with "aggressive" setting of the thermostat. After 1.5 hours my room was holding temperature enough that I didn't want keep testing. So basically 10% per hour or a theoretical 8 hours down to 20% reserve.

Misc items of note:
- The outside temps for this whole test were done with outside temps in the 20s. The overnight temps had been in single digits.
- I kept the central heat turned off while testing, so while it was running, it was the sole heat source for the house.
- The meter on the Ecoflow reported that stove used roughly 500wt while igniting the pellets, then drops to about 200wt on the initial high fan run then down to 100wt for the low fan run.
- Having my thermostat set a bit higher than I normally do, it ran more over this 1.5hrs than it would in normal use. '
- My cold natured wife wasn't unhappy about a warmer room for a while either - happy wife, happy life.
- My Aladdin Pellet Stove was manufactured September 1999 according to the sticker on it.

If I get a video thrown together for the facetubes, I'll post a link. I would like to try this again when I get it setup with a panel arraigned to where I can charge it and use it at the same time. This side of my house is intended to eventually be on a fully off grid circuit, but in the mean time this is giving me a quick and dirty(clean?) option in a pinch.

 

[Andrewr05]

Wow that seems like a lot of Watts for just the fans.
Although squirrel blower style fans aren't really known for their efficiency.

I wonder how long the unit would run with it set at a lower temp and maybe some modification of the fans to force them to spin slower and therefore draw less wattage?
Although I know with pellet stoves temperature control is very important

I had one years ago that overheated itself a lot.
You had to give the unit a deem clean 3 times a week.

 

[SparkyGage]

Wow that seems like a lot of Watts for just the fans.
Although squirrel blower style fans aren't really known for their efficiency.
.....

I think that's the key takeaway: this is an all metal unit that is twenty years old now. If I had a way to frankenstien it with some cheap honeywell fans and ducts, it would definitely save power (light plastic fans are about 35w on full which is about the same volume of flow as this unit on low - so 1 third the power). But at that point, I would probably be better off just working on getting a larger generator, panels and so on. This was just more of an endurance test for the EFR to see what its limitations are. Until I get that portion of the house on an off grid circuit, I wouldn't mess with it.