# This Solar Battery Runs on Gasoline - (Not Clickbait)

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** JerryRigEverything
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP88uN7pvbU
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/23007

## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

Today we find out the answer to the age-old solar panel question. What happens when the sun doesn't shine? Apparently, this generator back here can power your house using solar, gasoline, propane, or natural gas, making this the most useful appliance since the invention of the microwave. It's called the Anker Solix E10 whole-home backup solution from my channel sponsor, Anker, and it's the world's first hybrid whole-home backup. The entire system is plug-and-play just like the solar panels. We're starting off with 4,500 watts worth of solar, which is about half of the 9,000 watts that the stack of batteries can handle. So, there's room for expansion later. Installing the panels is actually super easy. We have the snap-in rack system, and we should be able to get the panels up in about half a day. The snap-in rack anchors can either be rafter-mounted or deck-mounted with super sticky polyisobutylene on the bottom, which helps waterproof it after everything's screwed in tight. If we hit a joist or a rafter underneath the shingles, we only need to put in two deck screws. But if we miss the rafter or one rafter doesn't exist where we need to mount, then we have to put in four screws. The screws have rubber washers as well to keep liquid from penetrating down inside of the shingles. Here in Utah, some years we have to deal with snow, which means that each of the anchors can be no more than 48 inches apart and within one-third the distance of a panel edge. It'll make more sense as you see the rails clip down into place. And now we just bring up the panels. I got this snap-in rack system from a distributor called Solar Wholesale. Solar Wholesale is able to take pictures of your roof and attic space and design whole solar systems custom to your house with individual plan sets, which help with permitting if you're building a grid-tied system. The Anker Solix system is off-grid since we're plugging the solar panels directly into the side of the battery, which makes things a little bit easier. The same connectors that string each of the panels together are the same connectors that plug into the battery: MC4s. The side of the battery has two solar inputs. Each of them maxes out at about 4,500 watts, but we're just going to use one of the inputs today. Brett can add a whole other array and add more batteries into his stack whenever he feels like it. Modular systems are the best kinds of systems. It's a little bit cold to be installing solar panels—it's February right now—but basically, we have all the panels connected in one loop, positive to negative, with their wires running into this junction box. And instead of penetrating down into the attic like we normally would, we're using conduit to skip the roof entirely and go straight into the exterior wall of the garage where the batteries and generator are going to sit. I'm a big fan of how the solar panels and racking are black on black, which match his gutters and his roof shingles. Aesthetically pleasing. The E10 system's battery power modules are modular. Each of the battery blocks has 6 kilowatt-hours worth of capacity inside. And each stack of batteries can include up to five modules. And you can tie three stacks together for a whopping 90 kilowatt-hours worth of storage, about the same amount of energy as an electric car. And the energy inside the batteries can be replenished from the sun, the grid, or our tri-fuel gasoline, propane, and natural gas generator that we'll try out in a second. This looks clean. Of course, we won't be running the fossil fuel generator inside of a closed garage, but I'll show you how that works later. Now that we have the batteries unboxed, installing them on the wall is super easy. Guess I got to do it myself. Anker has included two extremely beefy mounts that can hold over 600 pounds worth of batteries. We only have two batteries here today. I'll fasten the base plate to the arms first and then use the built-in level to make sure that it's square on the wall. Of course, Anker offers their own installation and support to help with setup, but it's kind of fun to see how it's all done. The brackets themselves can mount to either 16-on-center studs or 24-on-center studs depending on how they're flipped. Then the modular batteries can just stack on top of the shelf. And we can add more batteries to the stack whenever we feel like it. We have one battery mounted to the wall behind me. And let me walk you through this other battery. So, it has 6 kilowatt-hours of power stored inside. So, it makes it rather heavy—about 130 pounds, give or take. And then there are two plugs on the top, or two seats. One is an actual plug that clips into the battery module above and below it. And they kind of just daisy chain together all the way to the top, up to five batteries tall. If the batteries are going to be stacked just on concrete without one of the footers, then this little rubber plate needs to stay installed. But since we are mounting them to the wall, I'm going to pull this little rubber pad off so it can click into the base plate just like a little Lego. This plug connects to the battery below it. And above it or the inverter on top, which we will take to our control panel in a second. I do like how there are so many fins on the back for heat dissipation. The whole

### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00]

system can also be ground-mounted, but to clear up some floor space, I think it looks a little cleaner on the wall. And since we have more than two batteries tall, we're going to stick another bracket right over top of them to keep everything snugged up against the wall in case of an emergency. We are mounting the batteries just high enough off the floor to leave a parking spot for the tri-fuel smart generator underneath. The top inverter is much lighter. It just fits right on top of the stack like this. We'll get to the power dock breaker panel in just a second, but it's cool that we don't need all of this equipment at the same time. Now that we have the batteries hung, I'm going to plug in the power strip and see if we can charge my entire truck. If you just want the extra battery storage in your garage, you can get the solar and batteries without the smart inlet box or power dock, and it'll still work just fine. Using the power strip to charge electric vehicles or run things inside of your garage. So, jumping in here to the batteries on the E10 system. What's really cool is that the batteries themselves—so these modules right here—they're discharging at 5. 5 kW, and the solar at 2 kW is doing a pass-through to charge up my truck at 7. 5 kW. I can now basically drive for free using just the power of the sun. Now that we know the batteries can output an incredible amount of power—up to 10 kilowatts—let's see if they can power the house. To truly get a whole-home backup, we need to tie into the Anker Solix power dock, which is a smart home panel for all of your circuit breakers. And this is where I recommend hiring a professional electrician. The Anker Solix power dock can handle a 200-amp main panel connection, meaning it can handle the electricity of a whole residential home if you have the battery capacity to match. Since my friend Brett is starting off with just a few battery modules, we're just going to offset the power in his basement, which is conveniently where he films all of his YouTube videos. If the batteries in the garage ever run out of juice, the power dock will instantly switch power back to the grid in less than 20 milliseconds, meaning he shouldn't even notice the transition. We previously split apart the power dock into two parts and left the portion that has the input plugs in the garage next to the battery and moved the smart breaker panels down into the basement next to where the old dumb panel is so it's easier to install. So, we are currently in the basement. The electrical wires come out from the battery—that little junction box up in the garage. And I'll explain a little bit more how this works in a second, but we're taking those same wires coming all the way over here to the breaker panels. And this is where, you know, a certified electrician comes in. The wires come in there through the ceiling. And this is the box that we saw in the garage earlier. We'll be moving the breakers from the existing panel over to the new panel so it can smartly dictate which ones are functional in an emergency. Basically, as we move wires over from the original dumb panel to the Anker Solix smart panel, we have to extend the wires using some WAGO connections. And then the wires get extended down through the wall up into the bottom of the smart panel. And it looks a little messy right now, but it should clean up pretty quick. So, quick overview. The grid power comes in through these wires here, down through the electrical panel with all the breakers we left behind. Then the grid power comes from this breaker here, out through the bottom, up into this smart panel here. So, these breakers can get power from the grid or from the battery, which these wires were the ones that we pushed through the ceiling earlier. They go out to the garage and into the battery. And now that the electrical is done, we can put the covers back on. She cleans up pretty nice. The panel was exactly 15 inches wide from side to side, so it wouldn't recess completely between the studs. But that's what it looks like on the inside with all the breakers we installed. This spot would be a main panel breaker, but since we just brought the power over from here, this breaker is acting like our main shutoff. We also forgot to install the current sensors, which are these "clampy boys. " These are what make the smart panel smart, as you'll see in a second. So, back up here in the garage, this is what we took off of the electrical panel earlier. And we can put up to three stacks of five battery modules here in the garage. And then the battery obviously connects to the breaker panel downstairs with this. We'll get to the generator here in a second that can handle the propane and the gasoline. And then over here is where the solar comes in. And we have an extra two ports for an extra 4,500 watts worth of solar. And then this is the emergency shutoff. And down here is where the generator can plug in. So the generator, this is where we would put in the gasoline right there, like a normal generator. And then back here around this side is where the natural gas or the propane would connect, which we'll try in a second. This is where we switch between the natural gas, the regular gasoline, or the propane. It has outlets on it, like a regular wall outlet. And then this is what connects to the battery stack.

### Segment 3 (10:00 - 14:00) [10:00]

And then it's an electric start. So it can start from the app, or this button, or in an emergency, we have the pull start. But being a smart generator, everything should be able to happen automatically through the app. And then on the far side of the generator, we have the exhaust since there will be fumes coming from this fossil fuel boy. And this long cable is what's going to allow us to take it outside. And outside is where we will be able to run the generator. All right, let's head down to the basement and see what loads we can pull from the battery system. Okay, so this is where the magic happens. This is where Brett films his videos. We're going to put the heat gun and the heater onto the app. But first, there are a lot of folding phones back here. He keeps all of his phones in one piece, which is nice. That's cool. All right, back to the video. Brett: All right, here we're currently at 560 watts. Zack: That's what the power you pull in your basement is, 500 watts. Brett: Basement, my office, a few other things, the garage—but that's mainly what we get. Zack: Okay, so let's crank something on. I'm going to turn this heater on, too. So, we have two heaters going. The home load has jumped to 1. 7 kW, almost 2 kW. Basically, we're only using 20% of the total available output of the battery system. Since the Anker Solix E10 system has 10,000 watts of available output, it can power full-on air conditioners and dryers. We've set up the system to handle a lot of low continuous loads instead of a few large high-consumption appliances, which is just something you have to think about when you're connecting your batteries. As we add more batteries into the stack, then it can power the heavy-use items for longer. Let's see if the generator works. Now that the breaker box is installed and our solar is recharging the battery, let's say the grid goes down like it often does in California or Texas, and there's a snowstorm covering the panels so the batteries can't recharge. This is where the tri-fuel Anker Solix smart generator 5500 comes in. We currently just parked it underneath the battery modules since here in Utah the power doesn't go out all that often, but the tri-fuel generator is weatherproof enough to be parked outside and permanently connected to natural gas. Being a smart generator means it can turn itself on and run when it needs to, and it has three operating modes: eco, quiet, and turbo. And just like the batteries, it can function between -4°F all the way up to 122°F. All right, we're going to try with gasoline. Switching it down to the lower. We got the liquid gas port in the top. Starting it. All right. Smells kind of like a lawn mower. There's a reason why these things are outside. How much electricity are we generating? 2. 7 kW. The generator's RPMs remain constant, making it five times more efficient than a generator that always has to fluctuate with energy demand. It can charge the batteries at 4,500 watts, which is the same power coming from the solar panels. It's like a plan B for your plan B, which I guess would make it a plan C. The generator does its own smart maintenance and will let you know if things aren't working right from the Anker app. Speaking of which, we can see how much the solar is producing and how much power Brett's house is consuming. So, quiet mode is around 2,000 W and turbo mode is around 4,000 watts. That's a lot of power. So, we're going to try the propane now, which is connected and turned on. Slide to start. And there we have it. Now our backups have backups. Whether we're using solar power, gasoline, natural gas, or propane, we will have electricity in this house powering the entire basement. The solar is definitely going to be quieter than the generator. Since electricity rates are different all across the country, it's hard to calculate exactly what the payback period is going to be for this. But in an emergency situation like a week-long power outage in California or Texas, the Anker Solix E10 hybrid battery backup system is going to be priceless. I'll leave the current pricing down in the description if you want to pick up one of these hybrid systems for yourself. I, for one, am super excited, and Brett will keep us updated on his channel on how it works over time. Brett: Thanks, Anker. Zack: Thanks a ton for watching, and I'll see you around.