The road to nirvana |
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My journey into Photography, Horology, and Audiophilia |
Going solar: My love and (a little) hate with EcoFlow
October 1, 2024
Continuation from previous page...
The way the EcoFlow PowerStream operates led me to make this comprehensive yet incomplete calculation of my "power consumers" and corresponding "scenes" or combination of appliance utilization.
The EcoFlow PowerStream originally did not have a means to determine consumed power in real-time and is only now, which is still in beta, integrates with Shelly Group. Because our beloved Meralco meters are uni-directional, both consumption from, and power feed to, the grid is logged as CONSUMPTION so it means the PowerStream may produce too much power which may leak to the grid if not configured properly.
Net metering you say? I will not qualify due to low consumption and would need an oversized solar production that has to undergo a lengthy and tedious procedural and technical process. Nevermind.
Not a good start
My order was placed last September 18 and arrived on the 21st without the solar panel so the PowerStream served as paper weight while I persistently follow up with the vendor. In the meantime, I began setting up the EcoFlow app and the Smart Plug to get acquanted with them.
After installing the EcoFlow app and adding the Smart Plug, a firmware update was presented so I installed it. After a few minutes, I noticed that the SmartPlug started showing the real-time info (as Now) but never show Runtime and Today data. It just doesn't log any data.
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I sent an email to EcoFlow support in Europe and asked if the Smart Plug requires the PowerStream to log data. Their reply was:
"Yes, data recording will only start after connecting to powerstream."
I was left scratching my head as it wasn't what I expected but they know better, right?
The following week, the EcoFlow NextGen160W NextGen portable solar panel finally arrived.
I was finally able to add the PowerStream to the EcoFlow app, when I instantly got a "grid error" and the Powerstream LED displays solid red. I updated the firmware and it went away, thankfully. In all, there were about four firmware updates that I had to install to get it to the latest one.
Finally, I am configuring the PowerStream and since it's not connected to a battery, only the Prioritize power supply mode is available.
While I'm waiting for some decent solar output, the Smart Plug still isn't logging, darn...
I consulted with Europe support once more and their reply was:
"Yes, you can try to delete the smart plug and powerstream from the app and add them again to see if the data can be recorded."
After doing all these, the problem still persist.
I decided to delete my current EcoFlow account and created another one, then I logged in to the EcoFlow app using the new account and registered both the PowerStream and Smart Plug. No dice! This is really frustrating!
In the end I decided to accept that it probably is a bug with the Smart Plug and I am just unlucky, very unlucky.
Focus on the PowerStream, continued on next page.
