Portable Batteries solutions for power
How to hook up your unit to power your RV or travel trailer’s AC and DC appliances
If you’re looking for information on the latest Portable Power Stations for living off the grid, boondocking, emergency backup power, or RV life, then this post is for you. Over the past 18 months, we’ve been experimenting with various portable power stations, including those from popular brands like Jackery, Ecoflow, and Bluetti. This post will be updated to include the latest information and thoughts on each over time. But whether you’re just starting or have some experience with these units, we hope this post will provide additional insight on utilizing your options with popular portable power stations.
Affiliate Disclaimer: I’ve included links to all of the products mentioned below for your convenience, and yes, we will earn a small affiliate commission, at no additional cost to you, for each of these links. Rest assured, nothing and no one has influenced our feedback, and we purchased all of these items ourselves.
Admittingly, if you’re not familiar with all of the terms, this subject can initially be a bit confusing. It took us a while to wrap our heads around inverters vs. convertors, multi-stage charging modules, different gauges of wire, battery technologies, etc. I can promise you that once you start to dabble in it, things become simpler. One can easily get obsessed with this stuff, YouTube is verifiably full of portable battery fan-boys and fan-girls. Hopefully, this article will help clarify and simplify the process of powering your unique setup/system, be it your RV, travel trailer, or simply your off-grid power needs. In this article, I will describe my individual setup since that is what I can most readily and accurately describe, but always feel free to adapt to your specific needs and setup.
Our Portable Power Station Journey
Our journey started as we began to do more RVing in our travel trailer, and then our power needs expanded when we began to boondock, off-the-grid, living part-time on some property we own in the woods near our home. Initially, we purchased the Jackery 240 and Jackery 300 units to provide extra power in a pinch for things like charging our phones. We subsequently upgraded to the Jackery 500 to power our laptops and larger devices. Eventually, that led us to upgrade to the Jackery 1500, which could run most of our travel trailer using a 20amp to 30amp conversion plug. This worked well for a while, but the lack of weatherproof Jackery solar panels, lack of solar charging capacity, and the overall limitations of the Jackery ecosystem, particularly the fact they only have 500 cycles, meaning they can only be depleted and recharged 500 times before dropping to 80% capacity, led us to look into the increasingly popular LiFePo4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate) battery technology.
In particular, after a lot of research and parsing of YouTube videos and blogs, including Will Prowse’s excellent video channel and his DIY Solar forum (the search function is your friend), we started with the Ecoflow Delta Pro, which not only increased our total capacity in terms of Watt hours (3600Wh for the Delta Pro vs. 1534Wh for the Jackery 1500) but also introduced us to an entirely new set of options and plugs we could take advantage of. This article is mainly focused on maximizing those available output ports and will also include our tips and recommendations for recharging these portable power stations.
Simple Setup: Power your entire RV or Travel Trailer
The simplest solution after purchasing one of these units, whether it be the Ecoflow Delta Pro or Bluetti AC200Max (2048Wh), both of which use LiFePo4 batteries with thousands of available cycles, and both of which include a 30-amp RV output plug, is to simply plug your travel trailer into the unit, and you’re off. Your AC devices, including your microwave, AC outlets, coffee maker, TV, etc., will be powered directly by the AC Inverter on your power station. Most inverters on these power stations, which convert the battery’s DC energy to usable AC energy, are typically 90%+ efficient. This means that while you’ll use approximately 6-10% of your total available energy just converting from DC to AC, you’ll still be able to easily power all your devices without any extra setup. What about your DC devices, including your refrigerator, furnace fan, lights, etc.? Most RV’s and travel trailers, which come standard with Lead Acid batteries and perhaps a solar controller, will also include a multi-stage charging system that converts your AC (shore power) or Solar input respectively back to DC power to charge the ‘house’ batteries and/or your DC devices.
This AC to DC step is usually handled by a converter, and it works well enough, except that it’s not extremely efficient due to the extra energy conversion. Consider that when you take the battery’s stored DC energy and first convert it to AC (losing roughly 6-10% of your energy) and then have to convert the AC back to DC (losing another 10-15%) using the converter, you have wasted up to 25% of your energy at any given time just converting from one form to another; in this case, starting with DC and then ending back up in DC. There must be another solution, and with both the Delta Pro and the Bluetti 200ACMax, there is.
More Advanced: Powering AC and DC devices separately, maximizing energy efficiency
It bothered me that we were wasting up to 25% of our available power on conversions alone, so I began to look into ways to use the plethora of DC output ports available on these units to power our DC devices. I started with the Ecoflow Delta Pro because it had a convenient 30amp Anderson Powerpole connection port. When I started this journey, I had never heard of Anderson Powerpole connections, nor many of the other connectors I’ve since learned about. In truth, there are many ways to transport DC current from a battery to a set of devices, and I’ll include the methods I chose below. There are many ways to do this, and ultimately you may decide to utilize a different set of connectors that better suit your needs. Don’t hesitate to experiment with what works best for you.
In my case, I found an Anderson Powerpole (45amp connector) to SEA adapter on Amazon. This allowed me to utilize the 30amp port to essentially power all of my travel trailer’s DC devices without the need for the power hungry converter. I simply switched off the converter inside the breaker box in my camper since I didn’t need it to convert AC to DC any longer, and I also disconnected my travel trailer batteries as I didn’t need to utilize them in all in this situation.To avoid issues with my solar controller, and its multistage charging features, I also disconnected my RV’s rooftop solar panels. Below, I’ll go over how I created a solution that made it really simple to disconnect and reconnect my travel trailer batteries. Whether you have the standard lead-acid battery setup or something more advanced like Battleborn batteries, you won’t need them once you begin properly utilizing your power station. It effectively acts like a giant battery attached to your RV or unit.
For the Anderson output on my Ecoflow Delta Pro, I chose SAE connectors because I believed they would provide the most water and dust resistance compared to other connectors, like the regular Anderson 45amp or even the larger Anderson SB50 connectors; but both would equally get the job done just fine. SAE connectors are extremely versatile and offer a plethora of connection options. You can also find SAE splitters, etc., that can help you power multiple devices from the single 30amp DC port.
I’ve included a diagram of my exact setup below. It may look like a lot is going on, but it’s not as complicated as it may appear and this configuration maximizes our energy efficiency. Both my AC and DC connections are included in the diagram. I have also installed a Victron 500A Smart Shunt (and the optional Bluetooth Smart Dongle to extend Bluetooth range) to monitor the usage of my batteries, whether I’m using the lead-acid batteries that came with our camper or the Ecoflow or Bluetti to power the entire RV in their place. The Smart Shunt permits me to see more data than either the Ecoflow or Bluetti provide on their own, including the current amps being used by my RV. This is extremely useful to ensure you don’t use too much current at any given time, and it may be wise to list your DC devices as I did and write down exactly how much amperage each uses individually. A spreadsheet is a great way to include all this information, including adding various combinations of devices to see their total current usage. Just ensure that when combined, you don’t exceed the 30amp capacity of the DC output, and you’ll be fine.
DC & AC power setup with Ecoflow Delta Pro
You’ll notice that when possible, I’m using 10awg (10-gauge) wire to complete my connections. This ensures less voltage drop over distances, which can be a factor if any one of your extension cables is long. Our camper battery cables were 8awg, but this thickness isn’t needed, at least in my opinion, for the 30A max connection we’re making between the portable power station and the travel trailer, unless you are attempting to do so over longer distances (over 30ft).
This solution has allowed us to power our AC and DC devices both efficiently and without issue. It also keeps our travel trailer batteries in-tact, and allows for hooking them back quickly up when necessary.
If you’ve invested in an Bluetti AC200Max, or one of their higher end units like the AC300 or AC500, instead of the Ecoflow Delta Pro, you can utilize their 30A DC aviator-style output plug (extra adapter required) to provide power to all your DC devices. For the AC devices, use the 30A plug on the Bluetti, just as you would on the Ecoflow Delta Pro.
I hope this solution has provided some insight as to how best to power your own RV or travel trailer. This application of course can be applied to any off-the-grid living situation, including cabin’s, etc. The possibilities are endless with these portable power stations.
