Can You Survive a 24 Hour Outage with a Power Station? - Backup Power w/ Anker F3800

This is the exact situation I'm looking to prepare for with the exact product I'm looking to get. I'd like to pair it with solar panels and use it with my generator input plug.

Good video ! VERY IMPORTANT --- After Unplugging a Refrigerator from a Wall the Compressor May Have Been Running.

Unplugging & Re-Plugging a Refrigerator right away back into power is a BIG NO NO !!!

ALWAYS Wait 5 Minutes BEFORE Plugging a Refrigerator Back into the wall / alternative Power source. it allows the Pressure's in the refrigeration system to equalize & allows for a Easy start of the Compressor.

Failure to do this --- Can Result in a Overheated Compressor from it trying to start a compressor that was just running.
also possible total failure of old start components.

Edit --- Unplug Refrigerator while sleeping to conserve power. Refrigerator will stay cold overnight.
Plug back in in the morning.

Edit - Turn off inverter overnight to conserve power. = 70 watts/hr. savings.

Should i buy an extra battery and have it designated Just for a turkey dinner in case I'm really in the mood to make it during an outage? To some people that might be an essential need.

Great video, I learned a lot!

With the past Black Friday sales purchased a Pecron e3600 with 2 expansion batteries (3600w 9kWh). It is connected to a Reliance Controls 30amp 10 circuit (4-20amp, 6-15amp) transfer switch. We have an excellent propane fireplace and cooktop. So heavy power hitters are fridge and microwave, coffee maker and toaster oven. We experienced our first power outage yesterday at 2am. Being retired, I got up 7am proceeded to transfer all 10 circuits to the Pecron at 7:30am. Being able to heat water on stovetop and Starbucks instant for coffee is a win. After 2 hours noted output at 5% of system. I expect much of that was bringing the fridge temps down. Also noted 100-350w output flux when checked. We got our power back at 10:30am and proceeded to transfer all circuits to line and plugged in the 3600 to charge. Much of our community is still without power after 35 hours. If we were still without power at 4pm yesterday I would have charged the Pecron with my Wen 4800w portable propane generator.

There it is! Glad this came back!

you didnt talk about keeping the space you are in at a livable temp.....most unplanned outages are caused by severe weather and where ever you are sheltering the space will need to be conditioned some how. few city dwellers have wood stoves and if you have electric heat....well that is no heat then. gas forced central air uses from 800w to 300w when the fan is running and my furnace will run about 5 min our of every half hour when the outside temp is around 32. Glad to hear you will be testing the standby draw of the inverters now, it is a HUGE parasitic draw on the bigger inverters. (often around 10%per hour) and is why i try to turn off my battery bank off at night. i have a much smaller power station for my fridge and freezer to power then at night.

Is the internal battery 12v or does it go through a converter? Might lose power through that conversion.

Power stations can be wonderful tools to help you survive a brief power outage, but they're not a stand alone answer
I live in Georgia, where our most likely outage scenarios involve hurricanes, thunderstorms, or rare ice/snow events. The vast majority of homes around here are total electric or gas/electric. Wood stoves, wood burning fireplaces, and propane heaters are an exception. Heat is normally a furnace using either electricity or natural gas. Electricity is out, and a gas furnace requires a fan, so it's pretty useless. We just had a snowstorm a couple of weeks ago, and a lot of people were without power, and therefore, without heat, for a while.
Electric blankets tend to be good options in this scenario.
Our biggest issue is a hurricane, and those tend to hit in August/September when AC isn't optional. I can run a small window AC with around 400 watts per hour and keep one room in the house cool.
We geow our own food, so we have 2 refrigerators, a large upright freezer, and 3 chest freezers. All are completely full right now because we just got 2 pigs back from the processor last week. Losing that meat isn't a good option for us. We have 3 power stations and 2 gas generators. We have 2k of solar panels hooked to a charge controller for charging extra lifepo4 batteries that we use to extend run time on our power stations.
Our entire plan is to be able to survive 7 days of a total grid down scenario and maintain our comforts. That requires keeping 25 gallons of gas and 120 pounds of propane on hand at all times. It's not a problem for us living on a farm.
The power stations are extremely helpful because they can be moved around and used indoors, recharged via solar or generator, and ready to go again tomorrow.

Very informative, thanks

Great vid although weird to have it reuploaded today with the launch of the f3800P

I can power my whole 2200 sf home with a ecoflow delta 2 max for about 12 hours and longer with solar attached

I live out in the country, so my situation isn't going to match those of city folk. Our heating is redundant (pellet stove, propane wall heater, and propane furnace if the others fail) but we have a small Bluetti EB70S and my homemade 200ah battery/inverter setup ready for whenever we loose power. To extend running time, I also have several solar panels to keep things topped off. Eventually, I'll build another setup for the fridge. Otherwise, cooking is left to the BBQ and various camping supplies. If all else fails, I also have 2 RVs at my disposal. Need to rig up an instant transfer switch for those middle-of-the-night situations.

Home internet goes down when power goes out here. So still don't understand who has internet when the power goes out if the cable or fibre is dead too.

This scenario just happened Friday. Headed out of town for the weekend at 12pm. Power went out at 3am. Plugged a Delta 2 Max & ran 2 pedestal fans for next 4 hrs. Woke up, pulled fridge out at 7am & plugged it in. Boiled 8 cups of water in a kettle, toasted 2 bagels & ran a smoothie blender for a minute. Fridge was having to lower it's temp back down 8 degrees. HUGE draw. It was ALREADY down to 65%??? SOOOO...Plugged it into a gas generator while we got dressed to boost charge & buy time. Notice from power company said it would be back on at 5pm but had to leave. Plugged the Delta 2 Max into the wall outlet & left.
My point...get that fridge plugged in ASAP! The less restoration of temp, the more run time you'll get.
And...generating heat is an awful use of these batteries. The kettle gulps it. But in the end, a buddy stopped by at 5:30pm, power was back on & the EcoFlow was doing a fantastic job as a pass through so he left & when we came home Sunday, all was well. Definitely need for more power than what I thought for the simplest things.

A kerosene stove, a home designed heat solution from Toyotomi, other than the fuel, it runs very efficiently with low power draw. Initial start up uses 247W for nine minutes, then 47W on high to power fan. With my Anker C800plus, I can squeeze out a day of heat. Very efficient.

If you use a dc fridge, is the dc to ac converter still running? Or do you actually have control to turn off the converter when only using the dc output? If the converter is running anyway, how are you saving electricity by using a dc fridge?

Thanks for this in-depth video! I appreciate the breakdown of real-world power usage scenarios and the insights into idle consumption, which is often overlooked. Your testing always helps you make informed decisions.

Are you planning to review the new Anker Solix Everfrost 2? It looks like an interesting unit, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks again for the great content. I am looking forward to the next one!

Stay charged!

Set your expectations accordingly! Great video, it puts it into perspective.

Large inverters suck up a lot of power. I used my portable EG4 Battery and inverter to power my fridge and it only ran it for 34 hours with 2400 watts used for fridge and the 2700 watts was idle consumption. We lost power again and this time I connected my EG4 battery to my Delta 2 to run the fridge only and it ran it for more than 83 hrs than the power came on. I still had about 18% left on the EG4 and my Delta 2 was at 98%. I don't believe in buying expansion batteries instead I just buy lithium batteries for my power stations. I am going to buy the Victron 48V 1200W inverter as I understand this uses about 24 watts a day in idle consumption.

Adding even the most basic solar feed to these power stations offsets the passive draw and possibly the draw from the fridge. I Survived of a 9 day outage in SC last fall with a similar Blueti unit with a small propane generator and 400w of solar..

Anker Solix has an updated version of this (F3800 Plus) that adds 240 V split phase charging, and solar increased to 3600 watts with DC voltage up to 160 volts. Nice informative video!

Is this a re-upload? I swear I've seen this video before wtf

We are actually weighing going with the F3800 for a whole-house solution that we can grow over time. In the winter, 6000W is more than enough as we have a gas furnace. The goal would be to add another F3800 so we can run the whole house including the A/C with soft start, and then start to add additional batteries as budget allows. While the total cost would be more than an EG4-style solution, I think we can get started for less if we take advantage of some funding through work and the 30% tax credit. We also maintain the ability to take the unit to a family member's house if they experience an outage that we do not (happens often, unfortunately).
While we would eventually add some solar panels, we also have an inverter generator we could use to keep the batteries charged.

Can you please tell me which panels can I use with the f3800

There is also the defrost cycle of the refrigerator.

Nothing beats a Turkey Dinner during a good ice storm. Nobody shows, lots of leftovers.

Microwaves are taking over in camping trips.

Another good vid!

70watt power draw from the AC inverter is an insane amount. But I guess that makes sense for such a powerful inverter? I'm not sure the typical household needs that powerful an inverter. I'd rather just have just more watt-hours capacity storage as opposed to insanely powerful inverters (for my personal scenarios)

old footage - late to publish? The hair has magically grown back! but also - "winter season upon us" its almost march =-P Whatever, of course its fine - stay sexy, mr solar man

That stackable system looks nice ... but it would be much better if they would start making them so the connection uses some sort of built in plug system that are built into the top and bottom of the units so the expansion battery would connect when plugged on top and you wouldn't need those big cables going from one unit to the next.

I had just finished installing an Anker F3800 with one extra battery, with the Anker Smart Home Panel and sub-panel, and had cut over nearly all of the critical circuits to the sub-panel. On Feb 16 the power lines went down. The Anker kicked in transparently, and it actually took a few minutes before I realized I was on backup power. I was powering 2 full size fridges, one full size freezer, a mini-freezer, lights, pellet stove for heat, Starlink internet routers and laptop. Monitored the usage via the app, and because everything powered on and off randomly, I never saw usage exceed 900 watts. I'm sure there were some surges well over that, but the app didn't pick those up. The app consistently gave me an estimate of over 20 hours available. When the power returned 6.5 hours later, I had only used 32% of the total battery capacity, and recharged in 1 hour 15 minutes at just under 3000 watts from the grid. I had heat, lights and my fridges/freezers were fine. Worked exactly as intended, hands-off power for a short term event. Very, very pleased.

Do you always maintain a 100% charge on your units?

Positive Comment!!!

Can the old and new F3800 be linked together?

Would love if you could do a video on Power Stations for full home back up, review/comparing a couple devices, that would actually what I'm aiming for. Thanks in advance!

This is exactly why I became interested in these things, my power went out for 3 days a few years ago in the summer and it was so hot and boring I said I’m never letting this happen again lol

this is awesome. does anyone make a multi inverter set up? to be able to reduce inverter consumption off of DC power--sounds like the next gen for batteries so that you can turn the inverter consumption on low in the overnight?

Why don’t you compare the Aferiy P310 and the Clayton LPS II 3000 to all the other power stations?

Anyone else watching cause they miss Robbie and the Committed Crew. I hope you’re doing great Robbie you look a lot happier. Stay Committed!!

Robbie. Finish that genesis my dude 🫨

How can I contact “The Solar Lab” host? Robbie I think? Paul Rentmeester

Where do you get off getting $10,000 worth of free equipment???? 🖕👎 You are soooo bought off... And then you're telling us to go purchase it... For a whole 11 minute video... That's almost like $1,000 a minute....

"to be honest, I'm making a bagel before I leave." 🌌😁♠

I feed my F3800 with 48v LiFePo4 rack batteries through the solar inputs & it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than using Anker expansion batteries.