Can the EcoFlow Delta 1300 Keep the Lights on During a Power Outage?

EcoFlow began in 2017 by entrepreneurs who designed batteries for a drone company. These batteries needed to be long lasting, have high output, and be light. They took that expertise and founded EcoFlow who now make solar generators.

The Delta 1300 is their biggest model to date. It caught people’s attention with its astounding charge claims. I am curious to see if it is a good option to run the essentials in my house if the power goes out. Let’s dive into what the Delta 1300 offers.

Battery Capacity

The Delta 1300 has a 1260Wh (12V) Lithium-ion battery. It is called the Delta 1300 because of the battery size. Obviously, it isn’t quite 1300, but 1260Wh is a decent battery size. The benefits of lithium-ion are numerous. They are lighter, more efficient, less maintenance, and have a longer lifespan. The battery can sit for 1 year after being fully charged and still be ready to go. That is much nicer than lead-acid batteries that required you to charge every couple of months or you would ruin the battery.

Weight/Portability

The Delta 1300 comes in at right under 31 pounds. This puts in the easily portable category. It also comes with two carrying handles. If I am camping, hunting, road trips, etc., I want something I can pick up easily and not break my back doing it. It’s also nice if my wife can pick it up if I wasn’t there. I’m really happy with the weight of this system.

Click Here for the Best Price on the EcoFlow Delta 1300

Charge Speed

The charge speed on the Delta 1300 is what really caused a wave in the solar generator industry. They claimed that with a wall charger you could charge from 0% to 80% in one hour! It can be fully charged in 1.6 hours. That is 10 times faster than competing units. For example, if you look at the Goal Zero Yeti 1400, it takes 25 hours to charge from a wall outlet. It blows it out of the water.

Because of how fast it charges, it does have its own issues. To charge that fast, it creates a lot of heat. Heat creates inefficiencies in electrical units, and because of the heat the Delta 1300 requires a lot of fans to try to cool it down. It also has to cool down between charging it and using it again.

How does it do with solar panels? It allows up to 400W of solar input. Now, if you watch my video you know that I was able to put 600W of solar panels into it and it worked fine. The fastest charge speed you will get from solar would be about 3.25 hours. That is fairly good, and is under the 5-6 hour per day window I want to be in. That means I should be able to run something during the day and still charge it back up.

Expandability

The ability to expand the battery capacity on a solar system is important to me. I like the option of being able to expand the capacity of my system to meet my needs, especially when I consider how much money I spent. The Delta 1300 doesn’t have a typical battery expansion option, unlike the Titan or even the Goal Zero Yeti line. But what you can do with the Delta 1300 is chain another Delta 1300 to it. You can have up to 6 Delta 1300s linked together, giving you a combined battery capacity of 7560Wh. That is a lot, but I don’t like that you have to buy a whole Delta 1300 instead of a cheaper battery only option. There is no option to expand the solar panel capacity, although I was able to get 600W panels instead of the 400W that is listed.

Life Cycle

A lot of solar generators in this size have 500 life cycles before the battery starts to degrade. A life cycle is from 100% to 0% and then charged back up to 100%. Once 500 cycles are reached, it doesn’t mean the battery is worthless. Typically, they are good for about 80% after that. Meaning if you had a 1000Wh battery, after 500 cycles it would only be rated for 800Wh.

The Delta 1300 is rated for 800 cycles. Better than the typical 500, but something interesting is that after those 800 cycles the battery drops to 60% capacity instead of 80%. That reduces the battery capacity to 1260Wh x 0.6 = 756Wh.

I think it only has 500 cycles like many other units before it reaches 80% capacity. But they rate it to 800 cycles to look better and don’t really tell anyone that it will be 60% efficient by then, rather than 80% efficient at 500 cycles.

Number of Plugin Ports

There is a total of 13 output plugs on the Delta 1300. There are 2 USB-A plugs, 2 USB-A fast charge plugs, 2 USB-C plugs, a 12V car plug, and 6 AC plugs. I like the layout of the USB plugs and the screen display. It is simple and clean looking and works very well for smaller appliances like phones and laptops. The screen shows both input and output watts, a percentage battery display and a total run time counter.

On the opposite side are the 6 AC plugs. They are so close to being spaced out well enough that they don’t hit each other, but unfortunately, I think they are a little too close. Although I was able to get 6 plugs in, they were pushing on each other. If I used a boxier plug or a box plug, it covered up the one next to it making it unusable. They also only allow 3 of the 6 to be plugs with a ground on them. If you had 6 plugs that all had grounds attached, you wouldn’t be able to plug them all in.

Inverter Size

The Delta 1300 uses a Pure Sine Wave inverter with 1800W continuous usage and a 3300W surge capability. It’s pretty typical for the surge capacity to be double that of the continuous watt rating, but in this case, it is a little less than double.

I’ve noticed with some solar generators that if the inverter is mismatched from the battery, it can’t pull the full continuous watts that it is rated for. I don’t like paying for a more expensive inverter if it’s limited by the size of the battery. During my testing of the Delta 1300, it was able to pull 1800W continuously. Of course, that drained the battery in under an hour, but it’s good to know that it can do it. It should be noted that when you discharge the battery that fast, it does need to cool down for a while before it can be charged back up.

RV Connectivity

Unfortunately, there is no RV port. I think the size of this unit would be really well suited for RVers, so it’s too bad they didn’t incorporate a RV port into it. It makes it so much simpler.

For RVers who want to run their campers/RVs without the A/C unit I think this is a good option.

Car Charging Capability

It does come with car charging capability, charger included. It will take a car about 10 hours to recharge. This is a must for me if I’m looking for something to take camping or on road trips. Let’s do some quick math here. 1260W/10H = 126W. So, if your car charger is inputting a 126W, and let’s say you have a DC fridge that used 30W, then you could be running your fridge and charging at 96Wh/hr.

EcoFlow advertises a 130w charging speed. When I ran mine it was getting 129W, so I’d say that’s accurate.

Click Here for the Best Price on the EcoFlow Delta 1300

Customer Support and Warranty

EcoFlow warranties the Delta 1300 for 2 years. I always tell people to use their solar generator a lot at first, because if there are going to be issues you want to find out while it is under warranty. 2 years is a generous time frame, and it seems a lot of companies are bumping it up from 1 year.

That being said, there are multiple people having issues with EcoFlow’s customer support. I personally have not had any major issues with mine that require any warranty help. That doesn’t take away from the fact that many people have mentioned they have difficulties getting ahold of EcoFlow.

Full-Sized Kit

In order to have everything necessary to have the full kit you will have to get extra items that do not come with the EcoFlow Delta 1300. The following items are what is suggested from all of my testing:

1 – EcoFlow Delta 1300
4 – 100w Solar Panels
2 – PV Connector Extension Cable Sets 3ft
1 – PV Connector Solar Cable Set 100ft
1 – 2 to 1 PV Connector Branch Connector

Final Thoughts

After using the Delta 1300 at my house, my cabin, and on the road, here are my final thoughts. It has crazy impressive charge times for wall charging, but it comes at a cost. Not in money but in battery performance down the road.

The price point is great, coming in at around $1400 without solar panels. That is well below similar models like the Bluetti EB240 or the Goal Zero Yeti 1400.

But to answer my original question, will it power my house if the power goes out? I don’t think so. It is really close, and it could certainly run the bare essentials for a while. I don’t see it being able to run them continuously though for multiple days in a row. It’s just cutting things way too close, and I would need perfect sunlight to get charged up again while running my appliances. But because of how fast it charges, and its price point, I think it is a really good option for weekend camping, road trips, Vanlifers, etc. Depending on your application the EcoFlow Delta 1300 is a go in my book.