I was given the opportunity to review the B300K expansion battery and have been putting it to use with my AC200Max and AC200L power stations. I hope you enjoy this introduction to the B300K and demonstrations of connecting it to the two models of power stations.
I also put the B300K battery to some cool testing (it’s a pun!) along with my AC200L power station. I recently obtained a Midea inverter-based portable heat pump (refurbished – really good deal) as a backup for when my failing HVAC would be replaced, and in case of a power outage during a heatwave or even a cold snap. The Midea is a 12,000 BTU unit. By now the HVAC has already been replaced, but I was curious about how long my AC200L could run it with the B300K expansion battery. So one evening I set up the unit in my bedroom, and plugged it into the fully charged AC200L + B300K combination, and closed and blocked the duct vents. I took the following picture in the morning after it had been running over night. That night was quite cool, so it hadn’t run a lot. Also note that the Midea is on top of a wood crate to get it high enough for the hose to reach the window, it’s not actually that tall.
Here is what the weather conditions looked like for that first day and following.
In the end the combination was able to run the Midea heatpump for two full days in those weather conditions. When the unit is first started up and it needs to get the room to temperature it will draw around 1,300 watts. Once the room is stable it will periodically cycle, typically ramping up from 150 watts to around 600 watts, before settling to around 300 watts until the room gets to temperature again. Below are the captures of the SOC charts for the two days.
Here are the captures of the “Power Profile” for the two days showing the Midea cycling on and off as the day heated up.
And here is the state of charge at the end of the experiment, as well as that of the batteries independently.
So this experiment was quite successful, and my curiosity was satiated. I definitely would be able to have cooling and heating during a power outage. This test was done without any charging, solar or otherwise. For these weather conditions and based on the battery state of charge, the Midea unit used 3,950 watts over the two days. The AC200L would just barely make it through a day without the expansion battery. So based on a rough estimate I would need 500 watts of solar panels to keep this set up going, assuming 5 hours of solar charging and decent sun conditions. Not too bad at all, and a fun use of the equipment.
I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did doing the testing!
