Load shedding has been in abeyance for months now (because power outages lose elections, probably), but South Africans are a cynical lot. It’ll be back. If you’ve somehow crammed one of Ecoflow’s new Delta Pro Ultra X units into your home in the interim, you’ll find yourself completely avoiding Eskom’s return to form.
The Ecoflow of power
For up to a few weeks at a time, according to the Chinese power manufacturer. The goofy name aside (we blame Apple for this chaotic collection of suffixes), the scalable home battery system could run your entire house — not just bits of it — for ages. As long as you’re willing to pay for the battery capacity.
The Delta Pro Ultra X is the upgrade of the Delta Pro Ultra (obviously), with a single one of the system’s inverters supplying up to 12kW of output. Supporting batteries, which mount on the wall wherever you have space, offer between 12kWh and a staggering 180kWh of backup capacity. Of course, you’ll need a serious bank account to max out the battery capacity, at which point you might as well add another couple of inverters.
Three of Ecoflow’s Delta Pro Ultra X inverter systems give users up to 36kW of continuous power when the State utility is sitting on its hands or frantically trying to dry its coal reserves. At its base level, the Delta Pro Ultra X will give you a day or more of running everything (depending on your home — maybe turn off the Bitcoin mining rig). Assuming 15kW of daily power usage, a maxed-out battery will give you twelve days. If you’re conservative, you could stretch that to a solid 24 days.
It’s up to you whether you’re willing to pay for that convenience, however. Ecoflow’s latest is currently on pre-order in the States, with a serious price tag. One inverter and two expansion batteries (6kW each) will set buyers back at least R140,000. At those prices, a local launch may take some time, but the local folks are a friendly lot in Stuff‘s experience. They’ll probably bring one in just for you if you have the ready cash.
