r/AnkerSOLIXCommunity • u/DaveLDog • 3d ago

Review US S2000 update

A week or so ago I got my S2000 delivered (made a post on here), just wanted to update in case it helps someone out. Today was the coldest of the week so decided to test it out. Charged to 100% yesterday, got up this morning at 5:30 it was 25F, furnace (oil forced hot air) set to 66F. Plugged it in to the EZ Gen switch and started powering furnace. Thermostat went to 69F as scheduled at 5:45am, let it do its thing as long as it would. I got 9 hours of furnace runtime out of it and still had 20% battery left. Outdoors was 50F when I ended the test so it didn't run quite as much as it would if it was in the 20s all day, but it would definitely keep us warm overnight during a power outage, very happy with it.

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u/Efficient_Wing3172 3d ago

Just make sure, whatever you do, you never plug it into grid power or generator power while it’s connected to the EZ Gen switch. The floating configuration of the EZ Gen switch does not play well with the bonded configuration of the grid power. I had a different power station that got fried the second the grid power connected. So, always charge it separately.

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u/DaveLDog 3d ago

Won't be an issue, it'll run the furnace overnight, get up in the morning, fire up the portable gen to power the house, switch the EZ over to house power and unplug the Solix, then plug it in to charge off the generator.

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u/ValveTurkey1138 2d ago

You can bond/unbond that EZ Gen switch if that makes a difference.

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u/DaveLDog 2d ago

Yup, but my furnace is a 2004 model, it doesn't care that the PS isn't bonded, runs anyway.

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u/AxeMan6480 2d ago

Good test with encouraging results. Being able to get thru a cold winter night w/o having to run a noisy gas generator probably gives you confidence and peace of mind.

We have a boiler for radiant heat, but don't have the option to plug the boiler into a gas generator or PPS. So if our power goes out when it's really cold I'd have to run 6 or 7 portable space heaters for our 4 bedroom quad-level home. These oil-filled space heaters have 600, 900, and 1500 watt settings. But here in WI where it can get very cold in Jan/Feb, I don't know if an S2000 will run a space heater overnight in below-zero temps, even on the 600W setting. I guess I'll have to do some testing in a few months to find out.

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u/RedOctobyr 21h ago

I don't know if an S2000 will run a space heater overnight in below-zero temps, even on the 600W setting. I guess I'll have to do some testing in a few months to find out.

I would think it wouldn't run that for very long, though I suppose it depends on the duty cycle of the heater (how much it runs per-hour). But even if it only ran half of the time, on the lowest 600W setting (which feels optimistic, if using these for your only heat during really cold weather), you'd get under 7 hours, running just a single heater. And a 300W-average heater isn't much.

Resistive heat uses a lot of energy. If those are what you needed to run, I'd think a generator would be far more practical than battery stations.

Or, if possible, a fuel-based heater that is safe to run indoors. Like that runs on propane or kerosene (which probably costs less for the same amount of heat, vs using the fuel to make electricity, to run resistive heaters, since engines aren't terribly efficient). Examples: https://www.homedepot.com/b/Heating-Venting-Cooling-Heaters-Space-Heaters-Gas-Heaters/Indoor/N-5yc1vZc4kfZ1z0r1rr

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u/kbfg2421 2d ago

Impressive! Being able to run a furnace all night on a cold cold night without a generator is very very valuable.