I’ve seen the most popular home batteries up close and personal. They’re big, solid boxes that cost $10,000 or more and never leave the wall of your home. At CES 2024, I wheeled one around, and it didn’t even seem that heavy. EcoFlow’s new Delta Pro Ultra allows you to take some or all of your home’s power with you — even on vacation.
The Delta Pro Ultra is EcoFlow’s most powerful entry in the whole-home battery space, which is growing more competitive despite years of dominance by a few players, namely the Tesla Powerwall.
Like other whole-home battery systems, it’s essentially a stack of lithium ion phosphate batteries with an inverter on top to convert the DC electricity stored in those battery cells into the AC power your appliances use.
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What’s different from competitors is that EcoFlow’s batteries and inverters are in a stack, on wheels, connected by some simple wiring to a smart panel (called the EcoFlow Smart Home Panel 2) that distributes power between the batteries and your home. Because the batteries aren’t mounted (like on a wall), it’s fairly easy to add more and reassemble the configuration on your own. So if your energy needs increase, you don’t have to call somebody to come and add more batteries for you. That could save you thousands of dollars on an installer, or tens of thousands if it means you don’t have to buy a whole new big battery unit.
And, if you want power while you’re away from home — say, on a camping trip — all you have to do is unplug the battery and inverter unit from the wall and take it with you. It suddenly becomes a very large but very powerful portable power station that can save you the hassle and cost of buying a separate unit just for camping.
Here’s what to expect.
Powerful and flexible
First, some specs: The power of the EcoFlow Delta Pro Ultra depends largely on how many you have. Each inverter is capable of 7.2 kilowatts of output, which is a good amount of power. You can have up to three inverters, for a total of 21.6 kW of output — more than enough to start up your air conditioner on a hot day.
EcoFlow had the Delta Pro Ultra loaded up on a cart at CES so you could wheel it around. It’s surprisingly easy to move a nearly 200-pound battery.
Your home battery away from home
The coolest thing about the Delta Pro Ultra is that it can do something no Tesla Powerwall or Powerwall lookalike can: leave the house.
You can disconnect it from your smart panel and wheel the thing around, load it up in the car or the camper, and have all the electrical comforts of home with you while you travel.
It’s not the most portable of portable power stations. The inverter and one battery unit weigh about 190 pounds combined. There are lighter ways to haul electricity around. But it is still capable of being moved: I wheeled it around on the show floor at CES a bit, and it wasn’t hard at all.
The advantage of portability stretches beyond being able to take a big battery to your tailgate party. If you move, and you have a home battery that’s attached to the wall and wired into your home, you’re probably leaving that battery for the next owner of your house. But with the Delta Pro Ultra, you can take the battery with you. The only thing that requires an electrician is the panel.
