I have been looking in to the EcoFlow Delta Pro for my mobile café cuz I won’t need any noisy generators and have also considered making it in to a mobile cafe/roastery since they came out with a another system.
Will be very interesting to know how it all works out for you!
Cheers!
Hello All, I moved to a 120 year old house last year with 3 outlets and ancient wiring. I roast in the back yard outside, and there’s zero outlets and running an extension only brings me non-steady power (the bullet needs stable output!) so I hunted around for a power supply and ended up with a Lion Energy SAFARI ME DELUXE KIT. I can do at least 8 back-to-back roasts with this setup and it comes with an expansion battery and solar panels. It was an expensive investment but it’s worked out for my ‘this old house’ rental situation, and I get the bonus of having backup power for everything in my house with our frequent power outages in California. Hopefully this is helpful to someone.
Good to know you can get that many roasts with that kit. I’ve learned more while waiting for the Delta Pro to come in. First, if it is plugged into AC it is automatically in charge/passthrough mode, which means you are using mains power, not battery or solar. This means that if I want to use only solar so that I can indicate solar power roasted coffee on my bags, I have to keep the unit unplugged. Another issue for those of us in the US is that the federal tax credit (26% in 2022) only applies to batteries that are charged no less than 75% from solar–another reason not to use mains AC. Finally, for me it is better to use the Delta Pro strictly for business, not personal and business, because that allows me to get both the tax credit and still depreciate the remaining cost of the unit. We will be putting in a larger solar array and hybrid system on our main house panel, so this works for us.
Good point about passthrough, the Lion works similarly: if used while charging from mains or solar you’ll get the passthrough power. This is important to keep in mind, because while the battery power is ‘pure sine wave’ power and works well with the bullet, the passthrough power is not. I found this out because on occasion I try to get out just one more roast and most of the time when I connect to mains or solar during a roast, the bullet will throw a power related error and go to P0.
That sounds like the board is heated up and shut down to protect itself. I was going to ask where in CA are you to roast outside 8 back-to-back batches and if you were getting the the IGBT1 warning. I get it here in MA roasting inside until I placed a fan at the bottom of the roaster. Just curious how large is each of your batches. I’ve been trying to figure out what is a safe number of BAC roasting before I run into trouble.
I’m in northern california and I’ve not received that error, it was an A-04, sometimes I can recover live but more often than not the amout of heat put out changes enough to where I get inconsistent results. I’ve been roasting 8-14 batches per session for a few years now, have not had temperature issues. That sounds like a drag.
I’ve naturally standardized on 800 gram batches over the past couple of years just because it always works. I took Morten’s class from Coffeemind and we tried ‘sizing’ the roaster with full 1 kg batches. It was interesting to see the difference between the 220v and the 110v systems. Clearly for 110v and the kind of power I have, 800 grams is the sweet spot.
Good to know you were able to get 8 to 14 batches. I haven’t had the Bullet shutdown on me yet (keeping my fingers crossed!), but have had the IGBT1 go to “yellow” warning before. In another recent thread we discussed placement of an external fan to cool the belly of the roaster and placing the fan on the right side made a big difference for those of us hitting that warning. I’ve been roasting 3 batches of 1kg BAC and so far so good. I am a bit leery about roasting more when the ambient temps in MA right now is in the 90s even though I have the a/c on in the house since I roast inside with the kitchen window open for increased ventilation with my range hood vent. I may try to a 4th or even 5th 1kg roast when the outside temp is cooler in the fall/winter.
Update: The EcoFlow Delta Pro is here and I’ve got three solar panels temporarily connected. One concern I had is that the UPS feature of the Delta Pro can take up to 40ms to switch over to battery/solar when the power goes out. As a result, EcoFlow does not recommend it for use as a UPS on computers. I tested the UPS featrue with the R1 by putting the R1 is preheat mode then unplugging the Delta Pro from the wall: the R1 didn’t glitch at all. I did the test in a few more R1 modes. All of them worked fine with absolutely no noticeable disruption to the R1. I will be mostly roasting from battery/solar, but this was a good test for anyone just wanting to use a Delta Pro as a UPS for the R1.
The 400 watt portable were super pricey and I will eventually permanently mount the panels for this. I went with 6 200 watt Rich Solar panels, but I didn’t realize that all 6 will bump up to 150 volt limit of the solar input on the Delta Pro. That would work now in Houston since it is 85+ when the sun is shining, but if the temp drops much the Voc will increase to more than 150 volts and could fry the Delta Pro. So I am limited to 5 of these panels, building in a margin of error for low winter temps I don’t think this area has ever seen.
Another update: With my Artisan 3e fluid bed roaster (240v 5500 watts)I never roast during the day when its hot in the Houston area, because I cannot risk power fluctuations or outages. One of the reasons I got the Bullet was that it would be easier to run it through a high end UPS/solar generator, allowing me to roast at any time and to also label bags as Roasted with Solar Energy. Today I did a 20 minute preheat to 220c and another test run of a 500 g batch all through the solar generator. I started at 100% charge on the generator with full midday sun. I think it went down to around 78% by cooldown–that was with the generator powering my laptop, the Bullet and the S4 exhaust fan. By the end of the day I was back up to 100% charge–all using just three 200 watt panels that are not ideally situated. The most solar input I saw was 420 watts.
Looks very promising! In this scenario the preheating is of course taking a big chunk out of the energy storage. Running 2 to 3 back to back roasts would be more efficient overall, which I am sure you know.
Keep us updated.
I keep planning on back to back roasts, but so far every roast I’ve attempted, other than the underdeveloped sample roasts I tried, is coming out scorched or faced. I’m at wits end, since I’ve never had this issue with any other roaster.
They just had this talk last week…discussed hydrogen to use in their burners…
Beautiful video!
Guessing you could run a Bullet for quite a while off that panel+battery unit…
It’s a great solution to keep your Bullet running during power outages and even roast using solar. While it may be a bit pricey, the investment may be worth it in the long run. It’s always good to be prepared for unexpected situations, and having a reliable UPS can give you peace of mind. Ecoflow is a great power station. I use it too https://www.propaneva.com/best-solar-generators/#product1, only without the Pro add-on. Everything suits me, it’s pretty powerful.
