Using battery power to go off the City's power grid


I'm using a Bluetti AC200MAX 2,200 watt expandable power station to take my system off the city's power grid.  It runs off a lithium ion phosphate battery with a 4,800 watt pure sine wave inverter. My total system only takes about 450 watts so I have never heard the fan kick on - it is totally silent. The music comes from a completely black background, with a huge soundstage that sounds very natural. I know that Ric Schultz has talked about these types of setups and there is a very expensive Stromtank battery system that is marketed to audiophiles. Anyone else tried this type of setup in their audio system?

Here is a link to a review:

 

128x128sbayne

When I play music with my active speakers, the total power draw for the system is about 220W.  And when I listen to the headphone system, the power draw is even lower. So 5000W from the Giandel is overkill from a pure power perspective but I think audio quality comes from the parts and wires that can support that 5000W power draw.  For example, on the Ecoflow, I studied the parts and wires for the 30A outlet vs the 20A outlets and they are different.  This difference should cause a differece in sound. Being the tweaker that I am, of course I will test this theory on the Giandel :) My experience with Shunyata gear over the years tells me that wire gauge and quality matter and the quality of the parts and connections matter.

I agree, the AC adapter I plan to use with Giandel will have a negative effect but I have a hunch this will be overcome with the "higher quality" connection on the Giandel.  We will see.

I looked again at the Giandel site, and I see four standard 15A outlets, plus a hard wire connection for high power appliances, to the right of the four outlets.  I don't know if you are planning to use this special connection, but it would be interesting if you do, to compare the sound of that to one of the 15A outlets.  With your low total power draw at 220W max, any of the 15A outlets should be enough.

Also, they said that the Giandel is overbuilt with special EMF filtering.  BINGO, that alone may explain the sonic superiority of the Giandel as heard by Oeno.  I await your exciting experiments.

My concern is that Giandel advises to turn it off when not in use.  I don't know why.  This would be a problem with amps that need continuous low power for standby.  The manual cautions that if the battery voltage drops below 9.5, the inverter will shut down. That doesn't leave much room for the draining battery starting at 12.6V, so you would have to keep the battery charger running all the time, disconnecting the charger for critical listening.  Ricevs says the sound is not as high quality unless you disconnect the battery charging cables.  See what you find if you keep the charging cables connected all the time, which would be convenient.

I do plan to use the special connection on the Giandel. The 4/0 gauge 1 foot long battery cables arrived this morning and I’ve spent a good chunk of my evening connecting up everything and insulating all bare electrified metal. A word of advice, the Giandel has internal capacitors so to avoid sparks from the initial connection with the battery, it’s recommended to use a resistor to charge up the capacitors.

The battery is charging up right now and I’m waiting until full charge before I have the initial listen which may be in the morning.

I did not know about the EMF filtering which is good to know. The casing of the Giandel is all metal which I think should help with EMF as well.

I plan to charge the battery during off hours and then disconnect the charger during other times. And I want to do this automatically using relays and some type of smart controller. 

sirnui,

I have been worried about you.  Did you get a severe shock from connecting the battery to the Giandel?  Did the sparks cause a fire?

Maybe you are not happy with the Amperetime/Giandel, or else you would have reported enthusiastically by now.

I hope all is well.

All is well and the music flows like fine wine 😁 I've been very busy with life (mostly good) and replying back to this thread has been low priority. 

We're working with essentially a 12V car battery so sparks can and do happen so wear proper eye and glove protection and mitigate the sparks by using a resistor.  My 30 Ohm 25 Watt resistor came in last night and I will use that next time when making connections with battery (inverter and charger). 

I've been listening with the Puritan/Giandel combo and it's as good as expected.  I'm going to use an analogy to help describe what I gained.  I had an old pair of eye glasses and I recently got new ones.  With the old ones, I could still see 20/20 but they were scratched up.  Over the months and years, I got use to these scratches because I could still see very well.  When I tried my new pair of eye glasses, the clarity without the scratches were appreciated.  Comparing old and new, I also saw that the old pair had a yellowish tint that I never noticed before.  After having the new pair, I can't go back to the old pair.  I'm going to be cliche and say a sizeable veil has been lifted with the addition of the Giandel.  I can hear the improvements easily with my headphone listening and with my Kii Three Active speakers.

For anyone already with a good power conditioner, I believe the addition of the Giandel will enhance the performance of that conditioner and one may be surprised at the level of improvement.  I've tried the Ecoflow Delta Pro, Bluetti AC300/B300, and now the Giandel 5000/Amperetime Battery.  The rest of the system has not stayed the same throughout my time with these three solutions but I believe the Giandel is the best performer of the bunch.

For how I plan to charge and discharge the system, the 200Ah Amperetime battery is not big enough.  It's running too low on capacity at the end of the day.  I'm returning it and getting the 300Ah model.  Also, the Amperetime 40A charger is not as powerful as I would like, so I'm getting a Progressive Dynamics 80A charger (the one for lithium batteries).  This new charger requires a 20A outlet which I have.  I currently use a smart plug to automatically charge the battery at night and this has worked out very well.  With the new 80A charger, I now plan to use a smart outlet that can handle 20 amps.

Big Thank You to ricevs and oeno for sharing the Giandel!