You might be wondering why I'm in the dark. Well today I'm going to pull back the curtain a little bit and show you exactly where and how the JerryRigEverything videos are made, as well as how we're 100% backed up with batteries. Let's get started. [Intro] I make all my videos from home, but not inside my house. This is where we live and where we installed the elevator for my wife. This building is at the front of the property and this building, kind of like a mother-in-law's apartment type of thing, is at the back of the property. And it's where I film all my tear downs and durability tests. Normally it's powered by solar panels that I have on the roof, but today, as in right now, we're going completely battery powered and I'll explain how I did it. Flipping the breaker on this panel will take that extra building completely off grid. I'll explain how I wired all of this up in a second. Before I show you around though, let's make some cookies since we know any good host always provides some kind of refreshment, and these cookies are going to be cooked with the juice right there from the batteries. Everything you see today is going to be powered by these two EcoFlow Delta Pros that are wired together. EcoFlow's been a sponsor of the channel for a while now. I've had one of these powering my barn for the past 2 years. The cookies are going to take a second so let me show you where I film my videos. This main kitchen area is kind of like the central hub to the building. It's where I ship out a lot of my JerryRigEverything knives. And back here is where I film my videos. Once again, operating on battery power. All of these lights right here is where the magic happens. It's kind of a mess. Just finished the Galaxy Fold 5 teardown. As you can see it didn't quite survive. What's kind of fun though is that I can take my camera and zoom in on whatever I'm taking apart or autopsying and see it in real time in 4K on that screen. Everything including the camera which is on an inverted tripod is being supported by some DJ scaffolding as well as some barn door rails. There's a power strip up top and all of the lights are just held on with monopods. So pretty much every durability test and teardown that's been filmed in the last 4 years has been filmed in this room with all the sound proofing on the walls and everything. A lot happens back here. There's a total of about 5 rooms in this building. The other room is over here. Once again, running on battery power. And this room is kind of like a catch-all room where a lot of boxes go and where all my batteries and drones are being charged up on the shelves. Behind this door is where the Hummer is sleeping, and don't worry, he misses you guys too. Coming back here through the kitchen again. The cookies are smelling delicious. This is where I edit all of my videos. Light switch is over here. Signed by Buzz Aldrin. And this is where I do all my scripting and editing. I spend a ridiculous amount of time in this room. I don't do everything myself though. I do have an editor who helps me out. It's one of my high school buddies who lives in Texas. You'd probably see more of him if he didn't live so far away. Say hello, Devan. -Hey guys, I'm Devan. Zack, it's good to see you. -After he finishes the bulk of the edit, he passes it off to me. I polish it up and post it to the internet. Everything passes through this computer – a custom built Intel I9 GeForce 4090 with 64 gigs of RAM. And I keep my old computer as a backup just in case something happens to the main one. It's extremely important that I can keep working on this computer even if the power goes out. If Yellowstone erupts, I still need to make a video about Yellowstone erupting...which is where the batteries come in. How I was able to power this entire building from these 2 portable EcoFlow Delta Pros is with something called a transfer switch. This will look extremely normal to the people who have a generator hookup already since it's literally the exact same plug. Except for instead of putting a generator outside, we are inside with batteries. Normally these will be placed inside of a garage or somewhere a little more out of the way, but whoever built this building forever ago put the breaker panel in the kitchen, so here we are. But no one lives out here so I can do what I want. This particular transfer switch has 6 breakers, an inlet plug, and a row of manual transfer switches. It is pre-wired and we can take those wires into the control panel of the building and pick 6 of the circuit breakers to move over to the backup panel. With the breaker panel powered off, I can pull the original wire from the breaker and switch it with the new wire from the transfer switch. Then I'll splice the other transfer switch wire into the wire we just removed, basically putting the transfer switch in line with the load and allowing the transfer switch to manually decide whether I stay grid tied or completely off grid, running solely on battery backup. The reason we completely cut the grid for these backup circuits is because one, we don't want our electrical energy flowing out to power our neighbor's houses. And two, if the grid ever truly does go down we don't want power flowing out which would make a more dangerous situation for anyone working on the utilities. These two Delta Pro units are able to put out 7,200 watts worth of power. Each of these two units are 120 volts and when plugged into the double voltage hub, and then plugged again into the transfer switch, we get 240. Volts times amps equals 7,200 watts. The transfer switch box also has a white neutral wire and a green ground wire. I'm going to talk amps for a bit here since you can tell I'm not backing up every breaker for a reason. A lot of the breakers left in my panel are for huge appliances like the oven, which runs at 50 amps. The washer and dryer each have a 30 amp breaker. I could have connected them since the system caps at 30 amp, but nobody's washing their clothes in the apocalypse. My super old air conditioner also has a 30 amp breaker, but if I really need AC I can flip on the battery powered portable EcoFlow Wave 2 which can keep a room cool for about 8 hours. We also have an electric hot water heater running on a 60 amp breaker. And I could downsize all of these things or buy an induction stove which has a whole lot less power draw and then be able to back up everything everywhere all at once. But those aren't really my priorities at the moment. Take, for example, this first circuit which goes to my office computer, probably the most important thing in here. Normally power would come in through the grid, hit the breaker and go off to my computer, however, now that we have the battery back up, power comes into the grid, it goes into the red wire which comes over here to the transfer panel switch. And since it's on grid power, it comes back out through the black wire and off to my computer. However, if we switch it to generator, which we haven't exactly connected yet, then it would take battery power instead, passing it out to my computer. And I can still bake all the cookies I want during an outage or an apocalypse with my countertop mounted unit. Speaking of which...[ding sound]. Looks like the oven was pulling about 1400 watts while it was warming up and baking our cookies. And judging by the 7.2 kilowatt hours worth of energy we have in the battery modules, if we turned everything on in this whole building it would last for about 10 hours. Or, it's the equivalent of baking about 100 batches of cookies. One thing I really like about this system is not only is it modular but it's also expandable from 7.2 kilowatt hours like you see here, to 14.4 kilowatt hours which is enough to run my building for about 20 hours or bake us about 200 batches of cookies. Of course that 20 hours is with everything on. I could ration the electricity a little bit, make it last days, maybe even a week. Or I can get 2 more units for a total of 6 and 21 kilowatt hours. Now I don't have those here obviously. This is photoshop. The power of editing. Thank you Devin. Now so far it might seem like all sunshine and roses, but there are a few things that I don't like about this system. The first of which is that the transfer switch came with a bunch of wires attached and none of them were labeled, so I didn't know which breaker they were going to and that would have been very helpful. The second thing is that the batteries themselves don't balance between each other. It's not a huge deal, I just have to intentionally balance the loads in the panel so they get used up at about the same time. These breakers go to the first battery unit and these 3 breakers go to the second battery unit. The expansion batteries do fill up the battery they're attached to, but one half doesn't balance the other half, and if one half runs out of juice first the whole thing turns off. And finally, you might have noticed that I have solar panels on my roof. It's a grid tied system with micro inverters. So while these will indeed power the building while the sun is out and we're connected to the grid, once the grid turns off, my solar panels will not recharge this setup. Unless I get up on my roof, disconnect the micro inverters and run the solar panels through a DC connection in the back. These units can each take up to 1600 watts worth of solar. Since they have internal inverters of their own I have to disassemble my grid tied solar and wire it up as an off-grid setup to work on these batteries. Very doable in an apocalyptic situation, but not something I can change easily back and forth. So for now I'll stick to the portable solar panels and maybe someday I'll do a dedicated array just for an off-grid situation. One thing that I fantastically love about this setup though is that it needed no apps, no wifi, and no phone calls to activate it with anybody else. Everything was just plug and play which I cannot even describe how refreshing that is in 2023. Hardware that just works without needing the Cloud. There is an app that allows everything to be monitored and that's fantastic, but it's not a prerequisite for functionality. I'm definitely not trying to sell you one of these. I think they sell themselves. For example, if you were to buy an off-grid generator you might get like a 2 or 3 year warranty, maybe 5 if you're lucky. But these EcoFlow Delta Pros come with a 5 year warranty. And if you do have solar panels, you don't have to worry about where your fuel is coming from. Plus some battery backup systems also qualify for tax credits. It might be something worth looking into. I'm not an accountant or a tax guy though. Now JerryRigEverything can operate completely off grid, and since these have wheels and handles of their own, I can take my grid with me wherever I go. I'll leave a link down in the description so you can check out the current pricing or get one for yourself. And thanks for hanging out with me for the last 11 years. If you're new here, hit that subscribe button to hang out with me for the next 11. And thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.