(Thank you again to reader RH for writing this and taking photos of your rig.)
As part of my prep testing, spurred on by this blog, I decided to look into the production of ice if needed when things go south. While ice is obviously great for drinks, my primary thought would be for food preservation and keeping insulin cooled when no power is available.
My test setup is as follows – One EcoFlow River Max:
And one Frigidaire branded 26 lb/day ice maker:
Please note that these small countertop ice makers are sold under many brands but are all basically the same. The nice thing about them is they are low power draw – rated at 1.7 amps nominal with 2.0 amps listed as the highest draw during ice dump.
So, using a brand-new ice maker, I filled the unit with my reverse osmosis water, (RO as we have hard water in my area and if the water isn’t filtered it will build up limescale on the appliances) and started it. As you can see, the EcoFlow was at a 100% charge.
I ran the test for 2 hours and it resulted in the battery dropping to 51% of capacity and 1.14 lbs. of ice, below the specified output.
Now obviously, this isn’t a ton of ice, and per the rated output of the ice maker, at 26 lb/day, it should produce 1.08 lb/hour or 2.16 lbs. for this test. A caveat however – these ice makers (of which I’ve owned several) work much better when the water is already cold. For this test, the water was room temperature (around 72°F) which I am sure affected ice output. As the water cycles through it gets colder as there is some ice melt from the basket.
I did not run the test for the estimated 4 hours total that the EcoFlow indicated it could run the machine, but my overall estimation is that we would end up with around 6-7 lbs. of ice on a full battery charge.
So, my conclusion – yes, you can make ice using your EcoFlow solar generator, at least enough to keep some food or medicine cold when used in a cooler. For diabetics, this could be a major life-extending measure.
And besides, after a hard day of dealing with zombies, who wouldn’t like a nice blended Margarita?