On today's episode of survival dispatch Reviews we're going to be talking grid Down two words you're going to hear more And more [Music] So what's the deal why did I say we're Going to hear grid down more and more Frequently Well the fact of the matter is is that Our power grid is Antiquated and fragile On top of which it was very poorly Designed in the beginning and if you Take out somewhere around a dozen power Substations stations around the country You're going to wipe out 90 of power Across the country On top of which we are seeing physical Vandalism and attacks we're seeing Network attacks from foreign adversaries Whether it be China Russia whoever the Case may be and then on top of that we Have you know weather mother nature and Those sorts of things uh that plays a Significant role especially for those of Us in the Gulf States who are subjected To hurricanes I know our friends in California Are dealing with lots of power outages And I know you know in the northern States in the wintertime with snow and Freezing rain there's plenty of Instances of grid down there as well So we're going to get into a discussion Today around
We're going to have grid down situations What are the options So I want to mention that this is going To be an ongoing topic here on Survival Dispatch this problem of power outages Is not going away anytime soon it would Be impossible to do an in-depth video on Every single aspect of how you can Prepare for grid down Unless you want to do like a two-hour Feature length movie which we're not Going to do we're not going to bore you To death with so there's a half a dozen Options that we have as far as Contending with grid down power you can Always do nothing You could evacuate so maybe do a state You know or County Evac Center or it Could be to friends and family perhaps Who have power You could buy a small portable power Station like this one here from Power Nest this is one of our favorites it's Been Ultra reliable you can go up a step From there And you could buy a portable generator And then a step up from there you could Add some significant battery backups for A grid down system for lack of a better Term we're definitely going to discuss That in more depth today Or you can go up to the mac daddy and You could get a solar PV system with a Tesla powerwall
That by far is the most expensive option It's not a bad option for a lot of People but it is at the upper end of the Scale So let's dive in and start talking Somewhere in the middle for a grid down Solution So there are actually two middle of the Road Options for grid down cost wise one of Them would be a whole home generator It's you have to Hire an electrician you have to get with Your electric company there's a fair bit Of more equipment involved than just a Generator you have to have you know a Fuel source propane or natural gas And with natural gas in some instances When we have you know a major storm you Could lose gas pressure it may not have Enough to power it you also have to have A secondary panel in your house a Disconnect switch Permits the whole nine yards so it's Fairly expensive So today focusing on a middle of the Road grid down solution we're going to Talk battery backups like this one here From mango and you can see it on the Screen behind me as well mangopower.com So full disclosure mango did not pay us To do this review and they did send us This unit which is only kind of half of A unit and I'll get into why we feel
This is a really good middle of the road Solution Simply based on the fact that it's very Modular so you can buy a base unit like This for 3 699 dollars It's a portable it's on Wheels weighs a Lot it's 100 pounds but this can power The vast majority of things in your House it's got a ton of ports that we're Going to get into it can do 240 Two-phase power it can power your RV it Can power your you know your Tesla your EV those sort of things But it's modular as I said so you can Buy another battery pack goes on top of This another base unit goes beside this Another battery expansion pack on top of That and keep building it out So unlike solar plus a Tesla powerwall Or a whole home generator this allows You to do it in bite-sized chunks but What's really cool is that with the 30 Federal solar tax credit if you buy one Solar panel and connect it to each phase As you build out the system you can Claim the 30 tax deduction on the total Expenditure so for example let's say we Bought Ten thousand dollars worth of batteries Which would be on the high end just Doing it for easy numbers and we went Out we bought one two hundred dollar Solar panel we could claim the whole ten Thousand two hundred dollars on our
Taxes and pay somewhere like seven Thousand dollars and change as opposed To the full ten thousand dollars So now that we've kind of established uh What our line of thinking is with this Type of battery backup let's get into Some specifics Before we discuss the mango power e any Further I want to make a distinction Between off-grid power and grid down Power so off-grid power you're Generating your own electricity you're Not hooked up to the grid you're doing It with solar uh wind powered whatever The case may be grid down means you are Connected to the grid but accepting the Fact that we're a first world country With a third world power grid and Instances and duration of grid down Outages are becoming more and more Frequent so that's the reason we're Talking grid down today I mean in the State of Florida here for example we're Legally not even allowed to have a Building that's off the grid and that's A whole other political story that will Leave for another day But suffice it to say off-grid versus Grid down grid down much more applicable To the vast majority of people so this Thing as I mentioned previously is a Beast you know it's a hundred pounds It's 3699 It has 3 530 Watt hours of battery
Capacity so when you divide that with The price it works out about a dollar Five per watt hour which initially seems A little bit High we've done lots of Power Station previews where you're Getting down into say the 70 cents per Watt hour range but there's a major Major distinction this unit has EV class Batteries in it they last longer they're More reliable they charge faster so You're looking at two things when you Look at the cost per watt hour you can Get that cheap stuff 70 cents a kilowatt Hour and your initial cost of Acquisition seems to be lower when Measuring per watt hour initial cost of Acquisition a little bit higher with Something like this but because it lasts So much longer the TCO the total cost of Ownership is substantially better and Substantially better in your favor so Just an important distinction to make With that this thing can do 3000 watts Of continuous AC power output it has a 4.3 inch screen on the front here As well as a mobile app so just a word Of caution to anybody who may purchase This unit there have been some reported Issues With the smartphone app and connecting To this unit And we definitely had problems however It was our fault fault pardon me not Mangoes I was trying to connect it to
Our five gigahertz Wi-Fi network Everything that we have in our house is Modern it's on five gigahertz I did not See the line that said that the wireless Card in this unit can only connect to 2.4 gigahertz so save yourself some Grief if you buy one of these when you Go to connect to your wireless network Don't try and connect it to five Gigahertz like we did in addition to the Screen on the front there's a whole Bunch of ports which we're fixing to go Through in a second but there's also a Door on the side here that has a number Of inputs as well so we have one here Where we connect our AC power so to Charge this sucker up we have two E-ports so one e-port is meant to Connect to an expansion battery on the Top the second V Port is meant to Connect to another base unit beside this One which itself could have another Expansion battery area on top of it as Well and then we have a port for Connecting our solar system as well Solar PV and we at throttle dispatch we Have three portable Solar panels and we've rigged up some Wiring to connect all three of them we Got about a thousand watts of power Which is nothing too crazy but we can Plug it into this one port and it takes Some time and it takes some sunshine to Get this to a full charge but
Nonetheless If someone were to spend more money you Can do up to 2 000 Watts by the way Input through the solar charge you can Pay a lot of money for portable Panels may or may not be worth it again If you combine it all together you get Your 30 solar tax credit that's really An individual decision So up next we're going to take we're Gonna move the cameras around a bit We're going to take a closer look at the Ports on the front of this thing Taking a closer look at the front panel On the mango power e uh first thing you See up top here is a 30 amp RV Connection So if you uh travel Um you know you're an rver You can plug this in power almost Everything that you would normally have In your RV we've got four AC ports here Outlets I should say they're 20 amps a Piece We have Banks of USB a ports here we Have a couple USBC ports here 165 Watts One's 100 Watts I can tell you this 100 Watt Port does a phenomenal job of Charging our batteries uh we've got Batteries and so many devices that this Is really important to us we have two 12 Volt Barrel ports of course a 12 volt Carport here as well We can turn each of these banks on and
Off from the touch screen or the smart App so you may have been able to hear That click there's a slight sound coming From the fan but the DC outputs are now Turned on and if we had something Plugged in we would see what the draw is We hit the AC as well same thing if we Connect something to our AC Outlets Excuse me We would see what they were drawing at The same time so there's 16 ports Overall which is extremely generous much More ports than say just a smaller Portable power station would have and if You do add the expansion stuff to this You gain more and more ports to go with It so next up we'll move and we'll we'll Talk a little bit more with regards to The expandability Further on the topic of expandability Modularity I personally feel that's the Biggest benefit to buying a system like This if we were looking at a whole home Generator for example maybe we have to Spend 15 20 25 000 to have it installed The solar system you're looking at 30 000 average for a PV system another Thirty thousand for a Tesla power wall That's average size home It's a lot of money so something like This you know so the base unit is 3 699 You can add an expansion pack which Effectively doubles this from 3 500 watt Hours to 7 000 Watt hours and from three
Thousand watts of continuous AC power Output to 6 000 Watts for 23.99 so in That case you've got a little over six Thousand dollars invested again buy one Cheap solar panel pair it with it claim Your 30 on your federal taxes so what we Did is we have a couple small portable Generators gas generators so we can run Them for an hour in the morning hour in The evening charge the sucker back up to Full capacity with two generators we Could easily power this plus an Expansion battery Which we're hoping mango is going to Send us so we can do a complete review On the connectivity between both of them Long story short is we were looking at Burning maybe a gallon gallon half of Fuel a day not very much we're looking At 22 hours of no generator noise a day I can tell you that's a big deal we've Had some extended power outages here due To hurricanes in Florida and uh the Sound of generators running non-stop Enough to drive you batty especially When it's hot and there's no AC So again the the beauty of this type of System is the way that we can just keep Adding to it so if someone were to do Two base stations over time two Expansion batteries over time you know You've got somewhere a little over Twelve thousand dollars invested there Like I said throw some solar panels into
The mix maybe throw a gas generated Generator into the mix as well you know You might have thirteen fourteen Thousand dollars invested but you got Your 30 solar tax credit back which is a Big deal and you did it in bite-sized Chunks instead of having to sign a check For 15 20K for a whole home generator or Financing 60 to 80 000 for a solar PV System with a Tesla wall backing it up As well So I want to add that in March of 2023 Mango is going to be releasing an M-panel accessory slash connection you Can see it on the screen behind me here What that basically means is that you Would be able to or will be able to Connect your mango system directly To your panel and what that does is Makes this truly a set and forget Solution so when the Grid's up it keeps All your battery systems charged whether You have one two or the four you know Units in total When the grid goes down it's going to Flip your system over so you can use all The receptacles through your house Appliances Etc when it senses that the Grid's back up just like a gas or Propane power generator would do it'll Flip you off a battery back to the grid And you know you're barely going to skip A beat during the whole thing so that M-panel accessory coming March 2023 is a
Really big deal from our perspective Because it really makes this again You're going to set it up once and You're done a one and done set and Forget so in conclusion we just want to Say that we will hopefully be making a Follow-up video of this with the Expansion battery pack we're going to Reach out the mango and see if they'll Send that to us and if they do so then We will have significantly well we'll Have double the power available and We'll do some load testing in addition To what we've already done so what we've Already done is we've run pretty much Everything regular devices that you can Imagine electric devices but we haven't Run anything to 40. we would like to Have that expansion pack and then try The split phase 240 as well as power in Some of our larger appliances So if you live in the Gulf States and You suffer hurricane damage and Tornadoes like we do live in the midwest With tornadoes live in California with All the crazy stuff that's going on out There weather-wise knocking your grid Down People up north you know as I mentioned The beginning of the video with ice Storms and snow storms taking their Power out and then on top of all that Being prepared for the fact that we have A very old very weak power grid and it's
You're gonna hear the words grid down Much more frequently and even if you Only have a small power station or even Something like this a little bit of Power in today's context going to seem Like a lot of power when there is no Power available otherwise so I want to End the video on one quick thing here YouTube's algorithm is penalizing all of The channels who've ever shown any type Of firearms related content we would Greatly appreciate it if you click the Link in the description down below and Subscribe to our Rumble Rumble Channel Much like all the big guntubers and We're certainly not one of them but we Do have some gun content we expect it's Not our matter of if it's just when the YouTube algorithm hammers us just like Everybody else on the left these guys Are really good at Boiling frogs so they Don't want to throw everybody off the Platform all at once and you know raise A huge you know red flag but they will Pick us off one by one so I'd really Appreciate if you'd subscribe to our Rumble Channel and while we're still Here on YouTube if you could hit like Subscribe comment share it with other People we'd appreciate it greatly [Music]
