$3,000 EcoFlow Solar Tracker Review: What Were They Thinking?
When it comes to innovative solar equipment, EcoFlow has established itself a real leader. The brand is known for pushing the envelope in the portable power industry by combining cutting-edge technology with innovative designs; however, even the best solar companies occasionally release products that leave us scratching our heads.
Enter the EcoFlow Solar Tracker—a device that, while undeniably cool in design and purpose, raises serious questions about its practicality and value. Priced at an eye-watering $3,400, this automatic solar tracker is designed to maximize solar energy production by keeping your solar panels aligned with the sun throughout the day.
Sure, it’s a really intriguing concept, but is it just a flashy and overpriced gimmick, or is it actually a genuine game-changer? Let's dive in and find out.
What Exactly is the EcoFlow Solar Tracker?
At first glance, the EcoFlow Solar Tracker looks like something straight out of a sci-fi movie. With its sleek, almost robotic appearance, it could easily be mistaken for something NASA would put together.
As it turns out, the Solar Tracker is a fully self-contained and automated device that tracks the sun's movement across the sky throughout the day. The purpose is to adjust the angle of your attached solar panel to ensure it captures the maximum amount of sunlight possible from sunrise to sunset. Fully automated also means just that, it is designed to do everything for you.
The tracker can rotate nearly 360 degrees and tilt the attached solar panel from 0 to 90 degrees. It uses a precise light-detecting sensor, cleverly hidden behind a chrome window, to detect the sun or its reflection and adjust the tracker and connected panels accordingly.
If you’re into the really cutting-edge techy stuff, there's even a mobile app that allows you to manually control the tracker. With that said, the app isn’t actually very practical because the tracker resets to automatic mode once the app is closed.
Our Impression of the EcoFlow Solar Tracker
After unboxing and playing around with this really unique piece of solar equipment, we had a pretty clear idea of what we thought about it. To make things simple, here’s what we considered to be the main benefits and drawbacks of the EcoFlow Solar Tracker:
The Pros: Improved Early Morning and Late Evening Efficiency
One of the main selling points of the EcoFlow Solar Tracker is its ability to capture solar energy during times when static solar panels might struggle, particularly early in the morning and late in the evening.
Fixed solar panels generally hit their peak efficiency during midday when the sun is directly overhead. However, if your energy needs start before dawn or continue past dusk, or you just want to generate as much power as humanly possible, an automated solar tracker like this could help you squeeze every last watt of solar power out of the day.
Basically, it seems like a great idea that could be beneficial to some people, and we certainly understand the theory, but, as we’ll discuss, it’s not exactly the most practical piece of equipment.
The Cons: The Price and Performance Dilemma
While the EcoFlow Solar Tracker sounds great in theory, the execution leaves much to be desired, especially considering the steep price. At $3,400, the tracker is significantly more expensive than the solar panels it’s designed to support. The irony is hard to ignore: you’re essentially mounting a $187 solar panel on a $3,400 piece of equipment!
In terms of performance, the most glaring issue is the tracker’s tendency to overreact when it loses sight of the sun. Instead of just waiting a couple of minutes for an overhead cloud to pass, we found that the tracker will start frantically spinning in circles in a desperate attempt to track the sunlight.
If it doesn’t find the sun quickly, it lays the panel flat, which is far from an optimal angle for energy production. This lack of intelligence in the tracking algorithm can actually result in reduced efficiency and energy production. That’s right, on days with passing clouds, you’d probably be better off with a fixed solar panel, rather than one connected to the Solar Tracker. For something that costs three thousand bucks, that’s a bit of a joke.
Another major downside is the tracker’s limited solar panel capacity. It can only support a maximum of one 415W solar panel. For the same investment, you could buy multiple high-efficiency panels and a high-quality, adjustable ground mount, significantly increasing your solar potential without the added complexity of a finicky, complex, and expensive piece of tech.
Efficiency Testing: Static Solar Panels vs. the Solar Tracker
While we had a pretty clear idea of how this would turn out, we wanted to give the Solar Tracker a fair shot, so we ran a little head-to-head test.
Basically, we mounted a single Sirius 415W Solar Panel on the tracker and placed two identical solar panels on a static ground mount. Both setups were connected to EcoFlow DELTA Pro Power Stations with completely drained batteries. We did this first thing in the morning to make sure that the test would officially begin at sunrise.
In the beginning, the solar tracker outperformed the static panels, capturing double the amount of energy by efficiently tracking the rising early morning sun. However, by 9:00 a.m., the static panels were able to catch up, and from that point onward, they consistently outperformed the tracker. The gap actually widened as the day progressed, with the static panels generating significantly more power during peak sun hours.
By midday, the two static panels were producing nearly double the power of the single panel on the Solar Tracker. Despite the tracker's ability to follow the sun and tweak the angle of the attached solar panel, it just couldn’t match the sheer output of two panels working together.
Later in the day when the sun began to set, the tracker briefly regained the lead, but it was too little, too late. The overall energy production for the day clearly favored the static setup, making the tracker seem like a poor investment for anyone looking to maximize their solar output.
Sure, if you ran two solar panels on two separate EcoFlow Solar Trackers, you’d likely beat the static solar panels, but you’d be talking about a setup that would cost almost $7,000! You’d be way better off just investing that money into an improved solar array with a greater number of high-efficiency solar panels.
Our Final Thoughts: Is the EcoFlow Solar Tracker Worth it?
The EcoFlow Solar Tracker is a fascinating piece of technology that will undoubtedly appeal to gadget enthusiasts and those who enjoy experimenting with the latest solar tech. It’s a cool piece of equipment and we can see why someone with no budget constraints might pick one up; however, for the average consumer, the high cost and limited performance make it a really tough sell.
Unless you have very specific energy needs that require generating early morning or late evening solar power, as well as some really deep pockets, you're way better off investing in additional and improved solar panels, or even a high-quality static ground mount.
While the tracker might be cool to watch and show off to your neighbors, its practical benefits are just plain overshadowed by its drawbacks. In the end, the EcoFlow Solar Tracker feels more like a niche product for a select few rather than a must-have for the everyday solar user.
If EcoFlow can lower the price or increase the tracker's solar panel capacity in the future, it might become a more appealing option, but for now, we just can’t recommend it.
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