By Technical Editor Matt Allard
While walking around the show floor at InterBee I stumbled across a great alternative to a traditional generator. The EneClean portable battery solution uses a large rechargable Lithium Ion phosphate battery inside a pelican case. Unlike a traditional generator it runs silent making it perfect for live location work or where controlling ambient noise levels is critical. The example below provides up to 350W of continuous power and was shown running a Litepanels Sola 9, which is a LED equivalent to a 1K HMI light source. The Sola 9 draws 190W and can be run at full power for more than 4 hours continuously.
The EneClean batteries can be swapped in and out very easily. Replacement or extra batteries can also be ordered. The battery itself can be recharged every day for more than a year before it would need to be replaced. It takes approximately 8 hours to recharge from empty to full.
I can see this product being used is in disaster zones by news crews. Often in disasters fuel is hard to find and this makes using generators problematic. With an EneClean you could recharge camera batteries, phones, computers and use lights for long periods of time without the need for mains power. With a few extra battery packs and you could theoretically have a reliable power source for days on end – depending on what you were powering or charging with the battery.
On the downside they only sell a 100V model so you could only use it in countries like Japan and the US. Another factor to consider is this unit cannot be flown on a plane because it far exceeds the safe level of Lithium Ion that you are allowed to carry. This would mean for News organisations that they would have to have the units located in in various countries.
The 350W version weighs 24KG and costs $5000US. Extra batteries are $2000US. EneClean offers a wide range of sizes and configurations up to a battery that outputs 1500W and can provide 2880WH of power.
For more information you can visit the Lohas website.
