Inergy Flex System Explained - Kodiak Apex Flex batteries

Inergy Flex System Explained - Kodiak Apex Flex Batteries

 

Today we're going over the Inergy Flex System. Inergy solar used to have the Inergy Apex, which I really liked. They discontinued that and now their new system is called the Inergy Flex System. Presales started May 14th, 2020 and I want to explain how this system fits together and give you some of the specs and a general idea of exactly what all these components are. 

 

I can't endorse this product because I haven't been able to test it yet, but I will be doing a comprehensive review soon.

Inergy Flex 1500

So there are four basic components to this system. All four of these components can be mixed and matched together. Let’s start with the Inergy Flex 1500. Pictured here is what the module looks like all by itself. Anytime you buy a Flex 1500 or the Flex DC, it will come with the flex battery that it clips onto. That's going to give you the 1036 watt hours of power that you can use. Of course you can stack those batteries as well, but it is going to come with one in order to operate the unit. 

 

So, what we're looking at now is all the stuff that's on the front and I'm going to run through that. Basically, you're going to have six 120 volt or 110 receptacles that are grounded on the front that you can turn on with the touch of a button for the AC inverter. Above that you have another button that's going to activate the DC functionality of this unit and that's going to activate your two 12 volt cigarette-lighter sockets here. 

 

A really cool update with these is that they are 13.8 volts of regulated current. That means that when the voltage starts getting low on this lithium battery, say like 11 volts or something like that, a lot of times that might cut off the power. For example, if you have an electric cooler or anything like that, it might have a battery shut off and it might cut the cooler off.

 

What this does is keeps the voltage coming out of those lighter sockets at 13.8 volts throughout the entire cycle of the battery. So even right before it's dead, you're getting 13.8 volts out of that lighter socket, which is awesome. On the other side of that, you're basically going to have to do two 60 watt USBC ports with PD and QC 3.0 and two USB-A ports with QC 2.0 and then you have two of those small 5.5 millimeter DC outputs for the BaseCamp led lights and future accessories. 

 

The LCD display looks like it's definitely had some improvements. It's going to come with an ECA input port for solar on the side. You have a 30 amp MPPT charge controller inside and that's going to allow you to connect around 400 Watts of solar to charge that and the battery. 

But a cool thing that they did with this unit is now you're able to actually charge the battery by using the fast wall adapter. You can also use a cigarette lighter adapter for a car and you can use all that solar. But what's really cool is now you can use all of it at the same time, so you can just pour power into this to charge up your batteries in a ridiculously short amount of time. So I'm really excited to get to play with that. 

 

Now all six of these AC connected plugs right here, the 110 volt sockets, just like you'd find in your house, they are all run by a 1500 watt pure sine wave inverter that will surge up to 3000 Watts. So that will power anything continuously at 1500 Watts. And if you have something that's really big, like a power tool or something that needs a larger start load, it will handle anything up to 3000 Watts to get it going and then drops back down to 1500 Watts of pure sine wave continuous power. 

 

Another update for this inverter is that with the Apex, if you were drawing 1500 Watts continuously, after about 10 minutes, it would shut itself off for a few minutes. They did that to extend the life of the batteries to make sure that you weren't pulling out a ton of power and then putting a ton of power in because that can reduce the life cycles of the batteries. So they had that little safety mechanism in there to make sure that it was going to last for the full 2000 cycles or whatever it was.

 

What they've done is they've gotten rid of that because some people wanted to be able to pull 1500 Watts of power all the way until the battery is dead and it might shorten the lifespan of the batteries a little bit. You can use 1500 Watts continuously through the entire cycle of the battery. So all the power is yours to use at 1500 Watts continuous, which I think is very cool. So I'm excited to test that as well. 

Inergy Flex DC

Let's move on to the flex DC. With the DC model, you're going to be giving up that 1500 watt pure sine wave inverter and you're going to be giving up those six AC 110 plugs. There's no AC option on the flex DC. What you're trading that out for is a lot more connection outlets for DC-powered equipment.

 

So, if you don't need AC and DC is your bag, this gives you a lot more functionality. So you're going to have four cigarette lighter adapter reports. You're going to have four of the BaseCamp led plugin ports, four USBA, four USBC ports, and they're going to give you two 30 amp Anderson power pole output ports right there in the middle of the red and black connections so that you can run more DC equipment off of everything. If you're a van-lifer, or enjoy long road trips, or you're running a lot of DC-powered equipment, that's what you're going to be trading for. The DC version is that 1500 watt inverter and the six AC plugs. Other than that, everything is pretty much exactly the same except that you're not going to have two buttons because one of the buttons used to be to activate the AC inverter.

Flex Battery

Now, let's talk about the batteries. You can use this on a Kodiak, an Apex, the Flex 1500, or the Flex DC, so you can use it on any of the Inergy power generators. They add an extra 1036 watt hours to the mix. It's basically doubling the capacity of the Apex or the Kodiak. These automatically equalize and balance to the Kodiak or the Apex so you don't have to worry about matching up your voltages before they get connected.

 

You'll be able to connect these to the old Kodiak or Apex using an adapter that's basically a cable connector into the top of this flex battery. Then it goes into your Kodiak or Apex through the appropriate connector. They're going to be selling those separately, if you need one and want to add some of these batteries. Now one of these comes with the flex and the DC version, you're going to get a battery with this, but you can stack and add up to 96 of these batteries.

 

You can stack about five together in a row, five in a stack. And then there's a connector plate, so then you can stack five more. This really becomes a huge off-grid system, as much as you want to make it. You can add a ton of batteries to your unit. 

 

They self balance, they self talk. It's just plug and play. You don't have to do anything other than connecting another battery right to this one and you've just added another thousand watt hours to the system. These basically attach to the Flex 1500 and the Flex DC. They sit right on top and plug and click right into place.

 

With every battery that you add, you can also add a new MPPT charge controller with two new arrays of solar, for a total of 60 amps for every one that you do. If you do end up with a lot of batteries, it would take a long time to charge just off the Flex 1500 or DC, so they give you the ability to add charge controllers to the battery bank, every other battery. That way you can keep adding solar and keep your system growing with enough solar to keep it charged up in a day. If you need to charge up a lot of power all at once, you can add charge controllers in this stack.

 

So the Flex Battery looks great and you can use them for the Kodiak, the Apex, and the Flex 1500 and the DC. They do have a power button to activate their power supply. They have their own fans built in. These are lithium ion batteries, LG cells I believe. 

Flex MPPT Supercharger

This can be installed anywhere in your mix. You don't have to have it because the Flex 1500 and the Flex DC have their own 30 amp MPPT charge controller, which works out to about 400 Watts of solar that you can get into that. 90 volts is what that's rated for.

 

So that will charge your Flex battery and it will charge two to four Flex batteries, but it's going to take longer the more batteries that you have added to the system. With just the Flex 1500 for example, you could charge your system with maximum solar in about 3.5 hours. If you add one of these MPPT Superchargers to the mix, they just clip right into place and add two more charge controllers to your mix. So this triples the capacity. Basically you go all the way up to 1200 Watts because it gives you two more ECA connections and two more MPPT charge controllers. So now you have three different strings of solar panels bringing in that 90 volts. It takes it up to 1200 Watts.

 

You could charge one battery in an hour, which is completely crazy. This is compatible with ECA to MC4, the adapter for that. So you can kind of switch that around and use different things with it. The solar array option basically accepts solar panels in series and in parallel configurations. Either way you want to do it is no big deal. It's going to take 90 volts DC input maximum with no amperage input maximum. So 90 volts DC is what it will take, it doesn't matter if your solar panels are wired in parallel or in series and it only weighs six pounds. So it's really not a lot of weight to be added to the system. Of course you can add one of these every other battery and keep adding two solar arrays every time you put one of these on.

 

You can really take this as big as you want to take it. It's not necessary. But if you want faster charge times and you want to get more batteries, this is an option that clicks right into place. It's an incredibly versatile system no matter which direction you go with it.

 

If you want more information and you want to check it out, use this link. If you decide you want to purchase one during the presale, please use this link to get you the absolute best price available on the internet. You can also call in and use the coupon code word: ADVENTURE. That's also going to get you the very best price on the internet. 

 

We're really excited to do a full review for you guys as soon as we can to see what's going on with all these new features. If you enjoyed the video and found it helpful, please like, share, and subscribe. Thank you for reading and happy camping.