XT60 vs XT60i cables

In this video I take a few minutes to talk about the difference between an XT60 connector and an XT60i connector. Both can be used to input DC power to your Delta Pro but depending on your source (Solar Array, Power Supply/Battery bank etc) one connector might work better for you vs the other. This has nothing to do with the connector and everything to do with the Delta Pro. The Delta Pro tries to "sense" what type of power source is connected to it using the connector. It doesn't always get it right. If it thinks its not a solar power source then it will limit its input to 8amps which will significantly decrease your power input. Watch the whole video for more details.
amzn.to/3raATkT - XT60i connector I mention in this video
amzn.to/45XAzoA - XT60 connector I mention in this video
Updated!
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[@kevinlauzon7665]

From an Electrical Engineer: Periodically there have been questions about how does the Delta Mini/Max/Pro know when it’s charging by car and limit the current to 8A, and when it’s charging by solar and thus allow the unit’s max current limit (10A for DMin/Max, 15A for DPro). The secret is in the XT60i connector. In the car charging cable, the center pin is bridged with the main pin on the square side (+) of the connector. On the solar charging cable, the center pin is bridged with main pin on the angled side (-) of the connector. This way, the Delta Mini/Max/Pro can automatically adjust the current limit depending on which cord is connected. If you use another cable with a standard XT60 connector (no center pin), the unit will default to the 8A limit just to be safe. TLDR (Too Long, Didn't Read) Summary: 1. XT60i cable allows more than 8A of charging with any DC power source (solar or otherwise). 2. XT60 cable allows more than 8A of charging with *ONLY SOLAR PANELS*, but not with SMPS or standalone battery. -------------------- Detailed explanation: First of all, the official word from EcoFlow engineers is that the XT60 solar cable should be able to charge at more than 8A *WHEN USED WITH A SOLAR PANEL*. Why is this distinction important? Please see below: 1. XT60i solar cable - This is the solar cable with the orange connector at the end. This cable will ALWAYS allow for more than 8A, regardless of whether you are using it with solar panels or with an AC-DC SMPS (Switched Mode Power Supply). More info here on how the XT60i cable works: facebook.com/.../permalink/1381304675669717 2. XT60 solar cable *WITH SOLAR PANEL* - This is the solar cable with the yellow connector at the end. This will allow more than 8A charging via solar panel. From my testing (see attached pictures) with a Delta 2 and the 220W bifacial solar panel, you can clearly see that the charge current is over 8A. EF engineering has said that occasionally the power station may mis-identify the XT60 cable and limit it to 8A, but you can unplug and replug to get it to recognize the cable. But I have tested it multiple times, and it worked at over 8A each time. 3. XT60 solar cable *WITH SMPS OR STANDALONE BATTERY* - This does not affect most users. For the few users who are using an AC-DC SMPS or a standalone battery to charge your power station, make sure to use the XT60i cable. Because the XT60 will be identified as a car charger, and will be limited to 8A. I've tested SMPS multiple times with various EF power stations. Mark Hicks contributed standalone battery test results. facebook.com/groups/deltaprolaunch/permalink/1491858437947673/ facebook.com/groups/deltaprolaunch/permalink/1490488248084692/ facebook.com/groups/deltaprolaunch/permalink/1491976177935899/

[@neocrypto9368]

The issue is that a properly wired XT60i will tell the DP it’s ok to pull 15.9A in the absence of that pin the DP tries to ‘detect’ solar vs car battery and the results can be inconsistent. Short of a pin wired to tell it not to throttle or a positive detection of solar it will default to a limit of 4-8A (depending on car charge setting). That is to protect car wiring and prevent melting the cigarette lighter plug. By contrast the orange tip car adapter the DP comes with is wired opposite to explicitly tell DP to limit current. TLDR: get an XT60i cable for any of the newer EcoFlow products with XT60i ports.

[@jeffmcclain]

Good info. It is quite likely that earlier models of your Delta Pro may not have been properly setup to use/look at this pinned state for protecting car charging from the higher current. That is the ONLY purpose of this pin...and it is NON-STANDARD. The XT-60i connector was originally developed by BattGo to send serial data info about the battery that was being charged (number of charges, temperature, etc.) but it has since been used as simply another data pin on common power plug. Ecoflow chose to use it to indicate higher allowed current on this port by simply wiring the plug to ground (without this, the pin is internally pulled high on the Delta Pro/Max/2 line of products). Again, it is possible that you either have a broken pull up resistor on your Delta Pro (allowing the pin internally to float or capacitively couple to ground) or that early models did not have this pinned out in the model (or they internally pulled to ground instead of high, thus changing what they intended to do with a normal old XT-60). They probably changed their minds on allowing a normal XT-60 to be able to function as solar charger (and thus allow a normal XT-60 to be wired to car plug and exceed the 8A max spec input). /shrug. Either way, your video is very nice to help alert folks that there IS something being done on these plugs, and that should be the FIRST thing you check when trouble shooting capacity and generic cables from Amazon...

[@HippocratesGarden]

One thing to be very very careful of with the Delta Pro. There are numerous accounts (including some friends of mine) for whom the XT60 connector on the Delta Pro, broke and fell off into the unit. Be very tender and careful with them. Known problem.

[@carolmaplesden916]

I read some comments on some other videos also warning of that and suggested getting a pigtail to leave in permanently and plug and unplug the cable with it So yea that way I just plugged in the pigtail and never unplug it

[@tomatehostil]

Hi from Brazil!!Great info!!Thanks!

[@dagmardecruzalta8445]

Very good info. Thanks

[@LarryRichelli]

Thanks for the video but it is kind of hard to know if the pin is connected to the negative when buying on Amazon.....trial and error. Thanks again. I am in the process of purchasing the switching power supplies that you reviewed because I have to be able to charge my two DPs with my inverter generator (Not ecoflow) while powering my house with the dual voltage hub

[@OFFGRID_Trucker]

This answered my question. I have the yellow XT60 10' extension going out the front door to my 400w panel and just bought the Xt60I for my Delta 2 and going to see if there's a difference. Both of these models can only accept up to 500w. Maybe I can find a couple of 275w panels for some over paneling..? I did already buy the xt60I with the 12v car adapter.. 104w total input.

[@stevenshircliff393]

Ecoflow needs to provide some answers. I have fought this as well.

[@mannyfragoza9652]

thanks for the info i did notice i have an orange XT60i connector for my Wetown solar generator. Now i know what the difference is between the yellow and orange.

[@ShowemRight]

There's also a difference in how its built, the xt60i has a metal pin that s in between the positive and negative of the plug itself.

[@seriouslynow22]

I appreciate your doing this video. I am just starting in solar and my new Anchor Solix 1000 uses xt60 solar inputs. I am having trouble finding 10 gauge mc4 to xt60 connectors that I feel like I can trust. It seems like fully annealed copper wiring would be best. Everything I see is tinned copper from Chinese companies on Amazon. I will buy the ones you mention here just to save myself time. Thanks!

[@daemoncan2364]

Strange, but the 12v car cord for my Delta 2 Max has the center pin tied to positive. Different for MC4 to XT cables?

[@yanassi]

Thanks but i can’t see buying a cable cutting it open to learn if the middle pin is connected to the negative makes any sense. Can’t return it and now have a compromised cable.

[@SteffenBoserup]

You can use a multimeter to see if there's a short on the negative side

[@ladislavplachetka01]

Yes!

[@tommy28hhpr]

Do you think the xt60 cable can fail sooner than the xt60i? I was using the xt60 cable for about a month and now I get nothing from my solar array. I checked my inline fuses they were good and I replaced my mc4 connectors coming off my xt60 cable. I have 34v coming off my solar array mc4 connectors and my xt60 connector but my delta pro will not register the power or charge.

[@DanielGoodwin-jq1oc]

Hmm, generally speaking I really wouldn't expect either XT60 or XT60i cables to fail. Did you check your voltage and/or amps from the panel using a volt meter? (You mentioned you knew it was 34v). Since cables are fairly inexpensive, I would try swapping those out and seeing if it resolves the issue but my initial thought is its unlikely to be the cable. Are all your connections tight? (particularly the MC4 ones)

[@rokroll]

I have same gear and I found this useful thanks

[@Bmeri3]

I only have one solar panel at the moment, but 2 Delta Pros. I don’t want to continually move the solar panel cable to each DP as needed. Is it safe to use a splitter on the XT60 cable to each DP? My solar panel is rated for 400 watts. Thanks

[@DanielGoodwin-jq1oc]

According to my understanding, unfortunately that won't work. The two delta pros' inverters will "fight' each other for full input of the solar panel and won't "share" it equally. I'll try to do a short video demoing this.

Which is better

[@timcat1004]

The 60i cable that came with my DP was allowing a 1200 watt charge but it got warm. I didn't like that. So I bought a new 10 foot 60i cable from Amazon. That cable limits the charge to 1000 watts. But now it doesn't get warm. So I'm leaving it like that. I just don't get why an exact connector would reduce the watts.

[@alanb76]

Good observation. Either the connector or the wire can add resistance to the circuit. It doesn't take much extra resistance to reduce the current. Heat is proportional to current squared so reducing the current 20% reduces the heating 40%. Cables getting warm at high current is normal but if it gets hot that can be a problem. Hot plastic tends to degrade much more quickly over time and when it softens enough the support for the connector pins fails and catastrophic failure results.

[@tlteal]

Maybe someone here that's really smart can answer this. I have a 48v (51.2V) battery connected to the Ecoflow Delta Pro via an XT60i (back of the Delta Pro) and the other end on the battery lugs (+/-) and i'm only seeing 400watts. The interesting thing is that the power ramps up past 400 watts to 500+, then, clips back down. Yes, I"m sure I have the XT60i cable...... any idea what's going on and how I can get 800+ watts?

[@DanielGoodwin-jq1oc]

To consistently get more then you're probably going to need to look at a DC-to-DC boost converter. This issue you're encountering is that the DP sees that power source as a constant lower voltage and thinks it's a car battery so it throttles the amperage to 7.5 amps instead of the full 15 amps. I covered several DC boost converters that do this: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qIi1hmttgp2abdU

[@tlteal]

@@DanielGoodwin-jq1oc ok thank you. I thought it might have been related to the xt60i

[@tlteal]

@@DanielGoodwin-jq1oc not really comfortable with any of the options you showed in your video. IN fact, one of them isn't sold on amazon any longer (it's the one with the box covered and the two XT60i cables). Maybe I can just use an inverter hooked to 48v and then plug in the DP to the a/c. Not optimal but I think that would work.... thoughts?

[@DanielGoodwin-jq1oc]

Yes, that will work perfectly. In fact, that's essentially what I'm doing with mine. I have to use a switching power supply because I have my Delta Pros connected to a Smart Home Panel but if you don't have that then you can definitely connect to the AC input.

[@tlteal]

@@DanielGoodwin-jq1oc apparently my ecoflow delta pro had other plans today and the wife and I came home to a house full of smoke and burning smell. Yep, the ecoflow electronics were burning themselves. Come to find out, this is not an isolated incident. I'm waiting to see what ecoflow will do about this. I have 3 DP's, 2 EB's and lots of their other equipment but their customer service has left a lot to be desired. Soon as I get a chance, I'll use my sungold 6000w inverter/charger with the other ecoflow delta pro. that is, unless i decide to get all of them out of my house in fear of them burning the damn house down :(

[@RedBatteryHead]

So bottom line is, Go Bluetti 😂

[@ExposingTruth2screwoligarchy]

LOL, good one. I do have several Bluettis...

[@SolarSuntime]

They have their own issues. Just send back my AC500 stack for delta pros

[@RedBatteryHead]

@@SolarSuntime yeah, no brand is flawless. Mine AC200max is working fine though.

[@BS-ht9zj]

Conclusions are not actually correct. The third pin forces the controller into either a high or low current mode. A regular XT60 connector will force the controller to guess, depending on if the supply is a constant voltage source (like a battery), or a constant current source (like a solar panel). The controller will usually guess correctly for a solar array, but behavior using the XT60 can be erratic, especially for overpaneled solar arrays which can behave more like a constant current source and fool the controller into guessing incorrectly. Sounds like this is your case, and each of your two controllers guess differently. A constant voltage source using XT60 connector will always be reduced amperage, and you'll want a solar configured XT60i connector to allow full amperage input.

[@piccman1]

My understanding is xt60 is 60 amp and 60i is 100 amp. (4) EcoFlow 400 watt rigid panels wired in series put out 13.76 amps which stays constant so should not matter. Am I understanding this correctly?

[@BS-ht9zj]

@@piccman1 no, that’s incorrect in this context. EF uses the third pin as a power source identifier and without the third pin configured for solar input the current will be limited to 8A in some circumstances

[@piccman1]

Ahh. So this wiring senario would be MC4 to XT60i to allow up to 15 A?

[@juggalizzle75]

Nonsense. All xt60...xt60, xt60h and xt60i are rated 60 amps or 100 amp burst. It's in the name. Guess what an xt30 handles? The extra pin on the "i" is for reading battery information from smart batteries. Crappy Chinese xt60 connectors that are not to standard or more likely, has either the bullet connector stretched or the male reduced from incorrect plugging. You can widen the male by simply bending the prongs out a little to make a tighter fit.

[@y_x2]

"I don't know much about electricity" what is the purpose of this video? Booh

[@DanielGoodwin-jq1oc]

I'm sorry you're disappointed. I will waive the cost for this free video that you watched. :)