Outback Power is one of the most celebrated makers of off-grid PV + battery equipment. It was founded in 2001 — the first in the Trace Engineering diaspora.
Outback was acquired in 2010 by the Alpha Group. It was then passed to EnerSys in 2018. ...Then to Energy Access Innovations (EAI) a few years ago. ...Bounced around like an out-of-place kid in foster homes (although, maybe / hopefully, now in a stable long-term home).
EAI is the parent company of the EG4 inverter brand. EG4 inverters are very low cost for what they are, and are very popular in the DIY off-grid market. An off-grid distributor rep said that early EG4 customer support was weak — but that it's getting a lot better. I don't yet have personal experience with EG4... I'll reserve judgement.
EAI is also the parent company of the DIY off-grid oriented distributor Signature Solar.
Last year, I got my first experience working on an Outback inverter. ...Albeit not with a flagship Outback inverter (I worked on a SkyBox). There was struggle around getting the settings right, but now — paired with a Discover Helios battery — it seems to be dialed in.
I had some lingering questions around the inverter's settings. I called Outback, and a long-time Outback rep (who I'll call Max) went above and beyond to answer my questions. I'm happy to now consider Max an industry friend. I had considered Outback a cautionary tale, at the tail end of its sad demise. But — thanks to this call — I'm cautiously optimistic about an Outback revival.
Here are my notes from the call:
Outback was once squarely oriented to the moonshine cabin deep in the Appalacians — supporting PV and microhydro. Now it's more oriented to the mainstream market.
Max really appreciates the off-grid lifestyle. He grew up in a city, and didn't know what silence was. There was always the utility-transformer buzz, the big nearby highway, etc. He moved to a small Washington town, that was quiet most of the year (when orchard workers weren't around). He'd start a fire in the early morning... sit with coffee. The silence was so pure that he'd sometimes make a sound just to know that he could still hear.
The entire Outback company used to be in one building. ...There was easy access to the engineering team and the repair team. Now, alas, it's scattered around the country.
Going into the Alpha acquisition, Outback was bringing in maybe a million $ per year. Alpha was bringing in maybe a few-hundred million $ per year. Alpha's resources helped a lot.
Alpha's owners wanted to retire. ...Alpha was sold to the global corporation EnerSys. EnerSys was focused on one part of Alpha — the utility-looking broadband/telecom cabinets "that you've probably seen on the side of the road". EnerSys didn't want to put resources into Outback.
Originally, Outback supported (and celebrated) the DIY installer. But EnerSys just wanted the Outback support team to work with professionals — not end users ("the end user is not our customer"). The Outback support team quietly continued to support end users. ...At least those with some basic electrical / product familiarity... otherwise there are safety concerns, let alone company-resource concerns.
Max was laid off by EnerSys in Fall 2023, but he was brought back right away by EAI.
In the asset transfer from EnerSys to EAI, all developer notes across billions of lines of Outback code... were stripped out by EnerSys. The developer team has been in there since, trying to get a handle on the code. Haphazardly packed / shipped test equipment arrived largely broken. In general, it's been a rough transition from EnerSys.
Max seems genuinely enthusiastic about Outback's future under EAI.
EAI is working to revise the Outback brand. Under EAI, it's expected that DIY installers / end users will be supported.
Outback currently has three tech-support reps. Outback + EG4 tech support will be merged. All reps will be trained to support both brands. This merge makes sense to Max.
Max emphasized the importance of direct communication — tell people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.
The sales teams will remain separate.
The EG4 brand will remain associated with lower-cost high-frequency / transformerless inverters.
The Outback brand will remain associated with higher-end more-rugged transformer-based inverters (including a two-transformer inverter) — that "take a licking and keep on ticking", and handle high motor inrush and high leg imbalance exceptionally well.
Max appreciates that EAI owner James Showalter is strongly pro solar (BTW: Sean White interviewed James — here's the YouTube page).
Last summer, the Outback team went to Texas to tour the 300K square foot warehouse where EG4 and Outback products are assembled. They met EG4's R&D team ("EG4 has a pretty good engineering team"), that will design new Outback products.
Thanks to this call: I'm open to Outback — alongside Victron and MidNite Solar — being a viable option for year-2026+ 💪 off-grid systems.
The SkyBox was released in 2017, and was discontinued by 2023. It's Outback's only straight-up all-in-one inverter (that integrates PV MPPT charge control). It's also Outback's only high-frequency transformerless inverter. It was built in house (vs in China).
In general: To support higher in-rush, you'd need ~3 times more inverter capacity vs a tranformer-based inverter. But high-frequency inverters are more efficient.
The product manager behind the SkyBox lived in the city with reliable grid connection... he wasn't off-grid oriented.
The SkyBox works well when connected to the grid, but falls short without. There was an intention to support closed-loop battery communication, but that never got implemented. There was an intention to support up to 10 SkyBoxes in parallel, but the team couldn't make that work.
There's transparency around other Outback products (reflecting the general Outback philosophy), but the SkyBox was relatively gatekept / locked down. There was a consistent nomenclature around other Outback products — SkyBox had its own.
Max looked over my SkyBox settings, and said everything looks right.
Here's the SkyBox that I got dialed in, along with the Discover Helios battery that I installed (replacing two failed batteries from another company).
Here's a chart from Outback's Optics RE monitoring software — showing how the system managed PV + battery + grid + load yesterday (seeing the battery soak up extra PV in the day, and serve the evening load... chef's kiss).
Thanks again to Max for the awesome support, and for continuing to serve one of the industry's most esteemed brands.
BTW: There's a sweet story around the awesome couple that I did this work for. Blog post forthcoming.
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This blog and AI: I use AI all the time, to understand things better. But these blog posts are 100% written by Mike (for better or worse).