When it comes to portable power, Anker SOLIX has become one of our favorite brands. This is largely due to their build quality and innovation, and power stations like the Anker F3800 Plus and F3000 are perfect examples of that. But when it comes to integrated home backup and electric bill savings, Anker has always lagged a bit behind brands like EcoFlow and EG4.
That might be changing, or at least that’s what Anker is hoping for with the release of their new Anker Power Saver Kit. This $450 kit includes a bi-directional inlet box and smart meter that were both designed to connect your Anker F3000 Power Station to your home's electrical system.
Having your power station power your home, monitor your energy use, and even help you save money through peak shaving is an interesting idea, especially if you don’t have to install a full-blown solar power system. But does this kit actually work as advertised? Or is this just another gimmick designed to make you invest more money into building out a full Anker ecosystem?
Let’s break it down.
The Anker Power Saver Kit is made up of two parts that work together: a bi-directional inlet box and a smart meter.
The inlet box is essentially a 20-amp circuit breaker box that connects directly to your home’s electrical panel. It replaces the need for a manual transfer switch, allowing you to feed power both ways: from your F3000 Power Station into your panel during outages or during on-peak hours, or from the grid back into your Anker F3000 to charge its battery.
The smart meter is a small device with Wi-Fi connectivity and current clamps that you attach around wires in your breaker panel. These monitor the flow of electricity in real time and feed the data back to the Anker app, letting you see exactly how much power your home is using and when you're using it.
The smart meter also helps prevent the back-feeding of power from your F3000 into the grid. Since it connects to the app, you can also use it to set your preferred time-of-use settings to lower your grid usage when it makes sense. We’ll jump into this in more detail later, but there are also some really cool features, like storm detection, that can help you automate the setup to make it more effective as a backup power source.
Together, these two components give the Anker F3000 Power Station some home integration capabilities that it didn’t have previously. You also gain the ability to automatically charge your F3000 with solar panels or from the grid at night, then feed that free or low-cost electricity back into your home during expensive peak hours. In theory, these are some really handy components that make the F3000 a far more versatile power station.
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If you buy it on its own, the full retail price for the Anker SOLIX Power Saver Kit is $448. They currently have an offer where you can bundle it with the F3000 Power Station, and doing so drops the price for the Power Saver Kit to about $200. Shop Solar also has a bundle where they package the Power Saver Kit wtith the F3800 and an expansion battery for around $1,500, which is actually a really good deal.
These bundles deals don't do much for people who already own an F3000 Power Station, but it’s still a much better deal than buying it at full price (assuming you actually end up using it).
Anker markets this system as a way to reduce electricity bills, easily offset grid usage with solar, and simplify home power storage. And while that’s true in theory, the actual payoff is a little more complicated. So, while it's made to save you money you have to use it a very specific way to see any sort of return.
One of the things we liked most about the Anker SOLIX Power Saver Kit is how easy it is to install.
If you’re comfortable wiring a standard household outlet, you can handle this. The 20-amp breaker wiring is simple, and the current clamps on the smart meter just snap around existing wires. There’s no cutting or complex rewiring required, so it’s definitely a DIY-friendly install.
The Anker app setup is also refreshingly simple. Once the meter is connected to Wi-Fi, you can monitor your home’s total consumption, set charging schedules, and even track individual circuits. For people looking for ways to reduce electricity bills and usage, this information is actually really handy.
With all of that said, the system isn’t quite as “plug-and-play” as Anker’s marketing suggests.
You’ll need to run a communication cable between the inlet box and the smart meter, and depending on your wall layout, that can get a bit messy. Despite the marketing for the Power Kit showing the inlet box just replacing a standard wall outlet, it really makes the most sense to install it next to your main breaker panel.
Now that we’ve explained what it is and the basics of the install process, let’s jump into all of the things we like and dislike about this kit. We’ll start with the positives:
You can use the Anker Power Saver Kit with solar panels — meaning you can generate and store your own power before feeding it back into your home. This goes beyond traditional peak shaving, and it’s a genuine way to reduce your dependence on the grid.
That said, Anker’s own folding 400W panels are wildly overpriced. They’re portable and it’s nice they have matching Anker branding, but at over $800 each, they’re pretty much impossible to justify.
If you’re serious about this setup, we’d recommend picking up more affordable rigid panels from retailers like Shop Solar or Signature Solar. If you go this route, you could easily purchase panels with a similar 400W to 450W rating for under $200 each.
We actually explained in detail why rigid solar panels are often a superior option to these types of folded solar panels that the power station brands release.
You can check it out here: Folding Solar Panels vs Rigid Solar Panels: Which Should You Buy?
Being able to integrate the Anker app into your home, rather than just having it limited to monitoring and controlling your power station, is one of the strongest parts of this kit.
It not only tracks your F3000 Power Station’s power inputs and outputs, but also your home’s total energy consumption. You can see where your electricity is going, identify which appliances draw the most, and adjust your usage accordingly.
The app also includes a few genuinely useful smart features, such as:
Basically, if the system detects an incoming storm, it automatically forces your F3000 Power Station to charge up to 100%, no matter when you have it scheduled to take a charge. This ensures you’re ready with backup power in the event of a storm-related outage.
You can set a minimum battery capacity (say 50%), and the system will treat that as “empty” to preserve power for emergencies. Rather than allowing your F3000’s battery to drain down to nothing, you’ll always know you have that pre-set minimum power store set aside to deal with an outage.
If you pair your F3000 with an Anker SOLIX BP3000 Expansion Battery, you could even set it up to only pull power from that extra battery in the event of a blackout. This would mean you’d always have at least 3,072Wh of reserve power to keep your fridge running, as well as any other critical loads you would need if the grid goes down.
Both of these features might sound gimmicky, but we tested them and they actually work. In theory, they could make a big difference, especially if you happen to be away from home when a power outage hits.
If you already own the Anker F3000 Portable Power Station, this kit could unlock a ton of functionality. Whether you want to use it for more automated emergency home backup or use it as part of a hybrid solar power system, you have the flexibility to do either.
You could even use it to offset the power that a single high-wattage appliance uses, like an air conditioner. Doing so would offset the power that particular appliance is pulling by running it on cheaper, off-peak electricity as part of a peak shaving strategy, or you could even charge your F3000 with solar panels and run that particularl appliance for free with solar power.
If you add expansion batteries to your setup, you only increase the amount of money you can save on electricity, as well as your level of prep for outages.
While we think this is an excellent concept, and there were things we genuinely really liked about the Anker F3000 Power Saver Kit, it’s not without its flaws:
This kit only works with the Anker F3000 Power Station. It’s not compatible with the F3800 or F3800 Plus, which feels unnecessarily restrictive, especially when you consider those two power stations were specifically designed to function as serious home backup systems.
Take the Anker F3800 Plus, which can be expanded up to a total battery capacity of 53.8kWh. If you could pair that system with the Anker Power Saver, you’d be talking about a legitimate whole-home backup power system.
So, why limit it to the Anker F3000, which has a maximum expanded storage capacity of 24kWh and can only output 240V with two units? It almost feels like how Apple intentionally limits accessory compatibility to certain devices. Honestly, there’s probably no reason for it other than to keep users in specific power station ecosystems. Who knows, maybe they'll release a similar component for the F3800 Plus and other Anker power stations in the future.
Speaking of the limited potential, the marketing Anker uses to promote the F3000 Power Saver Kit seems to imply that you could use this setup to power your whole house, but with a 20-amp circuit, that’s just not realistic.
Even if you had two of the F3000 units together running 240V, you’d still be limited to a few critical loads: your fridge, a few outlets, or something like a small AC unit. Anything more and you’d be really pushing the limits.
We’d call this more of a partial backup solution. It would be great for offsetting one or two appliances that draw a lot of power, but nowhere near a full home backup system like you’d get from a more permanent solar power setup that you wired directly into your house.
Let’s talk numbers. All of Anker’s advertising seems to feature the Power Saver Kit alongside an “ideal” F3000 setup, which they even sell as one big package. Here’s what that looks like:
Together as a single bundle, all of these components cost around $5,298.
Now, given Anker advertises this bundle as a way to save power and money, let’s crunch the numbers and see what you’d actually save by using it.
If we assume you get five peak sun hours a day (which is optimistic in most northern regions), that gives you around 6kWh of solar power per day, or about $1.50 worth of energy savings at a typical rate of around $0.25 per kWh.
If you ran this system every single day, that’s roughly $500 per year in savings. In other words, it would take 10+ years to recoup your investment, and that’s assuming the setup runs flawlessly, every single day, without ever being used to power anything else.
If you already own the F3000 Power Station and just buy the Power Saver Kit on its own, it’s not a bad add-on. But if you’re buying everything Anker advertises as one big bundle, it’s a tough sell.
If your goal is to genuinely save money or build a small home backup system, you might get more value by going the traditional solar power system route.
There are plenty of all-in-one solar kits available that you could wire directly into your home’s electrical panel. You would lose out on portability, but you’d enjoy more power and convenience.
For example, let’s say you went with a basic solar power setup that included the following components:
Going this route would give you a much larger and more expandable system for nearly the same cost as the Anker F3000 + Power Saver Kit Bundle.
You would lose out on Anker’s app and the portability you’d get with a power station setup, but you’ll gain a lot of practical benefits, including a way faster return on investment.
Anker is clearly leaning into this home backup power angle, even going as far as labeling the F3000 a “Home Backup Power Station” on their website.
And honestly, the Anker SOLIX Power Saver Kit is an impressive step toward smart home energy management. It’s innovative, easy to install, and gives your F3000 Portable Power Station real-world functionality that goes beyond off-grid power for camping and emergency use.
But while the concept is solid, the execution just isn’t quite there yet. It’s too limited, a bit too expensive, and too restrictive to make sense for most homeowners.
If you already have an Anker F3000 and want to experiment with peak shaving or want more control and automation for light home backup purposes, it’s a really cool and functional upgrade. But if your main goal is to save money on utility bills or power your home reliably, you’ll be better off investing in a dedicated hybrid inverter system with components from brands like EG4, Rich Solar, and Sol-Ark.
Still, we’ll give Anker credit for pushing the portable power industry forward. It’s not perfect, but it’s progress, and we’re excited to see where they take it next.
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