Why EcoFlow developed a home energy management system of its own

EcoFlow has made a name for itself in portable power stations, and is taking further steps in software by embracing the challenge of developing a home energy management system.

In attendance at CES 2025, Peter Linghu, EcoFlow’s director of product strategy and development, discussed expanding its software capabilities by developing its own large language model for energy management.

The company’s latest platform, Oasis, represents a significant shift from being purely a hardware manufacturer to offering a comprehensive energy management ecosystem. “As our product portfolio grows more sophisticated, it can be a hassle for users to learn and configure everything,” Linghu explained. “Oasis offers users a simple and flexible way to do energy management, with AI automatically handling setup, predictive analytics, and schedule optimization.”

While other companies focus on creating software that works with various hardware brands, EcoFlow takes a more integrated approach. Though its platform supports third-party integrations with smart home devices like Google Nest and Matter-compatible products, the company believes maintaining its own ecosystem provides the best experience for customers.

EcoFlow believes its dual focus on advanced AI integrations and capabilities, plus its a robust ecosystem and third-party integrations sets itself up to deliver on quality.

“We’re definitely leading the industry rather than just following,” Linghu stated. “I do think Oasis is the most capable AI-powered EMS [Energy Management System] on the market for now.”

When asked if EcoFlow expects EMS platforms to be a hotly contested field, Linghu said: “We aimed to set the benchmark with our EMS and we think we have achieved that. In the long run, I do see a trend of combining different ecosystems together or at least offering API or other protocols so that different systems talk to each other.”

“But, we’re just starting,” he added. “We will be offering more extensions like VPP. Right now, we’re already offering VPP API functionality for integration into VPP networks through the aggregators.”

Developing proprietary AI capabilities

With the EMS comes two separate AI areas. One is in energy management, which uses predictive analytics and automation to make helpful decisions automatically. This neural network uses elements such as weather conditions, solar generation patterns, dynamic electricity tariffs, current and past household consumption and data from both EcoFlow devices integrated into the system, and third-party systems integrated via protocols Shelly and Matter.

The second AI area is communication. The first launch of Ocean sees EcoFlow use a general-purpose GPT model from OpenAI.

But Linghu says EcoFlow is actively developing its own large language model (LLM) for energy management alongside its learning models, rather than solely relying on general-purpose AI for communication.  

“We realize the limitations of a general model – it’s never perfect for delivering professional energy services,” Linghu explained. “For now, we’ve developed our own deep learning neural network dedicated to energy management, embedded with OpenAI’s chatting feature. But in the long run, we envision having our own complete solution.”

The company is leveraging years of accumulated energy usage data to train its AI models. “We’ve already built a very comprehensive and professional energy database, so we have abundant data to train and test functionality,” Linghu noted. 

With over 40% of the team dedicated to R&D and all products designed in-house, EcoFlow is making a substantial investment in this AI-driven future.

Expanding the Ocean

The Chinese-headquartered company isn’t slowing down on the hardware front, either. Linghu confirmed EcoFlow will launch a new high-capacity system called Ocean Pro in the US later this year, hinting at a larger-scale and wall-mounted battery energy storage system like its PowerOcean products, which are available in Europe. Further details were promised to be provided as the system approaches a launch, which ESS News understands may be around September, 2025.

Moving away from portability is another departure for EcoFlow, but wall-mounted options have proliferated for those that want more permanent storage options and don’t need portability.

That said, EcoFlow says it isn’t aiming at growing too fast. It remains only in the residential market rather than pursuing larger and larger commercial or industrial applications.

“Our mission is to power individuals and families worldwide,” Peter emphasized. “While we see small business owners using our products, we want to stay laser-focused so we can always bring the best products for our core market.”

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