The 45W PD Power Bank Was Released As Energear's First Power Bank Supporting USB Power Delivery

The 45W PD Power Bank by Energear uses USB Power Delivery 2.0 technology for fast charging over its single Type-C port. The USB Type-C port serves as both the output and input for sourcing/sinking power meaning it will charge any connected peripheral as well as getting power supplied by an external charger to charge the battery.

The Energear 45W PD Power Bank looks to be the first power bank sold by Energear supporting up to 45 watts using 5 volts @ 3 amps (15 watts), 9 volts @ 3 amps (27 watts), 12 volts @ 3 amps (36 watts), 15 volts @ 3 amps (45 watts) and 20 volts @ 2.25 amps (45 watts) power profiles over the USB Type-C interface. You can also charge the power bank using these power profiles as well.

You can use the Energear 45W PD Power Bank to quickly charge latest phones like the Apple iPhone XS Max or Android phones such as Google's Pixel 3 XL and the Samsung Galaxy S9+ over USB Power Delivery. The power bank should also sufficiently charge certain USB Type-C tablets and notebook PC's like Apple's 11-inch iPad Pro (2018) and MacBook 12" Retina 2017 or the Dell XPS 13 9370 and the Google Pixelbook.

Here's a closer view of how the Energear 45W PD Power Bank looks like from inside the box.  

The USB-IF certification logo is not explicitly displayed on the packaging but shows up on the power bank's product page.   

The nice thing about Energear products is that they mostly include a separate cable with the product itself, in this case a USB Type-C cable which should come in handy.

To set the Energear 45W PD Power Bank's USB Type-C port for charging out or to get charged by a USB Power Delivery based power source, you need to press the power button on the power bank. The LED's beside the power button will indicate how much charge is left.

The Energear 45W PD Power Bank also comes in black casing other than white as seen below.

We can see how the Energear 45W PD Power Bank supports power using the USB Power Test App from Granite River Labs with the Granite River Labs USB Power Delivery Compliance C2 Tester to generate the following test results.

The USB Power Test App first negotiates a power contract for every PDO supported by the Energear 45W PD Power Bank, and increases the load gradually to find the threshold where over current protection (OCP) kicks in and voltage and current start to drop for safety reasons. However, we do see more current instability after OCP triggers at 9V, 15V, and 20V PDO's.

The USB Power Test App reports out all the PDO's supported by the Energear power bank and their OCP thresholds.

PDO	OCP (A)	%OCP
PDO#1 Fixed: 5V 3A	3.49	116.3%
PDO#2 Fixed: 9V 3A	3.72	124%
PDO#3 Fixed: 12V 3A	3.66	122%
PDO#4 Fixed: 15V 3A	4.03	134.3%
PDO#5 Fixed: 20V 2.2A	4.24	192.6%

The USB Power Test App from Granite River Labs takes this data to produce an I-V curve which graphically shows the relationship between voltage and current for each PDO. We can observe the current for 20V PDO just drops without reaching the 4.24A OCP threshold.

To determine the Power Delivery Sink capabilities of the Energear 45W PD Power Bank, the USB Power Test App first negotiates a power contract emulating the Source and then reports out the voltage and current supported by the power bank for each of the Source PDO's advertised to the power bank. Unfortunately the power bank had problems charging at 5V.

Using the USB Power Delivery Compliance C2 Tester from Granite River Labs to run just a subset of the full USB Power Delivery compliance test suite, some compliance failures were observed for the Energear 45W PD Power Bank even though it has been claimed to be USB-IF certified.

USB-IF High Level Mapping Summary

Sl No	Test Category	Test Group Description	Test Result
1	PHY_PRIMARY_TX	BMC Physical Layer Transmitter	PASS
2	PHY_PRIMARY_RX	BMC Physical Layer Receiver	PASS
4	PROT_PRIMARY	Protocol Specific Primary	FAIL

Result Summary

Sl No	Test ID	Test Name	Test Result
1	TDA.2.1.1.1	TDA.2.1.1.1 BMC PHY TX EYE	PASS
2	TDA.2.1.1.2	TDA.2.1.1.2 BMC PHY TX BIT	PASS
3	TDA.2.1.2.2	TDA.2.1.2.2 BMC PHY RX INT REJ	PASS
4	TDA.2.1.2.1	TDA.2.1.2.1 BMC PHY RX BUSIDL	PASS
5	TDA.2.1.3.1	TDA.2.1.3.1 BMC PHY TERM	FAIL
7	TDA.2.2.1	TDA.2.2.1 BMC PROT SEQ GETCAPS	PASS
8	TDA.2.2.2.1	TDA.2.2.2.1 BMC PROT SEQ CHKCAP P PC	PASS
9	TDA.2.2.2.2	TDA.2.2.2.2 BMC PROT SEQ CHKCAP NOMARK P PC	PASS
10	TDA.2.2.2.3	TDA.2.2.2.3 BMC PROT SEQ CHKCAP CP ACC	PASS
11	TDA.2.2.2.4	TDA.2.2.2.4 BMC PROT SEQ CHKCAP NOMRK CP ACC	PASS
16	TDA.2.2.7	TDA.2.2.7 BMC PROT BIST NOT 5V SRC	FAIL
18	TDA.2.2.9	TDA.2.2.9 BMC PROT GSC REC	PASS
19	TDA.2.2.10	TDA.2.2.10 BMC PROT IGN PPS	PASS
20	TDA.2.3.1.1	TDA.2.3.1.1 POW SRC LOAD P PC	FAIL
21	TDA.2.3.1.2	TDA.2.3.1.2 POW SRC LOAD CP ACC	FAIL
24	TDA.2.3.3.1	TDA.2.3.3.1 POW SNK TRANS C CP	PASS

BMC Eye Diagram