Bluetti AC180 x 2 14 Renogy 100W Solar panels and my experiences so far.

[Holdontight]

I have 2 AC180s and have been using them for just over three weeks. I use one AC180 to run my home office and to power a chest freezer when I have spare power. The other AC180 is on standby for power outages. I plan to swap both units occasionally to even out the wear on the batteries.

I have over paneled my system with 1400W of Renogy solar panels. I hope to achieve a charge rate of 300W for as much of the day as possible. I did this in part because of tree coverage here and because Solar panels are quite a bit cheaper than they were 10 years ago. I built my system in part for backup power and to offset a small amount of our electricity usage. So far I produce a total 1KW most days and so the offset is tiny. I hope to squeeze a little more from my system shortly.



Parallel or serial

Each panel has an open circuit of 20V and so I have 2 in series to provide 40V and it looks like I’m seeing a limit of around 5.5A. The most I’ve seen so far is 280W input on the AC180. I plan to configure the solar array for 3 panels in series for a max voltage of 60V in the hopes of achieving more. I think my long run of poor quality MC4 cables isn’t helping much.



Cheap MC4’s

I now realize that some cheaper MC4 cables on Amazon are rubbish. I need to replace my long run of cables in the hopes of getting more than 5.5A though the system.

What I like so far about the AC180

I love the ability to run any 110/120V appliance in my home. I’ve been able to run a small space heater, air fryer, TV, electric blanket, Microwave, lighting and anything I could find. With 1000W storage in a box of its size makes it useful and isn’t too heavy to move around.

Price. I paid $687.94 for mine. That’s a battery, inverter, MPPT Controller and UPS in one package. I paid over $800 for a Renogy 100Ah LiPo4 battery just over 4 years ago.

Bluetti’s customer service. After purchasing my first AC180 at $793.94. Imagine how annoyed I was at seeing the price drop to $687.94 a week later. Bluetti refunded the price difference after a brief exchange with their customer service dept. Thanks Luna at Bluetti.

Timeout for the LCD is configurable. I’ve set mine to 5 minutes and so that’s more useful than I’ve seen before. You can set it to stay on permanently.

Internal charger with a standard IEC desktop computer cable. These cables are easy to find if you leave yours at home.





What’s to improve on the AC180?

The internal electronics appear to run on battery even if grid and solar is available. This will eventually drop the battery percentage from 100% to 99%, and a recharge follows.

Solar input is disconnected when the battery is full. You can have ample solar power and the AC180 won’t benefit from solar unless the battery is less than 100%

The UPS feature works well. I wish the internal electronics were supplied by grid power and not battery power. This would stop the occasional cycling of the battery between 99 and 100%

I’m not sure if the constant cycling of the battery between 99 and 100% is good for LiPo4 batteries. Time will tell.

Anyone with the Bluetooth app and in Bluetooth range of my units can mess with my loads. I hope Bluetti will improve the security of this in future releases.



Questions for the Forum

I love the flexibility of an above ground solar system. It’s not too much of an issue for me to add/remove and swap panels.

Do any of you configure and test new solar setups?

Do any of you have a plug and play solution for your solar arrays?

Do any of you have any problems running the input of the AC180 at its maximum input wattage for long periods?



Pictures. My home office. The AC180 can run this heater without issue. My oversized solar array to capture as much as i can on cloudy days


https://bit.ly/33Onq63

 

[Crowz]

Seems handy from a portable standpoint but with it costing that much I'd lean towards a more powerful permanent solution personally.

 

[Kremer]

Four of your 20V/5.5A panels in 2S2P should give let you get the full 10A that the Ac180 will draw from the solar input. At 40V that would be 400W.

 

[Daniel644]

OK, first off, DO NOT WIRE 3 of those panels in Series, yeah sure i theory you are right about the 60v limit, but what you are failing to remember is TEMPERATURE in colder temperatures the Voltage will be higher and that will fry your AC180, secondly by the time you bought 14 100 watt panels you could have bought and shipped 10 300 watt panels from signature solar (basing this off roughly a $100 a panel for the 100 watts, typical price, and the $85 a panel for the Hyundai 300 watt panels, you would be about $850+$300 in shipping for the Hyundai's versus the $1,400 or even if you caught them all on sale at $75 a piece $1,050 for HALF the capacity of the Hyundai's, 100 watt panels only make sense if you need some level of portability, they are far to expensive per watt to use for anything of importance IMHO.

When you said:

Price. I paid $687.94 for mine. That’s a battery, inverter, MPPT Controller and UPS in one package. I paid over $800 for a Renogy 100Ah LiPo4 battery just over 4 years ago.

You are comparing things poorly, first you say 100Ah LiPo4 battery but you don't mention the voltage of said battery, if that was a 24 volt battery then that battery has almost 2 and a half times the capacity, if it's a 48 volt then it's nearly 5 times the capacity, then you fail to consider other factors, yeah it has an MPPT controller, but it's a crappy low voltage controller that massively limits the solar collection capability, take for example I have a power station from another brand with the same limited Solar Input of 60v max (but higher amps) that is limited to 800 watts, by comparison I have a independent MPPT SCC that allows up to 160v input allowing me to wire 3 of the mentioned 300 watt panels in series and with a 48 volt battery I can wire 3 of those arrays in parallel (which I have done) allowing me to reach upwards of 2.2 Kw (2.7 theoretical with proper alignment) of solar production during peak sun (with off peak angles of panel alignments, 3 facing south east, 6 facing south west and tilts are not configured for optimal angle), I also picked up a 3,000 watt Pure Sine Wave Inverter for $200 the other day, lets say we combine the costs, a 3,000 watt inverter $200, a $100 MPPT and a $1,100 48volt 100ah battery, thats roughly $1,400, toss in another $100 for fuses, wires and breakers, call it $1,500, with that setup I would have more total power available to run different things, nearly 5 times the battery capacity and the ability to collect 5 times the amount of solar per day all for about 2.5 times the cost of the AC180 (and if you factor in solar panels price vs capacity discussed in the first half of my comment the net cost difference between the 2 total setups is $1,400+$650=$2,050 for AC180 and 14 100 watts vs. $1,150+$1,500= $2,650 so it's only 25% more overall yet have 5 times the solar collection per day and nearly 5 times the battery capacity which means you can run more stuff which means it offsets it's purchase price faster.

Further scaling up is easier and cheaper with this setup too, if I want to increase my capacity from the 48v 100Ah I can stack several of them in parallel, which would give me extended run time during inclement weather or cloudy days, right now I can go about a day and a half of no sun with the loads i'm running off of everything, if I had more battery capacity I could have more reserve for the multiple days of heavy clouds. If it wasn't for the horrible shading issues i'm having in the area with my temporary deployment (until I can build my ground mount array up at the corner of the lot) I could be collecting quite a bit more solar per day on sunny days.

Don't get me wrong, the portable units have a use case as something to use when camping or as an emergency backup, but something being used consistently indoors running a set load would be better served with separate equipment designed for that use case and no one should be wasting their time buying that many 100 watt panels unless you are just physically not able to move the larger panels by yourself.