My brand new AC200MAX is giving me voltage fluctuations of ± 5 volts on the AC outputs. It also causes rapid flickering of LED lights plugged into AC outputs and causing massive amounts of radio interference on AM and HF frequencies when in operation. Anyone have any idea what’s going on here and how to fix it?
If I had to guess, I would say it sounds there’s a problem with the inverter. And I don’t think there is a fix for that except to return it.
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I did a ‘reset to factory defaults’ on it and that may have done something because I used it to run my office all day yesterday and the voltage fluctuations seem to have gone away. It was putting out a solid 119 volt AC for something like 10 hours.
I don;'t understand what’s going on with the overhead lights at all. They’re shop light style LED units designed to replace fluorescent tube lighting, and they’re the only ones that have the rapid flickering. I’ve tried other LED lighting, desk lamps, etc. and none of them have the same problem. I’m starting to think that there is some kind of circuitry that is picking up something from the Bluetti that causes the problems that is specific to those lights because I see the problem nowhere else.
The radio interference issue is apparently not uncommon but still troublesome as I’m an amateur radio operator. It may be something I’m going to just have to learn how to deal with.
I’ll keep testing and see what happens. If the voltage fluctuation reappears I’ll try contacting the company directly.
That really sucks. It’s a pure sine inverter and you would think (or hope) it wouldn’t do that. Is the RF interference on equipment you have plugged into the AC side? What if you used the AC side to a power a DC power supply and then to your radio gear? Most of my radio gear is DC anyways, alternately, if its 12VDC you could just use the DC side of the unit and see if that works better.
The transceiver I’m running on it is a Kenwood TS-990, AC powered. I haven’t tried it with a DC transceiver yet. I’ll try it with one of my DC radios as soon as I have some time. I have a TS-2000 and a Yaesu 450 that I can pull off the shelf and try it with. I didn’t think of the DC side.
It’s kind of interesting now that I’m looking at it again. I have it up on the scope now and I’m seeing “birdies” about every 500 hertz all through the entire HF band. Fortunately those don’t fall inside of the frequency ranges I normally use or wouldn’t be able to use the AC200 at all.
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Nice. I am re-doing my basement shop and haven’t set up my radios yet but will soon. I have never tried them with my AC200Max, I don’t have an HF transceiver, only UHF/VHF. KI6LUY
I re-did my whole radioshack/office/lab last year but it’s getting so cluttered again I may be forced to do it all over again. I’m KC9YGN. But it wouldn’t be a bad thing to do again. It would let me reconfigure the electrical system in there to make it more convenient to use with the Bluetti
The good news is that the voltage fluctuation still hasn’t repeated since I did the reset on the AC200max. RFI on my radio equipment is still a problem, but since the “birdies” fall outside of the ham radio bands I can still use the radios. Just makes it harder to hear very weak stations that I probably couldn’t work anyway. The light flickering only occurs with those specific lights and no others so I’m assuming the problem is something with that light and not an issue with the AC200
I have 4 of the cheapest 100W solar panels I could find on order and should be here yet this week so I can experiment with that. This time of year we’re lucky to see sun one day in 10 so I’m not going to get a lot of power out of them but I want to experiment so I know what I’m doing when I put in a decent solar system this spring.
The AC200 originally was intended as emergency power backup to run the furnace and sump pumps and it works great for that. It handles the furnace very well. I estimate it could keep it running at least 8 hours or longer if necessary. A lot less time running the sump pumps of course but it could run both of those for about 2+ hours. Long enough for me to get the gas generator out, set up and running to take over the load. But I’m a habitual tinkerer and as soon as it got here and I saw the potential I started thinking about using it or something like it to take parts of the house off-grid and running on solar.
I bought 3 200w polycrystalline panels and they work just okay. but I haven’t seen 600w out of them yet. Found out I get the most output with them lying flat in the yard rather than using the built in kickstand which doesn’t work that well anyways. I’m on the east coast now and learning that it really does matter where you live as to how beneficial solar is.
I have asked about the noise issue on this forum in the past. No good results, I still have AC noise. In working on the issue however, I discovered that AC has a floating ground. If I bond the two grounds together on with a plug in one of the AC outlets the floating ground “goes away,” but the noise doesn’t. I discovered the issue when I put a line filter in and it showed a ground fault, it also didn’t resolve the noise issue. Choke coils seem to have no effect on the issue.
My solution to the HF noise is to use the 12v/30A outlet into an Anderson PowerPole distributor. There’s no noise when I do that. Would love to see someone come up with a solution.
I expected to see some RFI from the unit because almost everyone I know who has tried one of these systems has run into that. That it doesn’t show up on the 12V output would seem to indicate that it’s an issue with the AC inverter which doesn’t surprise me at all. As I said, it’s annoying but I’m still able to operate, even on 40 meters where it’s the worst. The noise blanker on my TS-990 cuts down the noise level quite a bit but that also reduces the sensitivity of the receiver a bit as well. I wonder if feeding it through one of my UPS systems would make a difference? I’ll have to try that.
I’ll keep fiddling with it. If I find something that helps I’ll post it. Meanwhile I am looking at still taking my entire radioshack/office off the grid using this beast just for the heck of it once my solar panels come in.
I’m still very much in the experimentation stage here. I started out knowing almost nothing about these systems but I’m learning fast.
I talked to one fellow who has a bigger sized Jackery and he said he has the same issue with the AC coming out of it. It doesn’t bother him much because he’s running all of his radio gear off the 12V side of the generator.
Since the RFI issue isn’t totally screwing things up for me I went ahead and ordered one of the 3,000Wh add on batteries from Bluetti. That would give me enough capacity to keep my entire radioshack/office powered for 10+ hours. Even if it doesn’t work out for the radioshack it will give me considerable extra capacity for what its primary purpose was supposed to be, running the sump pumps and the furnace.
Hi, are your flickering lights on a light dimmer?
I have also seen some flicker issues but only with LED lights connected to a dimmer. Depending on how you dim the lights you then may eliminate the flicker. I think there is an interference/feedback issue with the noise from the dimmer causing some resonance effect with the inverter.
Nope, not on a dimmer. They’re long tubular lights designed to replace fluorescent shop lights, with 2 tubes per fixture. Just a simple pull chain to turn them on and off. I’m suspecting that there is some kind of electronics in the lights that doesn’t like something the Bluetti is doing, but I can’t figure out what. The voltage fluctuation issue seems to have resolved itself so that’s not it. I had it on a meter today and fluctuated maybe half a volt AC a few times when it first started up, and then settled down and gave a solid 119V for the next 8 hours. I’ve tried other LED lights and haven’t had the same issue. I can easily replace those lights with another model but it’s still curious.
I installed the 3 amp “https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004043152719.html” DC to DC converter between the Bluetti and my 12 volt devices. It has eliminated the flickering in the 12 volt LED lights, the output is 12.1 volts now, and as a bonus, much but not all of the interference in my FM radio is gone. With no load on the output, the converter draws very little current, too little to move the needle on my 4 amp meter. With 2 amps of load for 5 minutes, the converter gets very slightly warm, almost no waste heat. It must be very efficient. The converter is about 14 feet from the Bluetti. Someday I might put it closer, that may reduce the interference even more? Having the AC on or off makes no difference to the interference.
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