AC180 tripping the house fuse

Product Discussion BLUETTI Apex & AC Series
1

Hello from Spain.

I purchased an AC180, and I have it plugged into the wall. On the AC socket, I have an extension board connected to it with a PoE switch, router, Pi, connected, drawing around 20-30W max. My main electricity fuse keeps tripping, and the bluetti is the only new addition to the house in recent weeks. I’ve already gone around disconnecting things from sockets, but it continues to trip 3 or 4 times a day. Now I’ve disconnected the bluetti, and connected my devices to the same socket the bluetti was connected too and the trips have stopped. I purchased this device so I could use it inline to keep my router etc. up, as here in Spain, electricity can randomly go off. Is the AC180 incapable of doing what I need? Any guidance would be appreciated.

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There are a few things to check; However, can you post your grid power info, voltage, and frequency i.e. 240 or 120VAC & 50 or 60Hz. Also, check the Firmware updates in the App and make sure the AC180 is up to date.

  1. Check your settings in the App - Check that power is set to the correct frequency for your location - Turn eco mode OFF - Turn Grid Adaption OFF.
  2. What AC180 charge setting are you using i.e. Silent, Standard or Turbo. For the very low load you are using Silent is more than enough. In Turbo mode and depending on the circuit and other loads on it, that circuit may overload.
  3. If the AC180 is below 80% state of charge, will it charge without any devices plugged in and AC/DC load switched OFF, without tripping your house circuit breaker/fuse? If it is not below 80%, use it without plugged into mains until it is. Then without devices plugged in to the AC180, turn, one at a time AC & DC load switches on.
  4. Will your devices work when the AC input is disconnected from the grid? i.e. from the battery and inverter.

    These are fault finding/ process of elimination things you can do that will help others like me assist you. :smile:

    Unfortunately “mind reading” is not one of my skills, lol.
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Also can you tell us what you mean by tripping? Is it tripping a branch circuit breaker that is supplying power to the AC180 grid input? Or some other breaker is tripping? What kind of breaker is it? Is a GFCI? Arc Fault?
.
When it is tripping what is the AC180 doing? Is it charging? If so, what is the grid input wattage like?

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for all the help and suggestions! I checked everything you mentioned. My grid power is 240V & 50Hz. I also made sure the firmware was up to date in the app.

In the App settings, I confirmed the power frequency, turned Eco Mode OFF, and checked that Grid Adaption was OFF . I also switched the charging mode to Silent, since my load is only around 20-30W. That alone seemed to make a big difference. It’s been two days now without the main RCD tripping.

When I say “tripping”, I mean the main house RCD (differential) going down, not a branch circuit breaker. The Bluetti was plugged directly into the wall, and from its AC outlet I had an extension board powering low-load devices (router, PoE switch, Home Assistant Yellow, house alarm, etc.) - about eight devices total.

The setup was intended to work inline like a UPS. That is, the Bluetti stays at 100%, passes power through, and switches to battery when the mains go out, then back to charging once power returns. That worked perfectly until a couple of weeks ago, when the RCD started tripping several times a day.

I later disconnected the Bluetti and ran the same extension board directly from the mains to test it, and the RCD stayed stable. Around the same time, I had an electrician here doing some outdoor work, so I asked him to have a look. He ran a few tests on the panel, found that the existing RCD was very sensitive to inverter-type loads, and replaced it with a Type A differential.

Since then, the battery is plugged back into the mains, and the extension board into the AC outlet, and everything has been completely stable, no more trips.

5

Happy that your issue has been rectified. Fault finding, especially when there are multiple items/devices in a system, can be daunting. The best way is to eliminate each one, one by one, until one is the culprit. Unfortunately, sometimes it can be a combination of items together, lol.

In your instance it was 2 items, the inverter and the RCD and this requires a licensed electrician’s knowledge. But it also proves it was not an AC180 fault as such.

I recently had a generator transfer switch installed to my house. There are 4 power circuits amongst others, that were protected by 2 RCDs, 2 circuits per RCD. My “sparky” removed both RCDs and installed an RCDO, one for each power circuit. The power was then rerouted to a ganged transfer switch and that board has a further RCDO which protects all 4 circuits. This is enough as the maximum loads are only as big as the power stations output and my biggest is an AC200P 2kW inverter, which at 240VAC is just over 8 amps.

The plus of individual RCDOs is that fault finding is now easier as each now has only one circuit, not 2. I generally use an AC180 to power the house in a grid outage and nothing has ever tripped with an average load of 500W.

I should note - The standard Australian house circuit breaker width, is what I call 1 slot wide. A RCD is 3 slots wide and I had 2. This used 6 slots width and replacing with 4 x RCDOs, which are each only 1 slot wide, made room for 2 extra slots spare space. This allowed the sparky to tidy up the whole board, which was full to overflow before the install. (The transfer switchgear is in a smaller added breaker box to the side, with the input plug below it.)