For reasons unknown, this device seems to have issues at the worst times. I’ve posted elsewhere that many of what appear to be intentional software configurations with this device in its quest to “stay running” get in the way of a more common use case, which is that it should provide power regardless of the situation so long as it has the juice.
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I digress.
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For what is now the third time, I get the “Zero Drift Abnormal” error, which is a developer who doesn’t understand UI putting words that mean nothing. Error E014. In the manual it says to power the device off.
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Now, the first time this happened, I discovered that if ANY power plug is attached, even if there’s no juice from them, the device will refuse to power down.
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Reference this thread: AC300 and AC200 Max won't shut down
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In it, they’re basically saying it’s a feature, not a bug. Well, I consider it not only a bug but a safety issue.
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I again digress.
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This time, the device won’t power off no matter what. Not from the app, not from the physical. It’s fully charged (imagine that) with nothing plugged in, and won’t charge. I don’t know exactly what caused it to go into this mode, but we got hit with rather torrential rains that seemed to wreak havoc on power and cause surges. I have a whole home surge protector, and I assume that the BLUETTI simply is picky about these graceful dips in power.
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EDIT: after some hours of this middling status (and unplugged the entire time), the device started throwing errors that indicate an inverter failure and something overheating with the DC. Later now, the device is apparently completely off after the screen was flickering nonstop. It no longer is accessible via the app and the physical power button doesn’t turn it on. I’m hesitant to plug it in given the errors about inverters and overheating. At this point it’s been escalated to BBB, because the device is clearly defective, and I’m not paying to get it shipped anywhere nor am I paying to get it fixed.
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Of course, the most notable competitor product, which I have four of in other parts of the house, have been running happily with no issues whatsoever.
Hi @Leicesterage, Regarding the E014 error, this indicates a temporary output overload. Please first upgrade all firmware to the latest version, disconnect all loads, and then restart the device. Generally, this will resolve the issue.
As for the AC200L being unable to power off when connected to a power source, this is indeed not a bug. The reason is that the power station needs to seize every opportunity to charge at any time to avoid running out of power when needed. Automatically turning on when connected to a power source also helps activate batteries in deep sleep mode.
Since you have already contacted customer service, could you please inform us of the service ticket number? We will supervise the service process.
As stated, the device will not power on nor would it power off under anything I did. I have no idea what the state of the battery charge level is because there wasn’t anything drawing power. Everything was completely unplugged save a small USB device. So I have no idea why the device would assume an “output” overload when nothing was drawing anything that should have caused that, thus the belief it’s a defect.
There’s been no customer service direct support because the last time I tried, they stopped responding when I called out a different problem where the device threw a different type of error, and they said it was unstable grid (the grid is NOT unstable). But as stated, the competitor product has never had an issue; which means the BLUETTI is over-sensitive to something. It turns out that “something” is basically, “I want to have power access at all times or I’m not happy” instead of, “if I don’t have power fine, I’ll yell at you, but I won’t just stop working”.
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At that time the use case was to run devices off battery 100% of the time; but the UPS mode in the device was still partially drawing from the grid during on-peak hours, so removing power completely was the only way to force the issue; then it threw the error.
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So basically: there is no support issue, only a BBB ticket, firmware was current last checked (and no option to do anything about it), and I just confirmed the unit will not turn on. But it was 100% as of 24 hours ago with nothing plugged in - so I suspect the batteries are still charged but whatever computer components are hosed, as with the link I shared as a reference.