Hi All. I hope this post is ok. I am trying to assist my husband who is up north by Yukon border. He has a Honda 1000 generator and the Bluetti AC180. The Bluetti is up to date of firmware. I did that for him before he left. I did add the Bluetti app to his phone but he says he has been unable to connect. - We did have it on grid enhancement mode on when he left - we did ths due to last time he tried to use this he could here the generator revving up and down and that is what bluetti suggested
Issue - Bluetti down to 11% charge. He plugs it in to honda generator and it jumps to 100% in like 3 seconds which is not right
should he have the generator on eco mode. We dont want to damage the bluetti but he needs it to charge things
Sounds like you need to recalibrate the internal bms by running a couple complete 100%-0%-100% cycles with constant loads on them. This is recommended every 3-4 months whether in use or being stored to keep that state of charge meter calibrated and fresh. This should definitely help but holler if you’d like more details!!
** Edit to add that the eco mode on the bluetti won’t affect the performance of the charging aspect. That’s in place as an option to have the bluetti unit turn off automatically if the AC or DC outputs are left on accidentally.
There is an “Eco” mode on the Honda, I believe that Power Girl was reffering to that. It is the demand throttle switch. Running the generator in demand mode or full throttle will make little difference to the AC180. (I have 3 AC180s, a Honda 2kVA and a small cheap 800W generator.) All of mine work without grid enhancement. (The small genny only when Silent mode is set on the AC180s)
What might trip your 1,000kVA Honda is if the Bluetti is set to Turbo charging mode. This is 850W and the actual maximum continuous output of the Honda is 800W.
As an aside, kVA is not the same as Watts power as there is an 80% power factor involved. So, 1,000kVA is actually only 800W.
I would suggest you contact your husband and get him to set the charge mode of the AC180 to Silent. Let the Honda run for a while until the AC180 shows no input load. Then follow @m.briney’s advice as above re a recalibration.
Hey, thanks for the response. Husband came home and we did that recalibration. We charged it at the house and then we took it all the way down to zero and then try to recharge using the various generators and the home. I’m just not sure if this is looking correct so in the generator, we had 1000 W it seemed to have input of up to 1000 W within, then put it in and charge it in the house it also was showing that it was input of 1000 but then it kicked down to input of 280. I just wanna make sure that this is acceptable and we’re not going to muck things up
When it dropped down the incoming wattage, what percentage was the SOC (state of charge) reading on the display?? Because these units will throttle down the amount of power if inputs as it gets closer to full. Specially if it’s been charging in turbo mode prior, it does this as a safety procedure to accurately “top balance” the battery pack and is totally normal.
I’m not sure. It wasn’t near full because it was still at just one percent charged when the initial thousand watt generator kicked it down and it showed 0 watt input.
We then thought maybe it was the generator so we plugged the bluetti into the 2000 W Honda Gen. again, just wanted watching the wattage percentage intake and that was again over 1000 but it didn’t seem to kick down at least for the time that we had it plugged in, but we were worried that the input was so high.
We then unplugged it from the Honda generator plugged it into the actual wall at our home just to see what the intake wattage was and it creeped up to 1000 but then after about five minutes, it seemed to kick down and the wattage was a continuous 280 until it reached 100% Recharge
We just didn’t know if having it at 1000 want input on the generator without it kicking down would do any damage. Hence we unplugged it and plugged it into the wall at our house to see what the input percentage was.
That all sounds pretty normal and you should be fine then. You can also check to see what AC charging mode you have your unit set to as the incoming wattage will vary drastically. Turbo Mode will actually allow the ac180 to peak at 1440 watts when charging via Wall/AC charging. This is crazy fast but for me when I am AC charging, I usually keep mine set to standard or silent tho as charging these units at under a .2C rate is ideal for longevity of the cells.
Silent mode will ALWAYS do around 280 watts. Standard will do around 1000. Turbo 1440ish. This depends on available load on the solar generator. The constant load + charging cannot exceed 1440W. If you are using 440W the maximum you will get is 1000W of charging. Vise versa if you are using 1000W, the maximum charge you will get is 440W. BMS can also throttle charging speed based on cell temp for battery protection. At the very top end of the SOC it is completely normal for it to trickle charge the remaining battery (say 99% to 100%) and charge at a fixed rate of 280 watts. When you get near the top end of the battery and charge at a fast rate its like electrons overflowing in a bucket, so this is why it controls the flow rate near the end. It is able to properly top off the charge. A lot of energy is wasted and its also why it feel like it takes forever to get from 99% to 100%.
Also since the standard charging and turbo charging profiles of the AC180 exceeds the continuous wattage of the generator (it only supports 800W continuous) the BMS is likely governing the charge to a 280W limit, since it is unable to do 1000W constant. So yes, completely normal that is sticks with 280W, which matches the charging profile of silent mode.
