I just purchased and installed a SolarX 4k in order to power 3 - Apex 300 units and 9 B300K batteries to provide power to my home. The Apex 300’s and B300k’s work great. but the Solar X 4K is up to now a disappointment. Currently I have 13 - 220 watt solar panels producing about 226 volts and 1600 watts of power. I was getting this kind of power from a mere 8 - 220 watt solar panels through my AC300 using it’s two ports. Why am I getting such low performance out of the SolarX? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Hello,
welcome here.
You may have connected more panels in series than before to achieve a higher voltage. If this causes some panels to be partially shaded at times, the yield will obviously not be as high. For comparison purposes, the conditions before and after installing the SolarX should be roughly the same.
Please provide more details.
You should also note that the power loss of the SolarX may be higher than that of the two inverters of the AC300.
I also want to buy the SolarX for my AC500 with 6 batteries. Therefore, I am also interested in this issue.
Perhaps @BLUETTI_CARE can comment on the problem.
Greetings from Germany
Joachim
Panels are in series but I live in New Mexico (desert area) zero trees or shading on panels - all south facing with 4 to 5 hours of peak sun per day. . At this rate I will have to double the number of solar panels to get same output as my AC300 setup right next to the giant Apex 300 setup. Such a strange situation… was really hoping for an easier solution using the Solar X. I am hoping there might be a software fix I am missing.
Hi Steve, I heard recently that when using the Triple XT60 cable option which perhaps you are with the 3 power stations? There is a large conversion loss resulting in a lower output voltage that can’t be adjusted.
If you are using the P090D cable you can adjust the output voltage between 35V and 58 Volts output but for the XT60 cables it could be locked on a calculation of Input Voltage * .1257 = output voltage.
If your array is 226 volts input the output after conversion could be 28.4 volts, and because the maximum amperage is 20A that could be a maximum of 560 watts per Apex input or 1680 watts maximum, which is close to what you are seeing.
Check your input voltage on the Apex300 and see if it is indeed about 28.4V. I am interested if that is how the XT60 cable version is working.
If that is the behaviour then the only solutions would be to increase the voltage for example 400 volts in would be 50 Volts out or to use the P090D cable where you can adjust the output voltage, but then you can only charge one power station at a time. Perhaps Bluetti can change this behaviour to increase this. Perhaps it is the default setting when the CAN port is not used or some other default that can hopefully be changed.
Wow that seems to make sense - and yes using the three xt60 cables but also have the larger single unit cable. When I have time may swap out and see what happens.
I was thinking if Bluetti can’t fix this then may need to buy two more SolarX units to get full power for the system. Kinda sucks seeing they are saying SolarX can really give you whopper power.
Thanks for your response and I will test that other cable later and get back to you here.
And in the morning light producing about 1.5K watts… Apex 300 input voltage is about 27 volts.
I hope that helps.
27V x 20A x 3 would be around 1600 watts
I wonder if you can somehow increase the supply voltage so it isn’t limited by the current.
Me too! Any suggestions? Anyone? Thanks!
more solar panels…connected in series
On the way… a dozen! ![]()
Hi @steveM1, Thank you for choosing our product.
From the information you provided, your solar panels have a total power of 1600W, and generating around 1500W in the morning is perfectly normal. If you are using three XT60 ports to charge three sets of Apex 300 + B300K, each group having over 400W of charging power is already quite good.
Could you please share a screenshot showing the actual input voltage, current, and power of the Apex 300 in the app? We’d also like to see how you connected the setup — could you record a short video, upload it to a cloud drive, and share the link with us?
@Sideeffect’s suggestion is very helpful — please try replacing the XT60 cable with a P090D cable and test the PV charging power of each Apex 300 + B300K group.
Thanks also to Akel for the helpful input and reminder.
Thanks for getting back to me… Here is the problem as I see it and don’t understand. At this time of writing this… I have 13 solar panels rated at 220 watts each and on a sunny day (Most days here in New Mexico our sunny) producing 1600 watts yet they are rated to product 2860 watts (I know under ideal conditions) BUT I have an AC300 right next to this Apex 300 setup with same solar panels (eight of them) and producing almost the same amount of power (same exact location of other panels). Why is SolarX so weak at producing power? It was advertised to be able to create massive power output yet by ratio is much smaller when using Apex 300 vs. AC300? The end result is the customer has to purchase a LOT more solar panels to get even decent performance out of this system. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
NOTE: (I will take screen shots of system performance once we have a clear and sunny day currently we have a very rare storm front moving through this weekend. )
And if this works (which I hope and suspect it will) means that I would have to purchase not one but 3 SolarX 4k units to power my system. That makes zero sense as the SolarX was sold as a great option to power all three banks of power (Apex 300 units in Parallel)
Is there a way for you to configure the Solar 4x to output a higher voltage? Your 13 panels output 226V (around 18V each) connected in series, but the Solar 4x is stepping that down to 27V or so, which causes the power to be limited by the Apex 300’s 20A max per MPPT input. If this is a fixed ratio, then adding more panels would help, but hopefully there is a way for your to change the configuration/software setting of the Solar 4x to output something like 55v instead. Looking on the brighter side, even though your max power is limited to around 550w x 3, you would be getting that for a much larger portion of the day, and not just around peak solar hour.
Hello,
as far as I understand, the SolarX isn’t connected to the MPPT input, but directly to a battery (e.g., B300K).
The B300K can be charged with 54A and 51V. Or am I wrong?
When in parallel mode, it connects to the solar input ports XT 60s. If you just use a single Apex 300 and then you go in the battery port. I’m actually gonna test that out later today to see if I get better Performance, but it is a rare rainy day in New Mexico, so I don’t have high hopes.
Now I understand. The only way you can probably increase the input voltage is by connecting additional solar panels. The difference between the input voltage and output voltage of the SolaX is probably due to its design, and the power loss is quite high.The SolarX’s power loss is approximately 5%.At a 3000W input, it only achieves approximately 2800W input power.
This won’t be able to be changed via the software.
Hopefully, I won’t have problems with my AC500 as well.
I’ll be feeding about 400V and 3500W into the SolarX and hope to then be able to feed 58V into the B300K.
Hi @steveM1, Thank you for getting back to us so quickly.
It does seem that the energy loss during charging is a bit high — this could be due to a settings issue or a hardware problem.
We recommend updating all firmware to the latest version first, then adjusting the charging current in the app to see if that helps.
In addition, please try using the P090D cable instead of the XT60 cable for charging to help identify the cause of the issue.
We look forward to your feedback.
Thanks for your input. I did try the P090 cable it did not seem to improve performance of the system- what has helped is adding more solar panels. The one thing limiting at the moment is we are having a odd flow of rainy weather here in New Mexico the past 5 days.
I will make sure firmware is up to date as well… Any recommendations on power settings? I have it set to backup power with 12 amp input max. These APEX 300 unites are gonna be used for whole home power (and they worked great when fully charged in the capacity but solar production has been weak(rain) and power drain excessive when left on). Thanks for any and all help! Stephan
Same Problem here. Instead of getting about 4200 Watt with 2 AC300 and 2 AC200L I’m getting 2900 Watt with 2 SolarX connected to 2 APEX 300 plus B300K via P090 cable. Firmware is updated.