I have battery from both EcoFlow and Bluetti and I feel EcoFlow’s app experience is significantly better than Bluetti. Here is a few issues I saw:
1.1. For Electricity Price, there is only two options “Fixed Rate” and “Time of Use”. I assume in most case people are taking advantage of TOU pricing model. However when I try to set this up it only provides “Peak” and “Off-Peak”. I am not sure how other utility company works but at least in my there are “Peak”, “Partial Peak”, and “Off Peak”.
1.2 Also, the price setting only allows two digits under decimal points. This is VERY coarse that will introduce a large margin of errors. I would strongly recommend you to allow at least four digits.
1.3 In the price setting there is also a “Selling Price”. Since I am not selling anything I basically set this price to be $0.0. That introduce another bugs which the app thinks that I am buying at. aprice but selling for free. So my “Savings” will never shows anything meaningful.
Please try to take a look at how other product record this. This three issues has becomes a major eye-sore for me using the app.
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How “Working Mode” works? I try to use “Custom”, enable “Charging”, enable TOU and configure my Time Setting for Peak between 15:00 ~ 23:00 and Off-Peak between 00:00 ~ 15:00 (again this setting is awkward, please refer to 1.1 above). But I can’t seem to understand its logic correctly. This is what says about custom working mode from manual:
I am not sure whether it’s me or the document doesn’t seem to explain anything to the user at all. I have so much questions about this mode. For example:
2.1. How do I configure charge/discharge time?
2.2. Why there are four different zones between 00:00 ~ 24:00? Is this configurable or it is fixed?
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How do I program my AC output On/Off time? I couldn’t find this is explained at all in the manual. Is scheduling AC Output even supported? I found on my device it seems to turn AC Power on and off on its own with a decision I can’t understand. Every day I leave the house with AC Output On, goinng back home at 22:00 seeing this is turning off by itself. On EcoFlow app I can schedule routines for each AC/DC port. I would be surprised if this is missing on Bluetti. If I miss anything please let me know.
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How can I decide the priority of charge Apex 300 and B300K? When I see Apex 300 showing power %, I do not know what it means. Does 70% mean B300K 70%, or Apex 300 70%, or both? Can I selectively program the charging priority of my units? For the least can you document the behaviour of charging?
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Is there is way I can even know the health of my battery? (i.e. temperature, charging cycles, or program the fan behaviour so it can turn on/off at a specific condition?)
There are quite a few other improvement and documentation you can really add to your product. I don’t have time to write a whole essay about it. So please spend some time to look at your mobile app and features and add whatever that makes sense to your customer.
Hi @Katia.Nova, Regarding “Working Mode”, please note the following information:
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Self-Consumption Mode – (Recommended for areas with sufficient photovoltaic power)
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Backup Mode – (Enabled by default; maintains SOC at 100% at all times, mainly used as a backup system)
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Time of Use Mode – (Recommended for areas with significant peak-valley electricity price differences)
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Custom Mode – (Combines the above 3 modes for users to choose freely)
Please select the most suitable UPS mode according to your needs.
Regarding how to configure charging and discharging times, please note the time can be customized by the user.
Although you cannot directly set the on/off time for AC output, you can configure the ECO mode and System Switch Recovery function:
- When ECO mode is enabled, if the AC or DC of the device has no load or the load power is too low, the device will automatically turn off AC or DC after a period of time to reduce self-consumption and save power. The specific power and time can be set in the APP.
- When the System Switch Recovery function is enabled, the on/off settings of AC and DC outputs will be memorized when the SOC drops to 0%. Once the SOC recovers to 5%, the settings will automatically revert to their original state.
The SOC displayed on the Apex 300 is the average SOC of the Apex 300 and all connected battery packs.
Currently, checking the battery life status is not supported. However, the BMS (Battery Management System) of the battery itself protects the battery from conditions harmful to its lifespan, such as overheating, over-discharging, and over-charging. Therefore, you can use it with confidence.
Thanks for your reply. There are still a few questions you did not explain:
- In the previous scrceenshot of manual, why in custom mode there are four period from 0:00 ~ 06:00, 06:00 ~ 12:00. 12:00 ~ 18:00, and 18:00 ~ 24:00? How can I change it? and for each of these separate period how can I assign various different routines (i.e. charge/discharge/AC/DC… etc)
- How EXACTLY does the “ECO Mode” work? Do the power need to be under the threshold for the entire time, or only happen even once, for the AC shutdown to happen? For example if my AC output is 40 W, and every 5 minutes there will be a short moment (i.e. 5 second) that the AC output becomes low, and immediately get back to 40 W, will ECHO mode still be triggered? I need better explanation here because I suspect the accidental AC shutdown is caused by this feature. I am also attaching an image for your reference:
- What exactly is “Energy” vs “Power”? Does “Energy” mean the amount of kwh that was charged and discharge each hour? Why it is not continuous like “Power”?
- Please Please Please fix that Electricity Price issue. It is completely useless in the app. I would rather you remove this feature in the app instead of providing a useless area in the app that shows wrong money saved information.
Hi @Katia.Nova, Thank you for getting back to us so quickly.
1. The four time periods of the custom mode mentioned in the manual are just examples. Customers can set the time by themselves in the APP. They can set the charging time (off-peak) to the period when electricity fees are low and the discharging time (peak) to the period when electricity fees are high.
2. The ECO mode is designed to save electricity. The original intention of this setting is to prevent the power station from continuous discharging when not necessary. The specific power and time can be set in the APP. For example, setting AC-ECO for 4 hours means that if the power station is not used or the power is below 15W for more than 4 hours, the AC output will be automatically turned off. If customers require the load to be online at all times, there is no need to enable this function.
When the power belows the threshold and the duration meets the set conditions, the AC output will be turned off, and this is not a one-time occurrence.
3. Daily power curve: Check the 24-hour daily statistical data of input and output power.
Energy statistics: Check the cumulative input and output energy data by year/month/day.
4. Regarding the issue of electricity price setting, we have submitted your requirements to the APP department.
