AC500 Idle Power Usage

Hi all,

Overall have been loving my AC500 and two B300S. However, I’ve recently started using it more off the grid, and noticed significant idle power usage.

I understand the published power usage is 31W with AC and DC on, but I just completed a test and am seeing almost double that. 13% consumption in 13 hours. Assuming the batteries have 90% published capacity, that works out to ~54W. This is with silent mode on and all inputs/outputs unplugged.

One of the main reasons I went with the AC500 over the AC300 is the lower idle power usage, so I’m a bit disappointed to see it almost 2x published numbers. Is this a settings issue, did I do the calculation wrong, or is this a defect?

Appreciate any insight!


Hi @Bcmurphy21
Your sure that the AC500 consumes less energy than AC300? From a logical side of view, a bigger inverter also need more energy to work.

Dont know about the exact values, but idle is not the same as DC,AC on without load. So do you really mean idle or active but without load?

When you mean active without load, its not really surprising to me to have about ~50W of selfconsumption. The 5000W Inverter takes a really impact on that, thats why there is the eco mode with turn off the AC after 4 hours beeing unused. WLAN + Bluetooth chips need energy and just DC beeing on also consumes a bit of energy. Not as much as AC, but noticeable.

Maybe @BLUETTI can provide you with a Spec Sheet of AC500 with all the self consume values.

greetings
Erik

I found this…

Interesting. Thats make me whonder why?

The only reason i can imagine off is that AC500 have more energy efficient parts build in. 10W in only AC mode is kinda insane when you know that AC300 can deliever less power than the AC500 inverter.

Thanks for sharing @Marcus

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I also thought that a larger inverter would mean more stand-by consumption.
that surprises me…

@BLUETTI @BLUETTI_CARE
Is this Correct and/or what are the official values?

AC500 is optimized based on AC300, so it consumes less power.

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Thanks for confirming the anticipated power usage of 31 Watts. Can you please comment on why I might be seeing much higher ideal power consumption? Thanks!

I never trust the percentage readouts on my Bluetti’s, they can be way off at times, especially if I haven’t calibrated the BMS’s in a while.

That’s fair, I can let it run to dead then to better confirm power consumption. It looks like on the AC300 you used to see idle power draw on the battery screen, but that seems to have been removed on the AC500. How do you calibrate the BMS?

@BLUETTI @BLUETTI_CARE Do you have a suggestion on how to get a more accurate sense of my idle power usage, or if my calculated 54W is an indication of an issue?

Drain the batteries to zero then fully charge them to 100% with the inverters off.

I believe you also need to recharge them with a steady power source, i.e. NOT solar panels.

Also, in a video on calibration, some may encounter a problem after fully draining them, they might not want to recharge. Google for the video.

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