Hi! I have upgraded my inverter setup (AC200Max and B230) with an Apex 300 to cover a few use cases I could not cover with AC200Max.
I see that B230 is not supported by Apex300 despite other large-ish extra batteries receiving the support treatment.
Is there a reason why B230 is not working with Apex 300?
I currently have my AC200Max + B230 connected to Apex via DC output (cigarette + RV cable) to somehow expand the capacity instead of switching the inverters and / or charging Apex300 from AC200Max AC.
Having B230 connected to Apex300 would make things a lot easier as well as give me a possibility to pass the ac200max along to someone else in need and replace it with B300K, ultimately making it an Apex 300 + B230 + B300K Combo
I’ve just connected b230 to apex300
My apex was 69%
My b230 was about 77%
After connecting, there was a blue battery icon on the apex screen and the SoC was jumping between 69 and 74
I assume it would work without jumping once i charge both to 100%
Knowing this, and if this technically works, ie battery packs do share load and charge each other, why on earth wouldn’t Bluetti have official support for these?
Is there a way I can ask for a custom-ish apex fw update to properly interconnect both?
When i charge b230 via t500 or d050s, the apex300 screen shows estimated charge time, so it sees the battery and its transferring charge through.
When i charge apex300, the b230 is blinking that it’s charging.
Dear bluetti, all I (and other b230 owners) need is a fw update to properly read the SoC, so it no longer jumps!
It even displays that an expansion battery is connected
What’s strange is that after pulling 10% of the capacity from a 1250 watt load, it took me 13 minutes.
If I do the math, it totals to 130 minutes to fully discharge, which gets me exactly 2700 wh capacity.
At the same time, the SoC is jumping to 94%. Which is 6% in 13 minutes under 1250watt load. It is 4500 capacity, indicating that it somewhat senses the b230, but doesnt know what to do with it.
Plugging b230 back into ac200max shows that b230 is at full capacity, which could mean one of two things:
Apex300 does not read the SoC of the full pack properly. I.e. it could discharge Apex300 internal battery first and then drain the xternal battery. But to test this I need to pull more than 10% while b230 is connected. At this time, while power outages can last upwards of 10-15 hours, I cant afford to pull kilowatts to the air.
Or
It does not pull from the b230 at all
When Apex was at 75% (around 2000Wh left), I connected 96% b230.
Apex screen started flashing 75% / 86% / 75%
After 3 minutes of 1200w load, the flashing stopped. Apex dropped to 65% after 14 minutes, indicating it still reads its internal SoC.
B230 showed 93% after reconnecting it to ac200max.
Which tells me it can draw from b230.
The biggest problem that comes from this incompatibility is weird SoC reading. I assume Apex firmware is missing a config to read the Wh capacity of B230 hence fails to properly understand its total capacity cause it reads the state of internal BMS without combining the readings of both.
It really comes down to adding a few configs, I am sure of that.
