Thank you for the tip. That forum looks fascinating, I’m already deep into several interesting topics.
And yeah, that might work - but it’s tough to figure out when the entire output is shorted. I’m not entirely sure what to look for. Plus, a bad MOSFET might be causing the short, but there’s a decent chance something else caused it to fail. And it will just fail again.
Have you ever done this level of troubleshooting on a board? It does sound like an interesting challenge.
Hi @steveh_131, In general, we do not recommend customers disassemble the unit themselves, as non-professional handling may cause damage to the power station.
However, based on your description, we believe you are a very professional person in the industry. Please operate under the premise of ensuring safety.
It seems you have already contacted our customer service team. Could you please inform us of your service ticket number? We will check whether the local repair warehouse can provide additional assistance according to your situation.
Thank you, @paulr, for your attention and explanation.
I’ve done component level troubleshooting on boards though not these power things. But, MOSFETS burn out sometimes. A good electronics forum is EEVblog Electronics Community Forum - Index where you could ask for troubleshooting help. They are better than I am about it. I dabble in electronics but am mostly a software guy.
If anything, I see an overqualified customer and clueless Bluetti here. All Bluetti had to do was refer to the service manual, identify the part number, then confirm payment and shipping with the customer, and that’s it.
local repair warehouse can provide additional assistance according to your situation.
This is indeed very sound advice. However, the acknowledgment that any local repair shop has better expertise and deeper access to Bluetti’s internal documentation than the manufacturer’s official representative seems paradoxical.
Hi @steveh_131, Out of responsibility for your order, we have to decline your request for purchasing spare parts separately.
This is because we are concerned that the problem may not be solved simply by replacing parts. It requires our professional engineers to get hold of the machine and conduct a thorough inspection to truly identify the root cause.
Secondly, the repair needs to be completed by our engineers, and only we can guarantee the quality of the repair and subsequent services.
After the repair is done, we will also conduct a series of quality tests until all of them are passed before sending the machine back to the customer. We will ensure the maintenance of your machine now and in the future, as well as protect all your rights and interests. We hope you can understand.
We understand that the repair fee is indeed relatively high, as it involves labor and material costs. We care a lot about your service experience. In this regard, we have applied for a reduction or exemption of the repair fee, and we will communicate about this matter via email. Please keep an eye out for the new email, and we will continue to follow up on this issue.
By far one of my favorite posts I have ever seen on this forum. One thing to understand about Bluetti is they are an extremely sales centric/marketing first company. In my opinion pro level consumer grade hardware should come with upgrades like modularity for simplifying repair, easier direct access, and better diagnostics capabilities. I should be able to bypass the BMS if the SOC reaches zero, know the voltage of the battery from a manual display, or have access to replace limited consumer replaceable parts. The AC200P was designed to become obsolete and eventually into a landfill.
I appreciate the offer, but I will have to decline. I already got this working myself and it probably cost less than what it would cost just to ship the unit. And instead of buying a likely expensive and certainly proprietary inverter board, I now have one that I can use on the next build.
Unfortunately, you seem to be correct. I have another Bluetti unit that has served me well, they seem to have decent build-quality overall - I’m sad to find out that the support is so lacking. I do appreciate that they offered a discounted service rate, but they didn’t offer it until I made this thread. I imagine the typical customer would find it very difficult to justify the cost of shipping and repairing these units - especially since you don’t know the cost until you pay for shipping.
Hi @steveh_131, We regret that we couldn’t be of more help.
Our service process has many rules, and our staff need to follow these rules when providing services.
If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact us at any time.
@BLUETTI_CARE May I ask why it is a rule that you will not sell replacement components for your products? This is not a standard practice for other home appliances - many of which are also dangerous and difficult to repair. When my washer quits working, I don’t have to ship it back to Maytag for repair. I can hire a local expert or I can do it myself.
I would urge you to reconsider. As these larger units begin to age out, I think your customer-base will start to think that they “invested” in a very expensive device from a company that never intended it to last much longer than its warranty period.
I have the exact problem you describe. I got my unit for free and am not going to “mail it in” for repair. At some point I was going to take the thing apart and see what I could find. Y ou’ve given me a path to follow. Thank you…
This seems to me like a basic repair typical of what TV repair shops did all the time back when they had those. I would say the smaller Bluetti units like the 30v2 are basically glorified USB power banks, 5 year warranty and reasonably shippable if something goes wrong within the warranty period, and not a big loss if something happens afterwards. The bigger ones though are quite hard to ship and localized repair seems important. Plus there is the whole right to repair movement that may come into play. I’d say publish some service manuals. This stuff isn’t magic. The product and the repairs aren’t more complex for this stuff than they are for cars, and those do have manuals avaiable.
I think at this point I’d imagine buying an AC300 and B300 in preference to an Apex 300 just because of the AC300’s lighter weight if it has to be shipped. I understand people like having a single box but maybe it could somehow disassemble if necessary. That would still beat two boxes and a cable.
If I were doing a fulll sized home solar install (say 5KW) I’d use separate components and not consider Bluetti even with the new Solar 4K. But, the smaller portable stuff still seems viable even with these drawbacks.
I’d be interested to hear how the AC200L repair goes. If it were me I’d attempt component level diagnosis but if you’ve got an alternate inverter that’s cool too. I’d like to know what you ended up using.
Hi @steveh_131, Thank you for sharing your opinions. We believe they are put forward to help us develop better.
We do not sell replacement components, first of all, to protect ordinary customers and prevent them from getting injured during the repair process.
In addition, we are worried that the problem may not be as the customer observes, and simply replacing a part may not solve it, so as to avoid the situation where the customer buys the part but still fails to fix the problem.
Finally, we are also concerned that unprofessional operations may cause greater damage to the power station.
We fully understand the feelings of customers, especially professionals, who are willing to try to repair by themselves. This can not only save maintenance fees and freight but also a lot of time. We have conveyed your opinions to the technical maintenance department, hoping that they can provide more support to customers with relevant technical backgrounds.
I’m glad to hear that this is helpful to someone - I hoped that it would be. I’d be interested to hear about your progress moving forward. What model is yours?
I agree with your assessment: for larger batteries, I will absolutely avoid Bluetti as long as they refuse to support local or DIY repair of their products. This is unfortunate - I was planning to purchase a large one in the next 12 months or so, likely a Bluetti as I had been quite happy with their products until this experience.
Instead, I plan to build with separate components as you described.
As for my AC200P, I don’t know that I’ll take it much farther than the picture I shared above. The 48V aftermarket inverter is working fine. I don’t have the fancy screen or other gadgets, but I also don’t really care about them. My daughter and I have enjoyed this project, so I might install an aftermarket BMS at some point - it looks like there are some solder-points that are fairly accessible for the individual BMS leads.
I really just have too many other projects on my plate to tackle an in-depth inverter board repair, although I admire your enthusiasm! The glue on this board is a serious pain. I checked for obvious things, like bulging capacitors or scorch marks - no clues.
This is the inverter I installed: Amazon.com: WZRELB 2000W Pure Sine Wave Inverter 48V DC to 110V 120V AC Power Converter with LED Display, Off-Grid Portable Power Inverter with 4 AC Outlets for Home, RV, Truck, Camping
That inverter is a pretty good value, and I see further up that the charging system still works independently of the inverter, which is pretty cool. Have you checked whether the MPPT works?
My feeling regarding the 100v2 is that it was an expenditure comparable to a mid-range mobile phone, so if it lasts 5 years that isn’t too bad. But a full sized system is more like a car and I would expect to be able to keep maintaining it as long as I want. AC200P and 200v2 are maybe sort of in between. The cutover might be at a box weighing 70 lb or more, since that has to be shipped by freight, while UPS and Fedex will take packages up to 70 lb.
Bluetti’s rationalization for not having repair documentation or parts availability is pretty weak, considering that people fix their own cars all the time, and TV repair was once a thriving local industry. TV’s back then had CRT’s with as much as 20,000 volts from the flyback coil. Similar with power tools, home wiring, etc. I’m much more scared of a gasoline powered chain saw than I am of an inverter board…
Now I’m wondering if I have to pay the shipping costs if someday I need a 100v2 warranty repair. Hmm.
Can I ask what they wanted to charge you to repair your 200P?
I see someone on DIYSF has a 200P with some solar panels for sale. I’m not looking for anything like that but the offer seemed generally reasonable, depending on the warranty situation. The unavailability of repair info certainly damages the aftermarket for out of warranty units.
I am operating under the assumption that the inverter board handled MPPT. Both of the charging ports were routed through the inverter board. I was able to bypass it for the 56V DC input from the charger and connect that right to the BMS, but I don’t see any circuitry on the BMS that would suggest that it is capable of MPPT. That function of the inverter board won’t work either, because it routes that power through the same terminals that are currently shorted.
100% agree. It seems more like a marketing/sales-oriented decision than a customer-satisfaction decision.
They wouldn’t tell me until I shipped it to them. That’s a pretty hefty expense to pay just to find how much more it will cost to repair it - which was a big part of why I declined.
Time on even their extended warranty is ticking away for this model, so I wouldn’t spend much on it unless I was ready and willing to install aftermarket circuitry. If the battery fails, it’s probably not worth even a DIY repair because you’d have to replace the battery, BMS and inverter. At that point you might as well just buy a new unit, or build your own.
Inverter and MPPT are usually separate devices when you buy components, but Bluetti may have combined them on the same board as an optimization. In that case maybe you have no MPPT. On the other hand you have a 2000W 48V inverter, an AC charger, and 2 KWH of batteries. The batteries are good for a lot of cycles and don’t seem likely to fail, so if the charger holds up and if you don’t care about solar, then you have a decent power bank. You can always DIY something later, using whatever works from the existing parts.
Gonna add, if you have already managed to disconnect the battery pack, I wonderif Bluetti would let you send either just the inverter board, or else the whole unit but minus the batteries, which would save a lot of weight.