In-depth review of the new AC60!

Product Discussion BLUETTI AC Series
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Hey fellow Bluetti Addicts!!

Check out one of our friends in-depth review of the brand spankin’ new AC60 unit!!

Jeff is a solid asset to our community so share him some love and subscribe to his channel and leave him note in the video’s comments on how much you appreciate his content, so we can get him to continue to making these! haha

And heres a link to more of his in-depth videos…

Cheers!
mike.briney

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@m.briney Many thanks to Mike for forwarding Jeff’s video to the BLUETTI forum!
Jeff’s videos are always of high quality and professional. This is very helpful for forum members to get a deeper understanding of our new product AC60 which will be available soon.

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Couldnt agree more! :slight_smile:

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This is an excellent review video. The only thing I would ask for in addition would be:
What is the standby power loss of the unit if it is on (with AC / DC output enabled or disabled) but there is no load?
What is the UPS behavior when grid power returns after the battery is depleted? Will AC output resume, or would someone have to physically press the button to re-enable AC? That would be a really useful feature to have given it is supposed to work as a UPS

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@snowstorm AC60 with UPS function. Based on the no-load power consumption issue you mentioned, our lab is already testing it and we expect to have the data out next month :)

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Note that I do not have an issue with the no load consumption as I have not used an AC60 yet. I just know that all inverters have standby losses (which is why we have eco mode to turn off the unit when idle). I just think it is something useful to benchmark as it matters when powering small loads.

The UPS resumption behaviour is important if this is to be used as an actual UPS. I have used various Bluetti units as UPS in the pass (EB3A and EB70), and one issue is that if the power goes out long enough to drain the battery, the AC output will remain off even after grid power resumes. It would be good if AC power is automatically resumes without manual intervention on grid power on in UPS mode

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@snowstorm I dont have the ac60 yet either but will try and find out what that idle consumption is. I would bet that its alot smaller then the AC200Max or other bluetti units that offer capacity expansion due to the smaller inverter size, and the brand just dialing in all the internals with time. But I’m with you… it would be nice to know this number. haha I dont believe any of the beta testers have received the b80 expansion batteries yet, but I will put the bug in their ears to find out this info. It would be nice to know those idle consumption with the standalone ac60 as well as when its tied to the b80 batteries.


And as far as the AC outputs getting re-engaged and automatically turned on after the battery is “woken” up… I too think it would be nice to at least feature this as a toggle-able option to have. I totally understand why they might have it “defaulted” to have all outputs “off” when the unit comes to life… but it would be nice to have the ability to choose. I will also pass this along to the teams. Thanks for your input man

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@snowstorm I’m planning on sharing my own AC60 review (non-video) here soon but for a sneak-peak I measured the internal no-load power usage with both AC and DC outputs turned on at 7W after it drained the battery 59Wh in 8.25 hours. As for your first question, the AC output does not turn on automatically after Grid power comes back after the AC60’s battery has depleted. If the battery runs out of juice and there’s no Grid input then the whole unit shuts off requiring outputs to be manually re-enabled.

@m.briney I agree a toggle switch in the app to auto-enable AC and/or DC outputs when Grid and/or PV input is supplied when the station is off would be a valuable addition - especially for off-grid remote locations.

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@bxm6306 and @snowstorm


So I talked to a few different people regarding the option of having the AC outputs turn on automatically once power is restored/battery starts getting charged, and this is the response i’ve recieved…


**"Auto power on is problematic from a regulatory standpoint. Unattended power on requires categorization as a “standby generator” instead of a “portable generator”. A “standby generator” has to be permanently attached to a building and grounded. **

“Portable generator"s can have remote start, but they can’t have unattended automatic start. It is a non-issue for gas generator since they need to be manually fueled before they can restart, but it’s kind of annoying for solar generators.”


I was unaware of any of those kind of "regulations" but it appears that its setup that way intentionally. Its definitely a bummer and can be confusing, because in a diy build, its different because alot of these external inverters are powered on by a mechanical switch on the side of the unit, and they will automatically kick back on when battery voltage is high enough. We dont have that option with these types of so-gens, cause they are all-in-one units. I agree tho.. it would be absolutely incredible if @BLUETTI could make this feature available with a toggleable switch within the app or something.
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Thanks for the info.
I think the current situation of UPS may be an oversight as the by-pass / off-line style UPS function may have been created to increase the longevity of the unit rather than having a true UPS use case in mind. Since the very beginning with Yetti lead acid solar generator units, UPS operation has always been possible if we plug the AC-DC charging adapter into the input and run the inverter. Though in those cases, the output power would be limited by the charging input power. But this would be a 100% online UPS that has 0ms switch over delay.
The current off-line UPS is good because it allows us to pull more power than charger can supply (though some popular units such as the EB3A, the charging input is pretty high compared to the battery size), and would increase the longevity of the unit. Hopefully Bluetti would provide a software function that remembers the state of the output and automatically restores them on once power say has been restored, maybe even say battery >5% charge or something.

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Can you ask them for what regulations they are talking about. I tried to research it myself since I found it odd that Ecoflow has an auto power feature.

The only thing I can find about portable vs standby generators is that standby generators have to be wired “permanently” and are thus grounded. I can’t find anything stating that portable generators cannot be auto start, or anything like that. I didn’t find anything different about battery vs gas generators. I just saw that portables have outlets on them, and that standby don’t. I assume Bluetti knows more than my hour of googling but it still seems like a misreading of the law.

I’ve found a bunch of stuff about carbon monoxide which isn’t an issue. Gas generators have auto start. There is no exposed wiring for their tonbe an electrocution risk. It makes no sense that a plug in generator would have an issue with auto power.