Hi all, I’m new to power station and I’m waiting on my 1st new Bluetti 200 v2. Are there anything I need to do when I receive it?
Am I supposed to charge it to full right out of the box?
Do I need to do a complete charge and discharge to calibrate the battery? I would assume that it was already done in the factory before it was shipped? What are your experience and recommendations?
Anything else I need to do before putting it into use?
Thank you!
BTW, I did see the following TIPS in the manual, just wondering if I need to do calibration too?
1. Charge the unit before first use.
*2. Do not use solar panels with open circuit voltage higher than 60V. Solar input *
voltage range for the unit is 12V-60V.
*3. If the unit’s SoC falls below 5%, please recharge the unit in time. If the SoC drops to 0, *
power off the unit and charge it for at least 30 minutes before restarting.
4. The unit is for off-grid use only. Do not connect its AC output to the grid.
*5. If not used for more than 3 months, charge the unit to 40%-60% SoC and store it *
*with the power off. For optimum battery life, discharge and charge the unit every 3 *
months.
Am I supposed to charge it to full right out of the box?
You will need to charge it up as the batteries are generally stored at between 40-60% state of charge for long term storage health.
Do I need to do a complete charge and discharge to calibrate the battery? I would assume that it was already done in the factory before it was shipped? What are your experience and recommendations?
I would assume factory calibration is integrated within Bluetti’s internal controls, but they do not publicly state that they calibrate them from the factory, so you do not get a fancy “QC pass” certificate/sticker that says “this battery was calibrated on such and such date”. If it’s calibrated you will know because you’ll be able to use the entire discharge curve. Say you have a fan running at 60W, and factoring in 15W for inverter losses, you are consuming 75W, meaning a 2073Wh power station should net you around 28 hours of usage (2073/75= ~28 hours)
Anything else I need to do before putting it into use?
The first thing I would do is inspect for any physical damage. Run all the basic controls and make sure they at least operate. Always a good idea to do your preflight inspection before, you know, you fly the plane! If you bought the power station wanting to go on a vacation trip you had planned all year, it would suck if it failed you before you had a chance to fix it! You can also test a high draw load to see if it can handle it without overheating or shutting down (also known as a stress test). Most importantly its more so about what you do AFTER the fact. Make sure you keep it stored in a dry, non-humid climate when not in use. If you can avoid keeping the battery always at 100% its best for long term storage when not in use. If you use it, occasionally be sure to fully discharge it as it will calibrate the BMS and allow it to accurately show you what the percentage is. The reason why is there is a very low difference in the voltage curve between say 30% to 70%. From a mathematical perspective 70% to 30% is a huge drop off. But in voltage speak, its maybe only 3V between the two. So it’s not like its 56V at 90% and 26V at 10% where it can easily detect it. Another tip is to perform a cool-down period if you are going to transition between a high discharge load to a high charge load, or vise versa. In other words, if I just charged my Bluetti power station from the grid at a high wattage, let it cool down for a few minutes before you subject it to a HIGH discharge load, like say running a microwave. Vise versa, if you just used the microwave, don’t then plug it into the wall and charge it at a high rate right away. Give it 10 or so minutes to cool down/stabilize. Can you do it right away? Sure. It’s just precautionary and for extending the health of the unit is all. There are protection mechanisms such an over temp which will kick in to prevent you from prematurely killing the unit.
Do not use solar panels with open circuit voltage higher than 60V.
What this means is you cannot use any solar panel (or series of panels connected together) that is rated higher than 60V or you risk damaging the solar generator. There is some limited built-in safety protection such as overvoltage protection, but the best practice is to simply avoid running into the problem in the first place. Solar panels will generate more voltage the colder it gets below 25C/77F, so I recommend getting a panel is has a tolerance of no more than 90% of its rated capacity to account for this voltage increase. So in the case of the Elite 200, you want NO MORE than open circuit voltage of 54V, “to be safe”.
If the unit’s SoC falls below 5%, please recharge the unit in time. If the SoC drops to 0,
What they mean by this is keeping the batteries stored at an extremely low voltage for a long period of time can damage the batteries due to the battery chemistry inside them. They are happiest at a long term median of 30-50%, or using them consistently within the full discharge curve, which keeps the BMS happy. What a lot of people do is get the power station and ALWAYS try to keep it at 100% which will cause your battery to eventually become mis calibrated and die on you at the wrong time, thus why they say discharge and charge fully every 3 months for optimum battery life.
@sealy1986 Thank you so much for your advice and sharing your valuable info and experience! I appreciate it very much.
Are there any over voltage protection built-in to the XT60 input? If not, do we know how much over V will cause damage? 10%? 20%
Thanks for the warning on solar panel. I didn’t know. I will need to do some homework to see which solar panel to get (for portability in camping)
I’m saving all your replies for reference. Thank you!
Oh, when discharge it for calibration, I suppose it can be done over time (several days) and not really need to discharge all at once?
Are there any over voltage protection built-in to the XT60 input?
The protection is integrated within the internal circuitry and not at the port directly.
do we know how much over V will cause damage? 10%? 20%
The tolerance would be razor thin, so 10% max. Overvoltage protection may only protect you so far and if it fails you, its catastrophic. Bye bye warranty. If the unit didn’t completely fail, the BMS at the very least will have logged it and the technician will be able to tell you voided the warranty by supplying too much voltage. You also basically leave a breadcrumb trail of evidence like burnt out capacitors, etc. “Bluetti did not tell me on the website I could do this” but (it was listed in the manual) is still user negligence. It’s still your duty to read the owner’s manual or understand how to properly operate it. Now if you were none the wiser and Bluetti NEVER told you in any form of writing, that’s negligence on THEIR part. “I’m sorry officer but I didn’t know I couldn’t drive 100 MPH on the highway when there was no traffic”. Right? LOL
Thanks again! I would think something like a resettable fuse that blows when over V is applied would work? Anyway, I’ll need to do some homework on solar panels and input V.
That would be an inline fuse but given your solar generator configuration you are likely going to want to go with 2 large panels in a parallel configuration, since you can take advantage of more amperage. It is going to be impossible to run pretty much any more than 2 panels anyway, given the 60V limit, so therefore, if you run two panels in parallel, the amperage will combine but the voltage will stay the same. A single Renogy 400 watt folding panel outputs 40V and 10A under optimal conditions, so thats 40X10 or 400 watts. When you connect them in parallel, you double the amperage, so its now 40X20 or 800 watts. That’s about the best you are going to do given a 60V VOC limit. You are better off taking advantage of the amperage.
I used an 800w bar heater (no thermostat to cut in and out as you need a constant, stable power draw for recalibration). This meant the process did not take too long. When you get your Elite, connect via Bluetooth to add it to your app and bind it, then charge up fully on standard mode, let it cool for a bit, discharge until it shuts itself off. Leave it to cool again ( I usually wait a couple of hours for it to be completely cool) then recharge fully from the mains with no interruptions and no charging of anything from the Elite during this process, on standard mode. Then check in the app for updates. Mine had a couple of updates to apply straight away.
I wouldn’t go over the solar voltage specs under any circumstances as at best the Elite will shut down / not charge to protect itself, at worst it will be damaged, possibly incurably.
Thank you! I’ll be looking at portable solar panel. That will be for off-grid/camping so it’ll need to be not too heavy and foldable. Truly appreciate your inputs!
Appreciate the input! I already installed the Bluetti app. I ordered it last week and it’s still not shipped as of today.
This is cool: I just watched HOBOTECH’s YT video on testing the Bluetti 200V2 and it does have over voltage protection. It shut off the input when the V was over 64V (max is 60V) so that was less than 7%. See here:
Ok, just received the 200V2. So far so good. Got the app connected and updated firmware.
Now, to discharge it completely to 0%, I will need to set the ‘AC ECO’ to off, yes? Otherwise, it shuts off the AC output when it gets less than the preset value (10W).