Power consumption of the AC300

Product Discussion BLUETTI AC Series
1

I have a question:
What is the own power consumption of the AC300 ?

2

Please be very specific on your question. What do you want to know about the power consumption of the AC300?

For example:
Do you want to know how much power the AC300 consumes off the grid when you charge an empty B300 battery off the grid power?
Do you want to know how much power the AC300 consumes from the battery when it is idle, with AC output on, disconnected from utility power, no load attached? (Parasitic power drain)
etc. etc.

If you are specific with your question people can help you with your answer.

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3

Hi @Tidofelder , The following chart is the no-load power consumption comparison of AC300 VS AC500, hope it can help you.

lQLPJxbjJi9hcMDNAvTNBXuwnh3Jjw1OyEsDdTo9JkBMAA_1403_756
lQLPJxbjJi9hcMDNAvTNBXuwnh3Jjw1OyEsDdTo9JkBMAA_1403_7561403×756 50.6 KB

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4

Thank you very mutch for you answer and grafic.

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5

Thanks for sharing. One missing information in the chart is: it is the per hour consumption.
In addition: are there any informnation about idle consumption if PV input is enabled but there is no input load from PV (e.g. during night)

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6

@BLUETTI
Thanks to your charts. But this is only a one moment chart.
Please make the same chart with the consuption in 24 h.
Or else better a continues chart over 24 hours.
Thanks
John

7

DC Charge only: I have two B300’s with the AC300. Any PV DC input under about 100 watts (With AC OFF) will not charge. Under 80 watts and I lose about 1-2% capacity a day. It takes about 150 watt input to trickle charge at all. Now in winter my four 380 watt peak panels produce good voltage but little current. This voltage turns on both B300‘s and the AC300 which promptly causes a discharge due to 30 or 40 watts current in early mornings and late afternoon. Best to just pull the DC input plug and keep it dark waiting for emergency use.
AC OUTPUT USE. For practical purposes it makes no sense to have under 200 watt load unless you have excess solar current you can waste. My experience is about 80 watt overhead to turn on AC.

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8

It’s easy to calculate. In the above chart, the AC300 with AC on consumes 37.6 Watts. So in 1 hours it uses 37.6 Wh. In 24 hours it consumes 902.4 Wh (= 0.9 kWh) and so on.

9

This result is very good.
The consumption is very low for this systems. Good job :slightly_smiling_face:
In fact, the AC500 is the best low consumption.
:grinning: :grinning:

10

This is right, also so are my oberservants.
In 3 days the B300 is empty.
And then to load it up, there is a consumption of 3500watt.

John

11

I have an AC300 with 2 B300 batteries. I let it run with AC out turned on but no load for 24 hours with two different watt hour meters on the AC grid input. Both meters said it used 1.6 kwh of grid power. So 1600 watthours / 24 hours = 66.7 watts idle consumption. I wish the above chart was correct, but that is not what I am experiencing.

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12

Do you have a graph that shows a comparison between the b300 and the b300s? Is the discharge rate significant? In my experience my AC300 with 4xB300’s discharges much faster than my AC500 with 4xB300s’s with the units turned on but the AC and DC inverters turned off. The AC300 drops about 1% per hour and the AC500 drops about 1% per 5 hours. It is a much larger difference than expected from the graph.

13

LAB vs. Reality

I measured the power consumption of my AC500 + 1xB300s as followed (as it is w/o load):

  • Power ON, AC & DC Off, no PV, Standard UPS Mode, No Load connected, Indoor
    516W/24h → 21.5W/h (means ~200% to LAB (12.6W) and FAQ Q8 (11W) value)

  • Power ON, AC ON, DC Off, no PV, Standard UPS Mode, No Load connected, Indoor
    2444W/24h → 101.8W/h (means ~350 % LAB (27.4W) and FAQ Q8 (30W incl. DC) value)

I used a FRITZ!DECT 200 for measuring. In Standard UPS Mode the AC500 run the most of the time on battery (why? battery durability at hundreds of load cycles a day vs. PV usage), except during charging when the battery drops below 100%. The measurement results given from the battery are identical (AC On: 56.5V (0x5C) x 1.8A(0x5D) = 101.7W). The results in PV Priority UPS mode are identical.

@BLUETTI Is the gap between the given/promised/expected values and the real values a hardware or a software issue?

Q8

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14

Doesn’t your test include the wall charger inefficiency? The chart above is the AC device self-consumption.
At first glance, the two results are consistent, since you are including charger inefficiency.

15

I am talking about total consumption to keep the AC300 on in PV priority or UPS mode. If you are saying the chart above does not include charging losses I can see that. In real world use you have to consider the total power consumed from operation, that number still stands at 67 watt / hour.

16

Agreed. I’m just saying that you pointed out that Bluetti’s numbers were wrong, and I’m just mentioning that I don’t think Bluetti is wrong, since they explicitly state that this is self-consumption.
They’re not talking about UPS mode, etc.

“In real world use you have to consider the total power consumed from operation, that number still stands at 67 watt / hour.”
That’s true, if someone is using it like you are. For example, a solar input would not have the AC adaptor inefficiency :slight_smile:

In any case, my personal measurements validate Bluetti’s chart.

17

You are correct, the chart shows how much would be lost with no input from the grid, which is very good to know in a power out situation :) I didn’t read it that way until you pointed it out, thanks.

Not sure what to think about the efficiency of the DC charging side. As Wuastr pointed out above, the batteries stay in standby mode until you exceed around 150 watts solar input. Lets say that number is 137.6 to make the math easy, take away the known standby consumption from the chart, 137.6 - 37.6 = 100 watts unaccounted for.
The fan runs more when charging, I think any power conversion is going to have some overhead…

Keep in mind that the energy is not being wasted, it’s helping to heat your home :) And as someone mentioned above, if you don’t have enough solar, charge it up and shut it down until a sunny day…

18

I should have mentioned that we have a Blizzard warning here in Buffalo for the next 48 hours. The Bluetti is all charged up and ready to provide us with 20 hours of run time if needed. And if that’s not enough, we can charge by generator for 4 hours every day if no sun. That capability is really nice to have…

19

This is no hardware and software problems, but the machine is running with its own power consumption.

20

@BLUETTI The AC500 is the machine and FAQ Q8 says the AC500 has a power consumption of 30W when everything is ON. But in reality it needs 100W. Where are the other 70W used (wasted) for?