The AC300 needs one more feature. A setting that turns AC and/or DC power back on after it has powered down from battery depletion when the batteries have recharged to a set percentage.
5 Likes
+1 Totally agree… otherwise power doesn’t come back on after a long outage.
YES! I literally came onto the forums this morning to make this exact suggestion. Some sort of feature that automatically turns the AC on, whether it’s when it reaches a certain percentage in the batteries, or a schedule to have it come on at a certain time of day. We’re using our AC300 for an off-grid cabin, including the WiFi, and I’ve had to drive multiple times 90 minutes away to press a button to enable AC output, then turn around and go home.
Please add this to the wish list Bluetti Admin!!
Depending on how your charging your unit you can install a smart switch with a schedule or use the internet to enable grid power
@twister36 This won’t work off grid. Once the battery has depleted and the unit has powered down, the unit powers back up from the PV input with AC and DC OFF. The App won’t let you turn them on remotely and the only option is to manually press the screen to turn them on again.
If you can connect to grid power you can use the PV priority UPS setting (AC300) to keep batteries at a minimum percentage, but then that will fail if the grid is ever down too long during extended cloudy periods.
Many MPPT all in one systems will reenable the AC power once batteries have reached a configured percentage.
I’m thankful to Bluetti for giving me a starter project with their product, but my next project will be a DIY build.
2 Likes
I do agree with the feature. I think the issue is that once the unit is off, no power, how can you tell the unit to turn on. The only way they can do this is to reserve x% of power to provide this functionality.
In this scenario, the unit wouldn’t be “off” - after the batteries are drained, when PV Input starts coming in from solar, the system turns back on (I’m guessing so the BMS works), but the AC inverter & DC outputs remain off. So they don’t have to reserve any power, just add in some additional logic to the firmware.
@avlena correct! Once the Bluetti devices detect power on the PV input, they power on while DC and AC output remains OFF and can only, from that point, be manually set ON again.
@Birvin sounds like you’re having similar challenges! One workaround we’ve found for our 100% off-grid cabin is to put a UPS on our wifi router, so the AC300 reconnects to it and then we can manually turn the AC output back on via the app. Not perfect though, the UPS only provides ~4hrs of power to the router, so if the AC300 gets depleted in the evening, we’re still screwed. I’ve thought about hooking up a separate power station just for the router, but it seems like such a waste of money when a feature to programmatically re-enable the AC output is such an obvious feature to add. We’ve discussed going the DIY route and building up a better system with a controller that has this feature too, but we’ve already invested so much into this setup, that I keep hoping for some firmware/app updates! 
2 Likes
@avlena I’ve never seen the option to turn on the AC with the App remotely. Is that a new feature?
1 Like
Take a look at this project - it should do what you want
2 Likes
@gsmithsa very interesting! I’m more fluent in JavaScript than Python, but this could be the reason I dive into Python programming.
@Birvin no new programming needed - just install MQTT and Stephen’s package on a Pi or any other Linux box you have, and away you go !
Nice. I’ll have to see if it works on a Pi 3 or 4. I have both. 
Just to chime in (I’m the author), I’ve done a little digging and there are several “UPS” options for the raspberry pi that could probably allow multi-day backup for a pi, but for my needs it hasn’t been necessary.
The more extreme option would be to get something running on an esp32 or something, which has even lower power needs and a deep sleep mode that could potentially support weeks running on battery power. I’ve been meaning to learn Rust for a while, so maybe some day I’ll find the time to do some Rust embedded programming.
This is the first bit of python I’ve done in close to 15 years, but I’m fairly certain you can write your own script in python that pulls in just the bluetooth control loop. Then you could write a script that basically polls the “control page” to see if the ac / dc output is on and attempts to turn it on if it isn’t. Or run the full script and write something in whatever language you want that interacts with your MQTT server to achieve the same thing.
1 Like
At the bottom of the app when you’re connected, in the detail view, there’s controls for the DC & AC output.
2 Likes
+1 This would be a great feature!