The B300 external expansion battery for the AC200Max just arrived an hour ago and dear sweet mother of milk of magnesia that puppy is big! Not only is it physically larger than the AC200Max it’s considerably heavier too. The specifications page pegs it at 80 pounds and after lugging that thing down the basement stairs and into my office/lab/radioshack I can assure you that it is every single ounce of that.
And to make things even more interesting the connector for the massive cable that connects it to the AC200 is, drum roll please, on the wrong side of the damned battery box! The connector on the battery box is on the right. The connector on the AC200 is on the left. And the cable is too short to reach if the two of them are stacked with the front panels towards, well, the front. The only way to connect them is to turn the battery around so the panel and switches are facing the rear.
Sigh….
Right now I’m dumping about about 800+ watts combined solar/grid power into it to fully charge the B300 and it’s sucking it down just fine. It’s already up to near full capacity. Of course I’m also drawing about 250W out of it at the same time to run my office so that’s slowing it down a bit. Yes, you can charge it from two different sources at the same time, and draw power from it at the same time as well.
So far so good. I’ll keep you posted.
grouchyfarmer 
I’ve been wanting to do something like this for some time. It’s still unrealistic I think, to be able to power the 220 furnace/dryer with solar, unless you are a Rockefeller. But running a rig like this, to some “green” outlets in the house, to run tv’s, computers, game systems, lights, what have you, is practical. Also a great power backup for basic necessities if and when the need arises.
I wish you much luck, and longevity, in your system. Keep us updated.
I have a friend, who had a huge solar system installed in/on his house. I think it was around 40k for all of it. It was guaranteed to meet a certain criteria, which it failed at. He had them come and remove it all, and got refunded.
How much of that was the system, the company who installed it, and how much B.S. in their claims, I do not really know. But in his case, it did not live up to the hype.
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That’s too bad about your friend’s situation but I’m not surprised by his experience. I looked into whole house solar and the price he paid seems about right. And what you get for that money, well, it isn’t much, really. My system is intended for use as an emergency backup system, but since I got the thing I thought I might as well play with it and do some experimenting and I’ve been learning a lot, and much of what I’ve been learning is that for the average person solar power systems just don’t work very well. Going completely off grid for the average home owner is going to be damn near impossible without making some drastic changes in one’s lifestyle.
Hmm, that seems like a possible topic for the blog…
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You can do solar water heaters too. But unless you want to do laundry the old fashioned way, and heat/cook with wood. And… live without air in this ever hotter hell we live in, going full solar is possible, but won’t be an easy lifestyle change.
I started a gasifier project several years ago, but my funds/time/back for the job dried up. I just wanted to see if I could do it. Look at the GEK if interested. I got a good bit of the parts roughed in, just need to follow through. A spool or two of mig wire, and several days of fab work, I’d be a lot closer… But it’s not exactly a priority. I have way too much shit that takes priority right now.
A gasifier is backwards tech I suppose, and a CO2 dump. But in the event of everything else going to shit, it is somewhat viable for limited power.
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The biggest issue I’m running into here is recharging the system. It works just fine supplying power, but recharging is time consuming, especially with bigger battery systems like mine. Especially if I try to recharge exclusively with solar, and especially this time of year. The days are short, the sun is low in the sky, and in the winter months we can go a week or more with dense cloud cover. So going entirely off-grid with nothing but solar to rely on, at least in this part of the world, is extremely difficult without having some kind of alternative energy source. With my experiments so far I’ve had to resort to using both solar and the grid to keep the Bluetti charged. I just don’t get enough solar power to keep up.
I have 4 more panels on order that should be here Feb. 10. I didn’t have enough cable to let me set up my existing solar panels in an ideal location and the new cable came the other day so I can reposition them to get more energy out of them. But basically it just takes way, way too long to recharge the system with the solar I have now.
And there are limits to the charging system, too. It can only handle up to 145V or so, and 800 watts. The panels I’m using now would let me run 7 panels total before I hit the voltage limit, about 700 watts under perfect conditions.
The experiment goes on!
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For some strange reason, I have never owned a Bluetti …but maybe someday.
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They’re pricey, but so are the other units in this size range. Bluetti, Ecoflow and Titan seem to be the best of the lot. And to be honest, if you’re looking for something with more capacity than this unit has, I would not spend the money on the larger systems like the AC500 or the big Ecoflow, I’d build my own system.
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