BIG POWER! 5100Wh Bluetti EP500 Battery Generator TEST & Review

In today's video we are going to

review

the new Blue Eddie

ep500

solar

generator

. Now, this thing is big and I mean absolutely huge, it produces 5100 watt hours and is capable of doing some pretty amazing things, but it's far from perfect and in this video. Let's take a look at the unit in detail. We'll put you through a series of

test

s and help you decide if this might be something for you. It has an overall modern look which I like. They have even included four wheels. I have two large ones in the front and these in the back can swivel and lock into position.

Now you will definitely need them because this unit weighs 167 pounds and most of that weight is due to the batteries that the

ep500

uses. Lithium iron phosphate batteries. These are currently some of the best types of batteries for a

battery

generator

like this because they can withstand many more charge cycles and are actually much safer in terms of fire risk. Using them the first time is easy. Turn the built-in circuit breaker to the on position, press the

power

button and wait a few moments for the unit to start. The built-in screen is full color and is in fact a touch screen, which makes it much easier to use than other models, all the ports on the ep500 are covered and they have divided them up to make it a little easier connect things into them.

On the top you have the DC outlet cover and when you open it you can see it has several ports that you can use, it has a 30 amp 12 volt DC plug along with a fully regulated cigarette lighter style outlet and on top of that it has two 12 volt DC 10 amp plugs and then you have the normal one. USB with fast charging and a 100-watt USB C port and it also has wireless charging on the top of the unit. You can charge two different devices at up to 15 watts each, but you can't do anything with this unit unless you can charge.

Turn it on and you've been given two different ways to get the job done. You can charge it through an AC outlet in your home or using solar energy. Now the AC cord is included, just plug it into your regular outlet and you have these nice ones. Twist lock style plugs simply line up the white dots and then twist the blue collar and the plug will be securely locked in place and the best way to charge this device is to use the free energy of the sun and the included solar input cable . It can actually handle between 70 and 145 volts or up to 1200 watts of solar input, that's a lot of

power

and you can charge the unit in as little as four hours and the cable you see is standard and included right in the box using the built-in cable . on the screen is a little strange but it gives you everything you need, the interface can show you how much power is going in and out, the

battery

status, its battery management system and pretty much everything you need to see what's going on and Customize certain settings now, plus this unit has built-in Wi-Fi and they will provide you with an app.

Now I had a demo version of the app which unfortunately was beta and didn't really work so I couldn't show it to you in the video that you can see on the screen, I'm putting in about 561 watts and that will charge the unit in about nine to nine and a half hours. It's also worth noting that the cooling fans are in fact smart fans and they just turn on. Turned on when needed, even just a couple of feet away you barely hear them at around 37 decibels and when it comes to that much power the cooling system is critical so what I verified worked properly and there were no leaks.

I took a smoke. Test, I put the smoke on the front and you can see the exit coming out the back and no smoke came from any other area of ​​the box. The ep500 is rated at up to 2000 watts continuously, meaning you should be able to get by. 2000 watts at any time without causing any kind of failure and to

test

it I hooked up an industrial heat gun, started on a low setting and then turned it up and now I'm drawing around 1800 watts but I wanted to get this right at the 2000 watt limit , so I also plugged in this little heater and now I'm drawing a little over 2000 watts.

I ran it for about 20 minutes, had no problems, but what if you have something that has a large initial draw and could draw over 2000 watts. Well the ep500 can actually run at 3000 watts of surge but I wanted to put that claim to the test so I added this little heat gun that uses about 300 watts and we ran it at around 2300 watts and the unit had no no problem and it actually ran for several minutes but then I went ahead and added a much larger heater that used about 300 watts to see if I could overload the unit and what would happen once I plugged in the heater was already on in just a few minutes.

Couple of seconds you can hear the error tone and the unit turned off and this is exactly what it should have done because the unit would have been consuming over 4000 watts. BP500 claims to emit pure sine wave energy and also states that it is capable of generating 5100 watt hours. I wanted to check the power quality first, so I used my Tektronix power analyzer and plugged it in. Things like voltage frequency and harmonic distortion were perfect, but the sine wave was exactly what I was looking for and it is definitely generating pure rated power, but now it's time to do the real test, the efficiency test, because all of these units have a dirty little secret and that is that they don't actually produce the power you think. do it because inside each of these devices there are circuits and an inverter that actually uses part of that energy that the device stores.

Now a higher efficiency unit is better for you because you will have more usable power left, so I put it to a test on the tektronix which is like filling up your car's gas tank and then seeing how far you can drive, so in In this case we put the battery at 100, turned on an electric heater and measured exactly how much power we could get and this was the end result 4,170 watt hours, now it will always be less than what they advertise, but it ends up being about 82 percent efficient and that's a little below average and i was a little disappointed that it wasn't a little bit higher and this device also has a really clever feature it has this communication port and it includes this special cable and if you buy two ep 500's you can connect them with the special interface box and now you can supply 240 volt power.

It's a really complicated thing to do, this is one of the first production devices I've seen that actually offers it now, unfortunately I don't have two of them or the interface box so I can only go by the specs this will actually have. It works if you choose this option. Another great feature is that this unit can be an upgrade, meaning that if you plug in a computer or your TV and the power goes out, you won't even notice because it keeps power in the device after use. I really liked this device for several weeks, but I had one major problem and that was the weight of almost 200 pounds.

This will limit where you can place it, it's a lot of weight and even lift it a couple of steps. It can be a real challenge for many people, but the problem is even greater because this system is not modular and if something breaks and you need to return it it would cost you a fortune, so I contacted Blue Eddy with my complaint. and I was very surprised by what they told me: they are actually going to arrange service on site if you are in the warranty period and they will pay for return shipping if they actually have to return it so that alone This statement really changed how I felt about of this unit because if you are not stuck paying for it or returning it then you really won't care if you need to because it doesn't come out of your pocket and if you want one of the largest units on the market that will give you a lot of run time.

This is definitely the one that will get 5 100 watt hours. This appliance will operate with the largest loads for a long period of time. This could be a viable replacement for many. gas generators for people, if you are interested in purchasing one of these I put a link below. They are now selling it on Kickstarter as a pre-order, which means you are guaranteed to get it or your money back and I hope you enjoyed this video. If so, please like and subscribe to my channel if you haven't already for more videos.