RV FEATURE
I’ ve found a decent portable battery and charging system that I have just begun to use for my outdoor adventures. Two products landed on my desk: the Bluetti AC70 portable lithium power station and a Bluetti DC-DC charger known as the Charger 1. Okay, I’ ll give them a try, I thought. It looked easy enough to hook up the Charger 1, and these portable power stations are selfexplanatory. So why not?
So far, I’ ve used the AC70 to power my outdoor hot water service, which I use for showers when working on my underconstruction beach house, to recharge my laptop when working on the road whether inside a caravan or, yes, a tent, and to make toast. A lot of toast.
The app works well, but be sure to select the correct preset to ensure you get the correct charge rate for the battery being charged. Here, the AC70 is receiving too much input because the wrong pre-set was selected.
AC70 FEATURES
Let’ s take a quick look at some of the AC70’ s features. It contains a 768Wh( 24Ah) internal LiFePO4 battery and a 1000W inverter. However, the AC70 contains a‘ Power Lifting’ mode, accessible via the Bluetti app, which boosts the inverter’ s capability to up to 2000W for powering highcurrent-draw heating devices such as kettles and hair dryers.
I have a cheap Kmart kettle at home that draws 1850 to 2200W. In Power Lifting mode, the AC70 wanted to boil the water but Kmart’ s cheapest kettle simply drew too much power, with the inverter cutting out well before the water was hot enough for a cuppa. That said, the ability to boost the inverter’ s output via Power Lifting mode up to 2000W is a fantastic feature. Sadly, my old kettle was simply too power-hungry, even for this surge power function.
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