BLUETTI EP500 Pro — 1½ Years Later

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Final Up to date on: eleventh March 2025, 07:18 pm

One and a half years in the past, in August of 2023, I printed a review of the BLUETTI EP500 Pro. It hit me lately that whereas we publish evaluations of such house vitality storage programs occasionally, and in addition write about new ones arriving available on the market and particular offers, we seldom (or by no means?) write about our long-term experiences with them. How do the merchandise maintain up years later? How a lot capability do you lose over time? How a lot does the capability maintain or leak whereas sitting in storage for a yr or extra? Is all the pieces as easy and functioning as effectively on Day 500 as on Day 10?

In spite of everything, if you wish to depend on a big vitality storage backup system in the long run, you need it to carry up effectively over time and also you need it to be pretty much as good as new if you happen to take it out of the closet a yr or two after shopping for it.

Sure, it could be extra helpful to do a 10-year evaluate of a product than a 1½-year evaluate. However we haven’t owned any battery storage programs for 10 years. The oldest one I’ve is the BLUETTI EP500 Professional. (Be aware: whereas I can solely vouch for and suggest the EP500 Professional, I simply came upon the same however barely older and lower-capacity EP500 mannequin is being discontinued and there’s a flash sale occurring proper now for the ultimate items. Till the tip of March 11, you can get it for $1899which is -37% or $1,100 off, and that deal opens up once more for a remaining time March 16–17. The EP500 Professional, in the meantime, costs $3,499 after a $500 low cost, and you’ll then get 5% off with the code CLEANTECH5OFF.)

About 6 months in the past, I pulled the BLUETTI EP500 Professional out of storage and charged it up totally simply earlier than Hurricane Milton hit. (Apologies — I mentioned I assumed it was Hurricane Helene within the video beneath. It’s arduous to maintain monitor of the hurricane names right here in Florida.) The system appeared to function like new, almost a yr after I had final examined and used it. We had misplaced energy for about 18 hours in a earlier hurricane, and we have been completely happy we’d be capable to energy the fridge, computer systems, the TV, telephones, and so on. once we acquired hit by Milton. The attention of the hurricane truly went by means of us, tearing most of the shingles off our roof and inflicting excessive whistling and wind gusts onto our entrance door for a number of hours. By some means, although, we by no means misplaced energy. I take into consideration 92% of our county in our utility district misplaced energy, however we didn’t. So, the BLUETTI EP500 Professional by no means needed to do the heavy lifting we anticipated.

Nonetheless, you don’t wish to depart a battery charged at 100% for lengthy, so we used the BLUETTI EP500 Professional to energy our computer systems and telephones lengthy sufficient to wind it again all the way down to ~50%. All labored as anticipated, simply because it had once we first acquired and examined the product a yr prior. However I didn’t doc all of that. (We have been too centered on different issues.)

So, I simply pulled the system out of the closet once more and did some testing for this text. It was nonetheless sitting at 49%, which I feel is what I left it at. I acquired it as much as 50%, which simply took just a few moments, after which it took me 10 minutes so as to add 5% of capability from the traditional 120V wall plug. So, in concept, it might take 200 minutes to go from 0% to 100%, or 3 hours and 20 minutes. However I stored going and charged all of it the way in which to 100%. It then took a complete of 1 hour and 25 minutes (an additional 1 hour and quarter-hour) to get to 95%, after which took one other 10 minutes to get to 100%. So, that’s 1 hour and 35 minutes to go from 50% to 100%.

Then, it took one other hour and a half of a pc and cellphone charging to convey the system again all the way down to 95% from 100%. I’ve been utilizing it for the previous couple of days to cost computer systems and telephones to attempt to get it again all the way down to 50% to retailer it once more, and it’s nonetheless at 72%.

So, sure, the system nonetheless works fantastically. There’s nonetheless loads of battery capability and all of it appears to be working the way it did from the start. The Bluetti Ep500 Pro can be a savior within the case of a hurricane or wildfire hitting and knocking out energy for a number of hours or days. I really like this factor.