Bluetti EB3A attempting to cook Mac N Chez! Nope!

[@georgiebearpaws]

The NUWAVE Induction Cooktop is a great addition to any solar panel setup. I've been using one for the past few months powered by the sun. I have a ways to go before I can cut my ties with the power company. But, for now, having what I have saves me some on the electric bill, and the power going out. Thanks for the video.

[@OffGridBasement]

Thanks for the info and the comment! Good luck!

[@OUFan2]

The induction cooktop is not a resistive load. It is an inductive load, like a motor. It uses magnetism to heat, so your power lift feature is what caused it to fail. That is why they call it an Induction Cooktop. It uses Induction or Magnetism to heat with. I really like your videos.

[@OffGridBasement]

Thanks for the information. I should've realized it would be so sensitive to the voltage drop from the power lift.

[@dollylaning1613]

Well, no dinner that night. Do you think you could have boiled the water with a different heating source? Is the Bluetti not compatible with convection devices?

[@OffGridBasement]

I think the induction cooktop was just asking for too much power that the Bluetti couldn't deliver. The GoFort was able to power it, but these portable solar generators are just too small for something like that.

[@CollinBaillie]

Keep the lid on to stop heat escaping the water. It could help by making that run time shorter.

[@OffGridBasement]

Good point. I didn't think of that. Thanks for the info!

[@MikeGentry]

There's something weird about induction anyway, I tried it on a single burner one we had and a 1000 watt inverter on 12 volt 100 amp lithium and wow did that thing scream some loud high pitched noise. I was afraid I was killing the inverter so I turned it off but on our RV induction we almost always need to go 1000 watts to boil water.

[@OffGridBasement]

I totally agree. If I need to actually use the induction cooktop in an off grid situation, I'm using my 3000w inverter. Thanks for the comment!

[@IamMotorHomeless]

So I guess you go hungery :)

[@mannyfragoza9652]

weird how the EB3A wont run your cooker. I've seen a video where some guy was running his washing machine and the Bluetti was clocked over 600 watts and very close to 700 before it shut down. Maybe you should have tried running the EB3A in normal mode just to see what happens.

[@OffGridBasement]

That's a good point about trying it in Normal mode. I didn't think that would work at all. I'll give it a shot. Thanks!

[@wherami]

Oh yeah cooking requires all bigger batteries i have found . Minimum for a kitchen i have found is 2000w to be sure and lasts for enough time

[@OffGridBasement]

Thanks for sharing and the comment!

[@mclaine33]

Yo my man, I’m going to make a video showing this can be done with the Nuwave and the EB3A. I’ve owned my Nuwave and EB3A since September 2022 and I’ve successfully managed to boil water. If you look at the manual of the Nuwave on page 16 it actually states it supports 85 to 144 volts. Using powerlifting mode the EB3A frequently increases and decreases the volts. The manual states that when it get below 85 volts it throws the error E3 code but it doesn’t turn off the device. The EB3A causes the voltage to spike up and it continues to cook. The only downside is the annoying beeping it makes when E3 error shows on the device. And that keeps happening every few seconds. There is a “trick” however to silence that annoying beeping of the Nuwave and that required me to physically open it up and remove the internal buzzer speaker. I’ll make a video to show you how it works.

[@OffGridBasement]

That's great! I'd love to see it. Thanks for the info and comment.

[@mclaine33]

@@OffGridBasement Here you go! Please enjoy! kzbin.info/www/bejne/jHOQo6aZYrKUldk

[@PaulKaras-r8b]

I own both these pieces of equipment. It is easy to make delicious mac n cheese BUT there are tricks. First up is the NuWave. This series of induction cookers allows the user to limit max power consumption to 600W or 900W or 1500W (1300W on some models). Set the NuWave to 600W (max power for the the EB-3A, no powerlifting will be needed). Next concerns the amount of water. 1500 grams of water (6 cups) just to throw it down the drain later ??? Use 2.5 times the weight of the pasta. Typical package contains 170 grams of pasta. So put 425 grams of water into the pot with the lid on and bring it to a rip-roaring boil. Dump all the pasta into the pot (put the lid back on) and bring back to a roaring boil. NOW TURN THE POWER OFF. Yup. Wait 21 to 25 minutes and it's cooked. No water needs to be dumped because the pasta has absorbed it all Add some milk and butter. A bit of power might be needed to make everything nicely warm again. Toss in the contents of the cheese packet and stir. Stuff completed mac n cheese into hole below the nose. Smile. Be happy.

[@OffGridBasement]

Thanks for the info and the comment!

[@PaulKaras-r8b]

@@OffGridBasement Realize some info was left out. It's important to start with 100% battery charge (minimum 80%). About 400g of water will take about 8 minutes to boil with the lid on and battery will be down to about 50%. 25 minutes later (with power off as warm pasta cooks by absorbing water) some power will be needed to make the sauce warm and the charge is down to about 40%. So 60% of total charge is consumed. It took several tries to get this to work BUT the result is worth it.

[@mrhalfstep]

I admit that I'm unfamiliar with the Nuwave device that you're using, but you keep referring to it as an "induction" cook top. Induction cookers actually flip the molecules of metal within the cookware back and forth, through electromagnetism, very fast, and cause said cookware to get hot in the process, which eventually makes the stuff inside the cookware get hot. That is an "inductive" load and the Bluetti's Powerlift feature specifically says that it is for "resistive" loads. The Nuwave's operation is more like a motor and that isn't supported by the feature. I looked around a little to get an understanding of how the Nuwave works, but I'm still not sure whether it is inductive or not so I'm just going by your description of it. If it were a traditional, "old timey" hot plate and it was under 1200 watts when it cycled on, it should have worked because that IS a "resistive" load and would be within the power parameters for the Bluetti. But here's the rub... it probably wouldn't work even if you had used the right device. I have two of these power pack/solar generators and neither of them provide the promised 600 watts on Powerlift mode. I've tried it with a toaster. I've tried it with a regular 800 watt hot plate. I've tried it with a small 700 watt coffee maker. If you don't set it to Powerlift it just overloads and kicks out. If you do set it to Powerlift it delivers a lower voltage, which is what you'd expect, but it doesn't deliver the amps to make it 600 watts output. On my units it is closer to 375 watts and that isn't of any practical use, I think you'll agree. I've even seen YT reviewers demonstrating the feature in action and stating that it was providing 600 watts, although at a lower voltage than 110 - 120 volts, and through the whole video segment you could see that the meters they had connected were showing much less than 600 watts. One review I remember explicitly is the one by HoboTech and that's because he ignored my efforts to point out the discrepancy in what he was saying and what was actually happening in the video. It was very obvious that he was not being truthful or not paying attention to his own experiment. I invite you to view it closely yourself and make your own determination. I bought 2 of these on the strength of that review, after my first viewing. I like them, but I really wanted that Powerlift feature. That improved the value, in my book. I'm always looking for updates to the firmware on the EB3A that will fix the Powerlift, but the two that I have downloaded so far haven't. I think that, in general, you will find that portable stored electric power units will be a poor choice for cooking, boiling or space heating. Making heat by restricting the flow of electrons through a conductor just takes too much stored energy to be more than a fun experiment. Propane or butane canister stoves would be more practical in an emergency and, if you have a few trees in your yard, you'd be surprised at what you can get done with a well designed twig stove. Just pick up and save the twigs for a rainy day. If you INSIST on using a small solar generator to heat water, you should find the cheapest, thinnest, widest bottomed stainless pot that you can (if you were born in the 1950s and know, by now, that it won't kill anyone outside of the state of California, you can do even better with a thin Aluminum pot) , so the pot doesn't have to absorb very much heat before it starts passing it through to the water. Check out that HoboTech EB3A video and let me know if I'm mistaken.

[@OffGridBasement]

I watched the HoboTech review and he does explain the voltage drop due to Power Lifting pretty well. He doesn't make it very clear that even though you can power a 1600w heater, you really not getting anything more out of it. It's just running very low heat and a slow fan. The unit did shut down with the Power Lifting turned off, but you could run that heater on low it would work with a lower voltage. Thanks for all the information and comment!

[@mrhalfstep]

@@OffGridBasement I guess I didn't make my point very well. If you watch the video at the point when he first moves the Oscope out of frame (around 9:30) you will see that the Bluetti App is showing only 480 watts being delivered to the heat gun. That should never go below 600 watts. The amps and volts will change, but the WATTS should always calculate out to 600 Watts. When he turns the gun up to high (which BTW exceeds the companies claim of working up to 1200 watts) the wattage shown on the app drops to 288 watts. The EB3A should always be delivering at least 600 WATTS to the device, otherwise what is the point of the feature? That would be like the company bragging that " If you use our Boost feature, not only will we reduce the voltage to your larger devices, we will also reduce the amount of energy (Watts) that the unit will deliver to that device and make it seem as though you bought a smaller solar generator.") Who would fall for that sales pitch? This guy messed up his experiment in several ways. The fan in the heat gun is an inductive load, not a resistive load, and, on high, it is is well over the 1200 watts that the device is approved to run. Do your own test with a toaster and measure the volts going to the toaster and the amps going to the toaster. They should calculate to 600 watts with the Boost set and should trip the over current limit without it set. I bet you find that it doesn't maintain the 600 watts. If your toaster is 900 watts at 120 volts that would be 7.5 amps. The EB3A should drop the voltage to 80 volts and maintain the 7.5 amps to deliver at least 600 watts to the toaster and the two I own don't do that. They lower the voltage and and the amps and that give me about 320 watts, if I remember correctly.

[@OffGridBasement]

@@mrhalfstep damn. I didn't watch it that closely and missed it. I'll need to do some tests of my own and see the numbers for myself. Thank you for all the info and time you put into your explanation.

[@mrhalfstep]

@@OffGridBasement And thank you for responding. I love YT and get so much from the videos that I watch. I'm so grateful to content makers and I want to give back, but I'm just not prepared to buy the equipment and invest the time that I'm sure it takes to make videos, so I make comments that I hope will spark the videos that I'd make if I wasn't so lazy. LOL I guess that makes me a bit of a parasite, but my heart's in the right place, I promise. Be safe.

[@jime9305]

It was certainly a fail, but I don't think it was necessarily the eb3a that failed.

[@OffGridBasement]

Ha! That is a good point!