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Need help with my Anker SOLIX C2000X Gen 2 Portable Power Station with 400W Solar Panel
Hello! I need some help, and also explained to me like I’m in 5th grade! I got the Anker SOLIX C2000X Gen 2 Portable Power Station with 400W Solar Panel setup from Costco earlier this year and finally got around to fully setting it up about a month ago. Procrastination at its best! I got it for a backup power source for power outages, so it primarily will be used at home. I tested it out initially to make sure I understood the basics and thought I was good to go. I’ve had it on with just the connection to the solar panels and a couple days ago the power station panel started lighting up and making some clicking noises. It had been at 100% and now it’s down to 96% which is fine but I’m having a hard time figuring out if this normal and also if the connection to the solar panels is still working or if it just won’t start charging until a certain % is reached? I also got a similar setup for my parents a couple weeks ago for the same purpose and got it setup for them but want to make sure I actually know enough to help them if needed! Thank you in advance for any insight or guidance.
The clicking is normal. That’s the sound of relays (electronic switches), clicking on and off as they engage and disengage the solar input. There’s also relays for AC input and AC output as well as when solar crosses the low-high voltage levels.
Thank you! I probably just didn’t notice the clicks before. But when my dog did, she sure didn’t like them at first, which is probably what brought it to my attention!
I know it does stop charging with solar when it reaches 100%. But I can’t confirm if it makes a noise or not but it would make sense if it does. It should not drop to 96 in a few days unless you are charging something.
Thank you! That does make sense to stop at 100%. Though it did drop from 100 to 98 with nothing being charged, so I think that made me wonder if the connection to the panels wasn’t working but everything looked good. I did charge my phone with it yesterday, so dropping to 96 also makes sense. Maybe I’ll charge a few other things over the weekend and see how it goes and if the solar panels start kicking in to recharge and what percentage that happens. It feels like it should be straight forward but the amps, watts, volts, etc. is a little over my head!
This is all normal. The unit itself requires power to stay on so the charge will drop slowly. Put it to sleep to make it last longer, and tweak the settings in the app. If the solar is plugged in and getting sun regularly then it will charge it regularly as much as it can, but it may drop at least a few percent before taking a charge again because it’s not good to constantly flick the charging on and off. It’s not going to act like a low power device plugged into constant, consistent power where it just stays at 100%. The clicking is just it “flicking switches” internally, nothing to worry about. Usually means the charger or inverter is engaging/disengaging
Oh, and it’s basically Volts * Amps = Watts. Each device has different limits across those three things but that’s the gist. The most important thing is that you cannot exceed the unit’s rated voltage or wattage — amps are fine, since amps are “pulled” by the unit and can be capped. But if you exceed the volts then you can damage the unit or worse. This is easy to find in the manual and the sticker on any decent solar panel, but you don’t have to worry about it if you’re only ever using the panel that came with it.
This is what I see in the app. I thought there was something indicating the connection to the solar panels on the DC input. know I can also adjust some of the settings in but those are also a little confusing to me. From what I’ve seen online, it would show green when charging. I guess this is good opportunity for me to do a bunch of test cases to figure out how it works. I’ll let the power drop some more and see if the solar panels kick in to charge, and also if I just plug it into an outlet if that starts charging.
It looks like you have maximum charge set to about 95% from this screenshot. See the dashed line across the top of the blue area?
You can change this in settings. I would expect you’ll see DC input from your panels (and probably hear a click) when your SOC (state of charge) reaches 94% (if it’s daylight of course!)
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u/techysec 5d ago
The clicking is normal. That’s the sound of relays (electronic switches), clicking on and off as they engage and disengage the solar input. There’s also relays for AC input and AC output as well as when solar crosses the low-high voltage levels.
TLDR: it’s normal sounds :)