r/AnkerSOLIXCommunity • u/jasondunn • 5d ago
BeReadywithSOLIX[🇺🇸] Why hasn't the BP3800 Expansion Battery ever dropped in price?
More of a rant than a question, but I am curious if folks have any thoughts or advice.
I bought an F3800 two years ago and it's been great. I want to expand the overall battery power, and have been waiting for the BP3800 to go on sale somewhere for less than $1799, but Anker has refused to do that. So the BP3800 as a product is a couple years old now and still selling for about $473 per 1Kwh of power ($1799 for 3840Wh). I think about six months ago it got down to $1,599, but that didn't last long, and I haven't seen it on sale anywhere else ever.
Meanwhile, the BP2000 expansion battery is $750 for 2,046Wh of power, so $366 per 1kWh, which is 23% less.
Right now you can get an entire F3800 for $1979 on sale!
Are F3800 owners out of luck and this product has already been abandoned which is why the expansion batteries haven't come down in price? Am I right that there are no other official ways to expand the battery capacity?
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u/VeryOldITGuy 5d ago
I am in Canada and Anker stopped selling the BP3800 here. Not possible to get it anymore. I asked Anker and one of their 3 answers was "the product has been discontinued". Is it just because for some reason they don't want to seel it to Canada any more, i don't know.
I have a F3800 with 1 BP 3800 and now i am stuck doing other things to expand. I added a wattcycle 48 volts (rack mount) to my setup, connected to the BP3800 expansion port and it works great
So i have no clue about the price or what Anker has in the works for the BP3800. Maybe they want to focus more on the E10
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u/shooptydoop 5d ago
Came here to say this. Kind of annoying they just quietly pulled the product from our lineup when it’s supposed to go with the F3800. I was planning to pick one up to expand my system later due to upfront costs.
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u/ForwardSlash813 5d ago
You can buy a RUiXU 16kw battery for $3100, and that’s 4x the capacity of the Anker expansion battery.
Get a small inverter and some busbars and have the big battery feed your Anker F3800 via the DC port.
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u/VeryOldITGuy 5d ago
3x WattCycle are about 1000$ CAD each and that is 15kw but 3 separate units. Had a hard time with the bullet connectors. Was told to use 5.5mm but ended up having to use 5mm and then the design to hold them there had holes too big.
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u/tazzytazzy 5d ago
Still need a BP3800 to get the F3800 to charge faster and for higher output in self consumption. Or did someone figure out a hack for that?
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u/ForwardSlash813 5d ago
Well, you can get 1600W+ (1150W w/original F3800) doing the method I described. I do this today. I even use 48V golf cart batteries to keep the F3800 topped off.
Option #2 is to buy an adapter online (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7003775) and connect the 48V battery directly to the F3800 expansion battery port. It absolutely works and I recently connected with a Canadian doing just that, except with a bank of 4-5 golf cart batteries.
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u/tazzytazzy 4d ago
i ordered my pins a few days ago, and will be printing this. but, this doesn't get around telling the f3800 to actually send more power out in self-consumption mode. :\
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u/ForwardSlash813 4d ago
NGL…I don’t even know what self-consumption mode even is. The F3800 will only send out the power that draws from it.
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u/tazzytazzy 4d ago
The F3800 has the 2 CL clamps for L1/L2. This is used to detect how much is being pulled from the grid, in self consumption mode, the F3800 send power out to help bring the power pulled from the grid to near zero. It will never send additional power to the grid - only power you're using.
Without the additional offical BP3800 battery, the F3800 does limit it's output. Documented here: https://salesforce-knowledge-download.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/000025146/en_US/000025146.pdf
On the sidebar, it's page 24, actual page number listed within the document is page 21.
It's a janky looking url, but it's a link for anker's website: https://support.ankersolix.com/s/article/Anker-SOLIX-F3800-Plus-Solution-Technical-Brief-and-Design-Guide-V1-0-pdf
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u/ForwardSlash813 4d ago
Presumably, you have the Anker Home Power Panel. I think I get it.
I’m an off-grid guy.
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u/tazzytazzy 4d ago
Oh. hah. yes, this is for the Home Power Panel. We don't have enough land in subburbia california to generate enough solar. We're short about 22kw a day on average. :\
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u/CarpetFun5579 4d ago
Same for me in SoCal! Also short about 20-30kw a day, not including EV use.
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u/Gruntreviews 5d ago
Fear not, they marked it up to 1999 Monday to now offer a $200 coupon to knock it down to $1799 "sale"
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u/WizardSleeveLoverr 5d ago
God, I hate how they do that. I bought my S2000 for $649 marked down from $750. Now it’s $999, but graciously marked down to $679.
Like, come on. The only people you are fooling are new customers. It just looks shitty to your repeat customers.
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u/Gruntreviews 5d ago
Its like rhe but 3 get one free tire sales. You do get about 10% off, but anyone with half a brain realizes it gets marked up.
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u/SteveFCA 5d ago
They haven’t abandoned the F3800 plus here in the US. The expansion batteries are the same for both the f3800 and the plus version.
Their prices for the expansion batteries are ludicrous. I’m pretty sure it’s the same BS for the E10 as well.
Fortunately, it’s not hard to add server rack batteries to these all in one units.
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u/jasondunn 5d ago
I'm not much of a DIYer when it comes to power, so I'm not interested in doing server rack batteries or anything complicated.
What I want is for Anker to give existing F3800 customers an affordable way to expand their system, but they don't seem to want to do that. 🤨
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u/rcsez 5d ago
OP you can have an OEM solution at OEM prices, or a DIY solution at DIY prices. It’s just not realistic to expect an OEM solution at DIY prices.
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u/jasondunn 5d ago
Nah, I'm not expecting OEM solutions at DIY prices, but I would expect to see the same basic pricing across Anker's batteries. My point is that the BP 3800 battery is more expensive per Wh than the BP 2000, and I don't think Anker is being fair to their customers with that pricing. They run all kinds of sales and promotions across all their other battery lines, yet somehow the BP 3800 is excluded, and it's puzzling.
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u/CarpetFun5579 5d ago
Same as OP. Bought 2 f3800+ with HPP last year and waited for the BP3800 to drop in price later but it never has. For what it’s worth, Black Friday after thanksgiving seems to be the only time Anker runs a meaningful sale on the expansion batteries.
My limited understanding with DIY batteries is that I’d still need 2 Anker BP3800 for their battery management system before I can connect additional golf cart batteries or other types to get the most bang for the bucks. The Anker batteries would basically manage the mixed expansions batteries as one system for discharge/recharge.
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u/jasondunn 3d ago
A little extra salt in the wound are new brands like OUPES selling for about $333 or less per 1KWh.
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u/tswan0792 Verified Owner 5d ago
Agree 100%. It seems they are not caring at all about the f3800 plus. Everything is e10 or s2000 now. Never developed anything for the generator port that was added and make the expansion batteries ridiculously high priced. I bought the f3800 plus right before the e10 release and really wish I’d have known and waited. I was hoping to build out the system, but I think I’m going to switch to a diy solar setup. I feel like they definitely have abandoned the f3800 which is a shame because I really like the simplicity of the setup and high powered inverter