adding a shunt battery monitor

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arjento asked Jun 29, '21

adding a shunt battery monitor

Hi Guys,

New to the forum and absolutely new to wiring. I have a question. This is the existing setup I've done on my boat . I have the energy smart shunt I want to install. I believe it installs on the negative post of my house bank to the (-) bus bar. However I note, that my (-) of my starter battery is also on that bus bar. Will this affect the the installation if I put it on the (-) post of the house bank? I only want to monitor the house bank.

Misc. The 1 and 1, 2 and 2 represent my battery switch

BMV Battery Monitor

jun-28-2021.jpg (41.9 KiB)

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JohnC answered · Jun 29, 2021 at 01:42 PM

Hi @Arjento , and welcome.

Yes, you're onto it. Place it somewhere between the house bank -ve and the -ve bus.

If you're new to wiring, this is worth a read.. https://www.victronenergy.com/upload/documents/Wiring-Unlimited-EN.pdf

Better to ask than make mistakes.. come back as you need.

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arjento commented · Jun 29, 2021 at 02:38 PM

Is this correct. I only have the one battery on the house bank but this is essentially how I have my setup.

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167607504nywq8rifzshunt1.jpg (35.6 KiB)

JohnC ♦ arjento commented · Jun 30, 2021 at 10:09 AM

@Arjento

Yes, that's ok. The fun part is tuning it in. Get to know the manual.. https://www.victronenergy.com/media/pg/SmartShunt/en/index-en.html

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arjento JohnC ♦ commented · Jul 02, 2021 at 04:49 AM

see below John C, your advice is so appreciated.

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JohnC answered · Jul 02, 2021 at 06:06 AM

@Arjento

Yes, your suspicion is correct, you mustn't bypass the shunt with any -ve load or charge wires. They won't get measured. Typically you'd go to the -ve bus, but if more convenient you could wire the dc/dc charger -ve directly to the shunt Load terminal, along with the bus wire.

A low charge level while at Absorb V means the batts have reached a high SOC and can't actually accept charge. You don't mention battery capacity nor type, but they are likely very close to 100% if say 100-200 Ah pbs. And your Abs has probably gone on longer than necessary..

You could safely manually sync it then to 100%, at least at this early stage.

They are indeed neat devices, and can tell you much more than just SOC, but need tuning to your batts/system for best results. Read that manual over'n'over until you understand how it works, and become a competent tweaker of it's settings.

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arjento commented · Jul 02, 2021 at 06:33 AM

79ah agm deep cycle is the house bank and the starter is a lead acid cranking battery. And yes the level is close to 100 percent 97 to 99 percent it said. I won't tweak much for setting right now just follow the parameters of the house battery for setting parameters.

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Answer 1 · 2021-07-02T04:49:00Z

arjento answered · Jul 02, 2021 at 04:49 AM

okay one more John C, I have the following as a setup now and turned it on setting up one device at a time. First I turned on the smart shunt (what a neat little product) works great, I did the update followed the instructions and all worked for that. Then I hooked up my dc charger input side (the starter battery), powered it on, updated its firmware, followed by hooking up the out side to my house bank and placing the bridge pin in the unit. Looked great but I think I'm doing something wrong. It's showing some pretty poor numbers for charging. I selected the dc charger in the device menu and it shows that it's charging but very very low level. 14.5V at 1.85A in the absorption phase. the note below it says you are charging but at negative levels to full charge (I only had a single lowrance chartplotter running). The charger on/off light is blinking also. I also believe I should probably wire the negative (out) to the loads side of the shunt instead of direct to the battery as I currently have it. Can you tell me which you would suggest? This is my current wiring diagram of how it is installed at the moment.

as-is-installed-july-01-2021.jpg (48.1 KiB)

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