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Marcus avatar image
Marcus asked

How to monitor Alternator in CerboGX?

I have a CerboGX with Touchdisplay, a 500A smart shunt monitoring the service battery and the power draw and a ARGO FET for the alternator.

The display showing the system, shows how much amps are going into the batteries or are drawn from the batteries. I have a MPPT for my solar which is shown there as well and in the winter I possibly will upgrade the shore 230V loader to a VICTRON model.

But how can I display and monitor the alternator in my system?

cerbo gxalternatormonitoring
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2 Answers
pwfarnell avatar image
pwfarnell answered ·

Have you enabled "Has DC System" in the system setup menu. If you enable this, then the charge that is coming from your alternator appears in this box. However, it only appears as Watts, you would need to calculate the amps using the battery voltage. Additionally, it is worth noting that the DC system power is calculated from all the other known power flows as a sort of catch all, so it is not 100% accurate.

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Marcus avatar image Marcus commented ·
Yes, I have that enabled, but it only tells me the power-draw, no way to show it more detailed, like the AC system. And I do always have the AC system lines for AC input and AC output in the top of the display, which I do not really need, since I have no DC system monitored by VICTRON connected.
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Sarah avatar image
Sarah answered ·

KYou might want to consider adding an addition smartshunt in ‘dc energy mode’ on the negative tail of the engine. This is a new feature and likely to be a little confusing as it will be connected to both the house and engine battery (assuming they share a common negative). It will give you an idea of the net output of the alternator which could be of interest. Alternatively replace the ARGO Fet with a isolated dc charger connected to the house, connect the new smartshunt to the negative output of the chargerbattery and configure it as an alternator or DC/DC charger. All new features/in development so interested to see what others think. There are lots of articles about that discuss the ‘ins and outs’ of the performance of ‘ordinary’ alternators and how to integrate them into your system. Happy to discuss further.

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