Our van has been sitting most of the winter with only sporadic use. Last use was January and everything worked perfectly. I started it today to make sure it’s charged up and the smart shunt soc dropped from 42% to 0% in minutes, even with everything off. I drove it around and it still reads 0%. It worked great all last year with no problems. We have a orion xs and smart shunt hooked up to a lithium 200 ah battery that’s about 1 year old. No solar, no invertor. I’m not sure how to read the app, but will include current screenshots. I checked for updates. The battery reads 13.32v with a voltmeter so I know it’s not dead. I did change charge voltage to 14.0v and discharge floor to 10% after this all started, but no other changes to setting have been made. How do I get the soc to read again?
You need to fully recharge your battery so that the chargers reach float and the SmartShunt should then resynchronise to 100%. The SmartShunt has a setting to determine the action on reset, the best option is “Keep SOC” so it remembers the SOC from when it was shut down. You may have another option selected which is why it went to 0% SOC. The SmartShunt always counts down from the 100% point set at synchronisation.
Thanks for the suggestion! I changed the action on reset to keep soc. The other problem is it does not appear to be charging the battery when engine is running? I’ve left it running and driven it a bit and the volts have only dropped from 13.4 to 13.34 on the smart shunt voltage reading. Do you have any other ideas? Thanks!
The SmartShunt does not control charging in any way, it is only a monitor. On one of your screenshots with the engine running the Orion XS is showing correct voltages but no current. This suggests the Orion itself is working or it would not generate 14.2V out whe the battery is at 13.4V. The areas I would investigate are the cabling between the Oriin XS and the lithium battery and the negative cable on the Orion XS. If any connections have come loose or corroded then the Orion will increase it’s voltage to the set 14.2V but no current will flow. Also check any fuses have not blown or any switches have not corroded. A multimeter will let you track down any faults.
Another thing is if you have a battery with a built in BMS with Bluetooth, some of these can have charging turned off by an app, make sure charging is enabled.
When all this started I did discover a very loose connection between the bus bar and red on/off switch. I immediately tightened it, but no change. The fuse on the battery is not blown, at least I don’t think so, and none of the breakers are tripped. I tightened all the connections then as well. I don’t see any corrosion.
The lithium battery does not have a Bluetooth BMS. Someone mentioned I need to “wake it up”, but did not elaborate as to how. It’s a renogy 200 amp core lithium battery.
No nothing wrong with the shunt! You need to understand how the shunt works. Your are drawing 2236w from your battery 159 amps hence the reason the Soc is 92%. At that rate your time to go before you have a flat battery is 1h5min as calculated by the shunt.
Our setup is very simple. Just lights, and they were all off. The shunt reading keeps reading these wild negative numbers and soc drops quickly. BUT the volts of the battery remains unchanged. 0% and 13.5 V for example. I recharged the battery to 14.2 volts and the soc did not automatically synch to 100%. Reset the SOC to 100% but I was still having wild negative numbers with everything turned off. I even unhooked the shunt (left side) per manual instructions and there were still negative numbers fluctuating wildly. So I did a zero calibration last night and topped off the battery. Again synching the soc to 100%. This morning the shunt readings are as follows. Maybe it’s fixed, or maybe I made it worse. lol. I was trying to get it working before my husband got home so we could use the van for a few days before he leaves again. At least I am glad to know our battery is fine, just trying to sort out the shunt readings.
I wonder if the electronics on the shunt got damp during the off season which has resulted in the erroneous readings. Similarly, if the connections between the pcb and shunt got corrosion on that may impact the reading.
Maybe? We are in Colorado, it’s super dry here and we’ve had the van open a ton working on the conversion. Everything is super clean and I don’t see any evidence of corrosion. The system is only a year old, but I will keep looking! Thanks for the input!
If the shunt is disconnected, the actual measuring shunt and you still have current readings then theres a problem with the shunt, I’d think.
But adding about your battery, LiFePO4 batteries don’t want to sit fully charged or discharged for longer periods of time, like what seemed to be the scenario in your case over winter. If you know your won’t really use the battery for a month or more, it would be best to get its SoC down to 50% and disconnect it or let the BMS switch off, then when you need it again, the actual SoC should still be around 50% and no harm should have come to the battery.
As for charging it, I try and charge my LiFePO4 cells to around 3.45V, which in your battery would work out to 13.8V and then I let it sit there for and hour or so, absorbiing and if unbalanced by 10mV or more difference between cells, haven’t had that yet, it would also balance at this stage. At that Voltage you probably have 98 to 99% SoC and are treating your battery well, with a potentially longer lifespan.
I kind of give up. This is the shunt reading today. 2 days after the screen shot I posted on the 16th. The battery is still full, everything has been off, now soc reads 0%
