Charlie,
I have almost the same setup you have, a solar panel feeding through the
controller directly to my house battery, and I have an ACR installed.
When the solar panel is putting out current after a few minutes the LED
on the ACR lights which shows the two batteries are connected. The
voltage on both batteries seems to be the same, though I don't have a
battery monitor. I'll check with a meter next time I'm on the boat.
Neil Gallagher
Weatherly 35-1
Glen Cove, NY
On Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 21:50 Charlie Nelson via CnC-List
<cnc-list@cnc-list.com <mailto:cnc-list@cnc-list.com>> wrote:
My boat has a house bank and a starting battery with an
ACR controller so that the ‘banks’ are ‘equalized’ when a
charging source is available—shore power or engine
alternator.
I added a solar panel to maintain the batteries without
the hazards of leaving the boat on shore power charging
when I am not on board.
Per local advice, I ran the solar power output controller
(MPPT) current thru my cigarette lighter(with the
appropriate circuit breaker in the ‘on’ position) and it
appears to be working since my house bank (which powers
the cigarette lighter) looks like it is 100% charged per
my Victron battery monitor after 9 days without a battery
charger or running the engine.
OTOH, my starting battery voltage sagged over these 9
days of this test to about 90% of maximum per the Victron
battery monitor.
My understanding of the ACR is that it should distribute
charging current to keep both battery banks ‘equalized’ so
the lower charge state on the starting battery doesn’t
make sense to me.
My questions to the list are:
1. Should the ACR be equalizing the charging source
current as I discuss above, even when this current might
be significantly less than my shore power Xantex 40?
2. If so, why is my starting battery ‘down’?
3. If not, what am I doing wrong? I could hook up the
solar directly to the starting battery but with the ACR,
this seemed unnecessary (if I understand how an ACR works.)
Charlie Nelson
1985 C&C 36XL/kcb
Water Phantom
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