Josh makes good points. Also, wiring the solar through a cigarette lighter port is poor advice. The gauge of wiring going from it to a house even with an ACR would never work and only be a trickle charge at best. I'm guessing the cigarette lighter wiring is probably a 16 guage, right? Thats a problem.
Think of wiring as being similar to plumbing in regards to pressure. A very small tube is a small stream of pressure and even after a few days it would not fill a large tank of water. You definitely need to rethink the wiring diagram. If you have one I can review it. Also, I can send you what I have recently done on my 38 Landfall. I literally gutted my entire boat and install everything new that includes 3 battery banks, etc. Regards, Brian On Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 10:32 PM Josh Muckley <muckl...@gmail.com> wrote: > The battery monitor is probably not setup for a charger voltage to be > entering from the cigarette lighter. To better establish the actual > conditions of your setup you need to provide the terminal voltage of each > of the batteries. You also need to provide the chemistry of each of the > batteries. > > A flooded lead acid battery that is drained ~90% will read ~12.65v with no > load after 24 hours of being disconnected from the circuit (physically > remove the ground connection from the battery terminal). Anything more > than 12.65v after 24hours of being disconnected tells me the monitor is > wrong. This is what I would look for to confirm that the battery monitor > is indicating true state of charger. > > Josh Muckley > S/V Sea Hawk > 1989 C&C 37+ > Solomons, MD > > > > > On Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 21:50 Charlie Nelson via CnC-List < > 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 >> Sent from AOL Mobile Mail >> Get the new AOL app: mail.mobile.aol.com >> October is the time to show your appreciation with a small contribution >> to this list to help offset the costs. If you want to support the list - >> use PayPal to send contribution -- https://www.paypal.me/stumurray >> Thanks - Stu > > October is the time to show your appreciation with a small contribution to > this list to help offset the costs. If you want to support the list - use > PayPal to send contribution -- https://www.paypal.me/stumurray Thanks > - Stu
October is the time to show your appreciation with a small contribution to this list to help offset the costs. If you want to support the list - use PayPal to send contribution -- https://www.paypal.me/stumurray Thanks - Stu
