Bruce: Ideally the measuring shunts for the Link 20 should be in series with the negative connections to the batteries with all load negatives connected to the groundymmmsß side of the shunts. ie: Nothing should be connectedness school directly to the battery negative terminals other than the battery side of the shunt. All current will then flow through the shunts and register as charge or discharge on the Link 20.
Also ideally, there will be no load other than your starter motor connected to your start battery. Your solar panels should go to the house battery. That's where the major battery charge and discharge events occur. The negative side of the panels go to ground. The engine start battery uses very little and only needs charging occasionally. You can charge your engine start battery by either combining the batteries or using a small regulator such as a Zantrex echo-charge. Rich Knowles Indigo. LF38 Halifax On 2013-08-26, at 12:43, BRUCE BOLTON <[email protected]> wrote: I just installed two 100 watt Arenco panels through an MPeseddfPT controller ... and it works very well, very happy with the output. I've got 320 amp hour AGM house battery bank and a 120 amp hour starting battery connected through a battery isolator switch (can keep them seperate or connect them into one big bank). Link 20 monitor function for solar panels has been switch "on". The issue: I connected the controller output to the starting battery (because of the size of the terminals on that battery), keept the battery isolator switch in the "connect everything together" position and what happens is the house bank shows charging via the solar panels, but the starting always shows a discharge. I don't know why ... On a recent trip of a week without shore power the solar panels almost keept up with demand (fridge/freezer on all the time) maybe a minus 50 amps at the end of the trip on the house bank, while the starting battery showed a minus 500 amps at the end of the trip! I believe that this is simply a link monitor issue and that this is (obviously) not reality. Any Ideas on what can be done to get the link indicating correctly would be appreciated. Perhaps when the battery banks are not isolated the link then reads this as one bank only, and the starting one is just recording the amount of power pulled from the bank over time ... Thanks for any feedback! Bruce Bolton C&C35III Apple Tree _______________________________________________ This List is provided by the C&C Photo Album http://www.cncphotoalbum.com [email protected] _______________________________________________ This List is provided by the C&C Photo Album http://www.cncphotoalbum.com [email protected]
