Solar panel is not charging via the Link "house bank" shunt. Seeing that its link 20, you should have two shunt resistors, one for the house and one for starting bank. You should be very careful wiring stuff to battery terminals themselves. I know many folks have it that way, but you have permanent loads and permanent charging, dual battery monitor. You should really have high amperage buss bar for + and -. This high amperage buss bar is where controller terminals should go. Battery terminals should be free of miscellaneous connectors. Only heavy gauge lugs should be there to join batteries, and then one jumper to a properly sized fuse for your bank consumption. There should be no loads or chargers hooked to the battery before the fuse. Other side of the fuse goes to a high amperage buss bar. Negative side should only connect to a shunt resistor. There should be nothing connected the that side of the shunt resistor. Other side of shunt resistor should go to negative bus bar. Since you have link 20, that goes for both of your banks. Sounds like your isolator switch is bypassing the house shunt. Likely connecting to battery directly. I have link 10 (one shunt), I don't monitor starting battery AH. My starting bank is lead acid and has different charge topology from the house AGM deep cycle. I use the both position on the house main switch in emergencies only when engine won't start. AH used to start the engine like that do not show up on Link monitor.
-----Original Message----- From: CnC-List [mailto:cnc-list-boun...@cnc-list.com] On Behalf Of BRUCE BOLTON Sent: Monday, August 26, 2013 11:44 AM To: cnc-list@cnc-list.com Subject: Stus-List LInk monitor and solar panel issue I just installed two 100 watt Arenco panels through an MPPT 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 CnC-List@cnc-list.com _______________________________________________ This List is provided by the C&C Photo Album http://www.cncphotoalbum.com CnC-List@cnc-list.com
