question

ksb avatar image
ksb asked

Wiring confusion

I am having a hard time wrapping my head around how to hook up my smartshunt. I have two AGM batteries in parallel. Everything i have seen says I should disconnect all the cables going to the negative terminal of my first battery and replace them with a single wire connection to the “Battery Minus” terminal on the shunt. I then guessed, the cables I disconnected from my first batteries negative terminal would connect to the “System Minus” side of the shunt. I have two. One goes to chassis ground and one goes to the negative terminal on the second battery. That does not make sense to me as the diagrams say the “System Minus“ connects to loads. I don’t think of system ground and the second battery negative as loads. What am I not understanding?

SmartShunt
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1 Answer
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kevgermany answered ·

It's maybe a terminology thing. Think of the load side of the shunt as a single returning load.

Sounds as if both batteries are separately grounded. This will no longer work with the shunt.

For the shunt install:

Negatives of both batteries are joined. This can be at the batteries, or by connecting both to the battery side of the shunt. If you join at the batteries, take a cable from the join to the shunt. They no longer go to ground. There are no other connections to the battery negative terminals.

Load side of shunt takes all the other negatives that were on the batteries, including ground.

Might be easiest to do this with a busbar. I.e. load side of shunt to busbar, all negatives to busbar.

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