Hello! I replaced a defective battery monitor (Pentametric by Bogart Engineering) with a combination of a Victron Smartshunt and a Whizbang Jr. from Midnite Solar. The Whizbang is hooked up at the battery bank. The Victron Smartshunt is on the load side and configured as a DC Energy Meter to measure only the load. Between this shunt and the Whizbang Jr's shunt is the connection to the Solar Charge Controller. So I expect the Victron Smartshunt to provide me only with the load current.
Unfortunately It gives me erratic values on the Phone app and from the VE.Direct interface. Following is a picture of measured load current with the iPhone app display. Also a trace chart from samples at one minute interval. Notice the difference between the battery amperage (Batt amps) and the Smartshunt load readings (Load amps).
You can see the Smartshunt values that should always be negative and it sometimes sho a positive value. It should also match Batt amps when there is not enough sun energy to charge the battery.
So I don't know what to do other than shutting down my system to perform a zero current calibration to see what it could do. I'm planning to do this on the coming weekend.
Any help would be appreciated as I am out of ideas for now.
Thanks and best regards.
Daniel.
I added another chart showing the measured load with my original Pentametric battery monitor. As you can see, the load line is in sync with the battery amps line. Same with Watts obviously.
With the old Pentametric battery monitor.
