Honda 2000i generator amps surging up and down

test the generator by plugging in a 1500 watt heater. If there is no surging--then it may be the converter playing up.

I praised that wrong I turned off the inverter powering the trailer when on solar but left the solar and charge controller on.

The generator engine was running fine the surging had to do with electrical load

The amp surging would occur both on and off eco mode.

The amp surging was like a 30 second cycle.

My converter has four charging cycles as the charging on 75% battery level begins the converter could show 25+/- amps as the batteries become more charged it drops to 15a to 8amps and by the time ths batteries are at 90% to 3 amps or less. Which make charging on the generator for only 3 amps a waste of gas.

My batteries get down to 75/80% overnight.

This morning batteries down to 78% generator work fine no surging.

One interesting note although my batteries were at 78% my voltage level was at 12.1 MyChart says they should have been at 12.37 12.40?

1L243 wrote:
Which make charging on the generator for only 3 amps a waste of gas. Typical gen charging is 50-90% with solar to finish.

One interesting note although my batteries were at 78% my voltage level was at 12.1 MyChart says they should have been at 12.37 12.40? Typical chart voltage is for a battery at rest - ie NO loads for several hours. Draws reduce battery voltage and it will recover to its SOC at rest. Likely your battery was not at rest.

One main advantage of your battery monitor is the SOC reading.

1L243 wrote:
The generator engine was running fine the surging had to do with electrical load

So you found an intermittent load and all is actually fine?

1L243 wrote:
My converter has four charging cycles as the charging on 75% battery level begins the converter could show 25+/- amps as the batteries become more charged it drops to 15a to 8amps and by the time ths batteries are at 90% to 3 amps or less. Which make charging on the generator for only 3 amps a waste of gas.

What converter? Once you hit peak voltage on the battery (14.4 volts?) run the generator one additional hour and you are done.

One interesting note although my batteries were at 78% my voltage level was at 12.1 MyChart says they should have been at 12.37 12.40?
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If your monitor has the capacity too high and you use X ah in a day, then the batts will be down X ah and show the voltage for that, but the monitor will think they are higher in SOC than they are.

ISTR you are using your old battery bank this summer and one batt was worrisome, but you will get new batts this winter? You might be seeing what you would expect by now?

Also, the voltage will be (somewhat) lower if the batteries are under load when you're checking the voltage. The chart values are for resting voltage usually. That said, my gut instinct is that 0.3V difference between resting and loaded voltage is fairly high for most circumstances where the battery bank is appropriately sized for the load.

Most monitors do not compensate for Peurkert effect
Heavy loads such as inverter powered MW or coffee maker
Have a harder/stronger effect on battery capacity than the AmpHrs that are counted/measured by the monitor .
EXAMPLE
Use using 60 amps for 1 minutes, is not the same as using 1amp for 60 minutes, the monitor will count each event as 1 AmpHR, but the physical toll on the batteries is completely different, and with 60 amp load the batteries will have a lower voltage and less capacity than the 1amp load, even though the monitor will display the same SOC in each case

This could be your situation, according to battery voltage you were at 50% SOC, Not 78% indicated by AmpHR count,
3 amps or not, you need to get those batteries up to full, that means 14.4v and under 1 amp rate per 100AmpHR capacity,
0.5 amps per 100 at 14.4 volts is what I use to indicate full charge, the capacity count will indicate 100% before the batteries reach that charge rate, but I charge them until they reach that point, more batteries die from under charging sulphation buildup, than over charging, 400AmpHR bank, I charge until batteries take 2 amps or less at 14.4v

Hi,

If I remember correctly, the Victron monitor does do a Peurkert calculation.

Sounds like you might have a self resetting breaker on the battery + wire.
Charge amps exceed the rating of the breaker it trips, resets and the cycle starts all over again.
Your solar might be wired where it bypasses the breaker. This would reduce the converter charge and thus the breaker would not trip.

Jim