Where to put shunt

SCVJeff wrote:

allen8106 wrote:

JRRNeiklot wrote:

BFL13 wrote:
Please say what monitor the shunt is for. A battery monitor like the Trimetric takes all the neg wires to its shunt and then just one fat wire to the battery neg post.

A solar monitor only monitors the solar so it's shunt is upstream of the Trimetric

Trimetric 2030-RV

The shunt shoud be on the negative side of battery within about 1 foot.

Why does it matter? It can be at the source or load, or anywhere inbetween and the current drawn is the current drawn

Here is why. "Even if the shunt is not close to the battery it will still measure the amps accurately. The main reason we say the shunt should be "near the batteries" is that the large cables to the battery need to be kept short to keep the voltage drop low to your loads and to charging sources. Since the shunt is in that path, it therefore will be near the batteries. The only slight inaccuracy that could occur if it isn't near the battery is that if the cable is too small, or the amps are really high there can be a little voltage drop that will cause the "volts" on the meter to read perhaps as much as a few tenths of a volt different than is at the battery. This error will be minimized if the cable is large enough to keep the voltage drop low."

This is from the engineer,owner of Bogart engineering Ralph Hiesey