Point taken on Solar, although not as helpful in my situation. I almost always park in deep shade for best cooling in the summer. In the winter, I would be parking in the sun for the opposite reason, but rarely use it in the winter. So my best bang for the buck is to increase overall capacity.
I need to run the generator a few hours a day anyway for other purposes (charging RC helicopter batteries, microwave, etc). Increasing my current capacity by adding two brand new deep cycle batteries will give me lots of overhead even if the batteries only get recharged to 80% or so each day. It will also extend my time from needing to recharge every 24hrs to every couple of days. And the batteries will also get fully topped off at the end of the trip once back on shore power waiting for the next trip. If I didn’t have the need to run the generator every day, solar would be higher up on the priority list.
SkiSmuggs wrote:
Grp 24 batteries are the cheapest and that is why dealers install them. A grp 24 has 75-80AH, a grp 27 has 90-100 although I had one from Costco rated to 110 amp hours.
I can only fit one Group 27 (90-100) in my battery space. I can fit two Group 24s (150-160) :)
Problem one solved, so on to the meter…
MrWizard wrote:
Reflex
It seems you wired it correctly
But a 19 inch TV that only uses 12w, seems like a miracle to me
Although the fan power seems right
There are no stray negative wires connected on the wrong side of the shunt?
The only thing on the negative battery post is the shunt?
ALL negative wires are connected on the output far side of the shunt?
Any negative wire connected at the post side instead of the far side will be bypassing the shunt and NOT give a reading on the meter
The manual for the TV (Insignia tv NS-19D220NA16) lists 30w powered on consumption. So the 13.5w is probably incorrect (which is the increase the meter shows when I turn it on). So we can probably assume the meter is off by a factor of 2 or so.
All leads are connected as shown in the diagram. I checked continuity of the individual wires, labeled them, and doubled checked several times during the installation. I’ll go back and re-check the wiring configuration once more just in case. If you had to guess which things might cause the meter to read low, what should I be looking at, testing, etc?
Here is a photo showing the wiring. The wire that doesn’t show a label is wire #2, labeled just out of frame. Wire #1 looks like there may be some strands touching the other terminal, but its actually an indentation in the shunt itself, and no stray strands are actually touching.
The paperwork that comes with the meter states that it comes with a 100A shunt, and the default setting in the meter is for 100A. If they accidentally shipped a 50A shunt, could that account for the difference in the meter reading? I set it to 50A to see, but the consumption seemed even lower, showing the TV drawing even less at ~7w. A true miracle?
Is the shunt sensitive to which side gets connected to the negative pole? I.e., could the wiring be correct, but the shunt needs to be flipped end to end the wiring redone for the new shunt configuration?
And thanks for all the help guys. Really appreciate it!
