Spent the day to install the new battery monitor. After the sudden death of the previous main bank batteries I realized that it is quite important to monitor the charge state of the batteries and not let them go deep cycle too often. Actually, better avoid any charge below 80% is apparently the best to maintain battery life.
The installation is actually quite a brainteaser with 6 different cables you need to install in the right sequence. Also, additionally to the actual monitor I needed to install a shunt and rewire the ground cables for the main bank and the starter battery across the shunt. As usual I only found out when half way through the project that one cable was missing, and so off I went for another Westmarine shopping round! In the end came the anxious moment after the last connection was made: Will the darn thing work? Guess what, first try and it worked like a charm without having to troubleshoot and fix anything!
The picture shows the battery monitor display. This is a Xantrex LinkLite. It can display the actual voltage, amps drawn, and charge state of the battery for the main bank, and the voltage of the auxiliary starter battery. I mounted it below the companionway to reduce cable length. That way you can also see the display at eye's height when switching on the battery main switch. Checked all the different circuits to see how much they draw. The masthead tricolor is the biggest power drain at 2.2A. Who would have thought! The normal running lights draw only 1.2A, even though they consist of 3 individual bulbs whereas the tricolor has only one.
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| Battery monitor |
