Xantrex Monitor Problem OR Battery bank problem?

[svstrider]

I am in darwin and the wet has well and truly started with a cyclone giving the town a Xmas scare before missing us. However, when I was at the boat tying everything down on Xmas eve I noticed that the Xantrex battery monitor was showing a low voltage alarm & 6.7V However the DC monitor that comes with the switch board shows 13.7 V Up until a week ago they would both read the same voltage. The Xantrex shows that the batteries are 92% full. When I plud the dock charger in it only puts in 5amps. So I think that the house batteries are nearly full.

The house bank consists of six AGM 6V batteries in series and parallel. There are also AGM starter batteries , one for each engine linked into the system with VSR voltage sensors. All batteries were new 4 years ago. None of the main fuses are shorted. I tested the house bank. Each 6v battery tested at 6.7 volts (the same as the xantrex is now reading) and the whole bank tested as 13.7V (the same as the control panel ammeter is reading)

Any ideas as to the cause of the low voltage alarm? Thanks for your help.

[rigormortis]

I am in the Philippines and we are well and truly done with the wet, thank you. You can have it. I have a XantrexLite. Have you checked the tiny input wires on the unit? They are tiny, with even tinier set screws to hold in place and mine have come loose on 3 occasions giving weird readings for some parameters. Just a thought.
Pete

[svstrider]

Originally Posted by rigormortis

I am in the Philippines and we are well and truly done with the wet, thank you. You can have it. I have a XantrexLite. Have you checked the tiny input wires on the unit? They are tiny, with even tinier set screws to hold in place and mine have come loose on 3 occasions giving weird readings for some parameters. Just a thought.
Pete

Thanks for that, hard but dead
I will have a look at the back of the monitor. I think I have a Xantrex Lite as well. The batteries have been looked after, I hope. So hopefully it is a monitor problem. Any feed back on a rreplacement. ? Vectron??

[mitiempo]

If it is just a wire that is loose or has come undone you should not need a new monitor.

[svstrider]

Originally Posted by mitiempo

If it is just a wire that is loose or has come undone you should not need a new monitor.

Thanks for the replies, mitempo & rigorM.

I checked the connections at the guage and at the house batteries. I noticed that there are only 2 wires at the batteries and four at the monitor, I followed the coax and found the other two going via fuses to the main buses. I then realised that the two going to the negative on the batteries must only be measuring passing current amps ( I hope I have not shown too much of my ignorance with that statement). So I figured that the voltage sensor wires must be going somewhere else.

I followed the coax from the monitor and found that the other two wires split off through fuses. The fuses were not blown BUT one of the connections the fuse was plugged into was. I cleaned the corrosion and now the two two voltmeters are reading 13.6 and all is good with the world.

THANKS, BRAINS TRUST - another boat problem solved. Inside boat temp when I opened up was 41oC - good old Darwin.