BAC Forum

General Boards => Technical Support => Topic started by: Larry Dedrick on August 14, 2018, 03:39:08 PM

Title: House Batteries Showing 16 amp discharge on Shore Power
Post by: Larry Dedrick on August 14, 2018, 03:39:08 PM
   Should we be seeing a discharge on our house batteries when ON shore power or Gen. power, seems unusual to me. What drew my attention was when we were overnighting and had NO power hooked up and Gen OFF, we were showing a discharge of 55 amps which is unusually high in comparison to 15 to 22 amps that we were use to seeing. Basically we were dry camping overnight with this high of discharge (55 amps). The only equipment operating overnight was Refrig, and a fan.
   During Shore  or Gen power operation the solar shows positive amps and the house batteries show a discharge even though they are holding at 13.0 volts.
          Any ideas out there?

Larry D
Title: Re: House Batteries Showing 16 amp discharge on Shore Power
Post by: David T. Richelderfer on August 14, 2018, 04:27:41 PM
Could be an erroneous reading due to a bad sensor.

Could be some high energy demand device is on.

Could be a short circuit somewhere.

Could be a bad transfer switch.

My first place to look in our coach would be to see if the inverter is set to too low an amperage allowance from shore/generator power.  When I use my 3000w portable generator, I set my inverter to "power sharing" at 10 to 25 amps so the generator's breaker will not get kicked out.  If the sum of electrical devices' demand (water heater, induction cooktop, convection/microwave, etc.) tries to overtax the generator, then the house batteries will power share with the generator and show a discharging condition.  When those devices are later turned off, then the inverter will use generator power to recharge the house batteries.
Title: Re: House Batteries Showing 16 amp discharge on Shore Power
Post by: Steve Huber on August 14, 2018, 04:39:02 PM
Larry,
Try shutting off the circuit breakers one at a time to see if you can isolate a circuit that has the high load. If that doesn't change anything, I'd suspect a bad battery.
Steve