diy solar

diy solar

To shunt or not to shunt...

Looks great ?
But I don't understand the difference to the shunt suggested in technical terms re Lead-acid, but am certainly happy to use something that is much easier to mount and 50% cheaper. Maybe someone in this thread is able to comment?

It's a Hall effect sensor. It measures the magnetic field around the wire and computes a current.

A shunt is a resistor. Current is calculated based on the voltage drop across the resistor.

They do the same thing using different methods.

You are most certainly correct, well spotted @sunshine_eggo. Given Victron is 3mm shorter width ie 130mm (vs 133 × 71 × 34 mm is my existing PWM) I believe I could still mount Victron unit and have it jutting out from current vertical backboard 186mm, like a shelf, to look down upon controllers interface instead. After doing some measurements it will fit with superfine tolerance of error, but I believe I can do it, see mock-up below.
View attachment 79040

Victrons are designed to be vertically mounted. Otherwise, their cooling fins are not nearly as effective.

I dont understand why, but I will take your word on that.

Because the Victrons are limited to 100V. 3S of your panels would be about 120V.
 
Would this really make that much of a difference?
If your regular Ampere are less than 100 Amps in/out, then I expect no difference on a 350Amp rated shunt.

btw, the AiLi 350Amp Shunt that i have actually says 500A on the metal. so they sold it advertising 70% of the max rating.

it could probably take 500A but for a short time.

if its running at 350A all day then it could heat up. main undesirable side effect might be: heated up shunt report inaccurate Amps by some percent

100A or less on a 350A rated shunt should be fine.

disclaimer: i'm amateur. 500A*70%=350A so 100A would be only 30% of the 350A number which is supposed to be ok. hope this helps somewhat.

in an extreme case, the fins being oriented flat will result in less convection air cooling the shunt, like 300A+ for hour or more, then the shunt would heat up and report some percentage inaccurate Amp measurement

but in this case i doubt it will become an issue until a lot more stuff is added and running constantly.

usually shunt makers try to make it out of materials that do not change their properties much when temperature change. like how rubber becomes hard cold soft hot, but with electrical resistance instead
 
If your regular Ampere are less than 100 Amps in/out, then I expect no difference on a 350Amp rated shunt.

Using a shunt that is somewhat close to the right range for your loads is best though. i.e. Try not to use a 1000a rated shunt for loads that are never >100a because it won't be very accurate.

I believe that in general the larger the shunt ampacity, the lower the precision of the measurements.
 
Using a shunt that is somewhat close to the right range for your loads is best though. i.e. Try not to use a 1000a rated shunt for loads that are never >100a because it won't be very accurate.

I believe that in general the larger the shunt ampacity, the lower the precision of the measurements.

Correct. The entire current magnitude is over 50, 75 or 100mV depending on shunt design, so a 100A 50mV shunt has 10X the precision of a 1000A 50mV shunt.

Generally speaking, and this too varies by shunt manufacturer, max continuous should be 66-80% of the shunt's rating, e.g., a 100A shunt should not be run continuously above 66-80A depending on manufacturer.
 
the AiLi shunt here says 500A 75mV on the metal but it's advertised as 350A 50mV
350/500 = 0.7
0.7 * 75mV = 52.5mV
 
Using a shunt that is somewhat close to the right range for your loads is best though. i.e. Try not to use a 1000a rated shunt for loads that are never >100a because it won't be very accurate.

I believe that in general the larger the shunt ampacity, the lower the precision of the measurements.
accurate!! using a 350A rated shunt with 100A or less will result in relatively degraded accuracy/precision relative to if used with 350A max

but even if degraded, it still might provide a great value ?

like having 20/20 vision vs 20/40 vision, still technically have vision ;)
 
Correct. The entire current magnitude is over 50, 75 or 100mV depending on shunt design, so a 100A 50mV shunt has 10X the precision of a 1000A 50mV shunt.

Generally speaking, and this too varies by shunt manufacturer, max continuous should be 66-80% of the shunt's rating, e.g., a 100A shunt should not be run continuously above 66-80A depending on manufacturer.
66 - 80% of max shunt Amperes can be used to have optimized time, to not over stress the hardware, thank you for this recommendation.

the AiLi shunt i have seems to have a 70% "derating factor" where the hardware says X but they take X times 0.7 (or 70%) to get the continuous rating
 
Here is what I don't get.
I think everyone who is trying to get as much as they can out of their solar system, fights tooth and nail to move as much power as efficiently as possible. Why add more connections which intentionally increase resistance?
Am I making a big deal out of nothing?
 
It's a Hall effect sensor. It measures the magnetic field around the wire and computes a current.
A shunt is a resistor. Current is calculated based on the voltage drop across the resistor.
They do the same thing using different methods.
Any objections to using the Hall Effect sensor vs a budget shunt suggested; given that it seems to be a much easier install, and much cheaper?
 
Any objections to using the Hall Effect sensor vs a budget shunt suggested; given that it seems to be a much easier install, and much cheaper?
Been using Hall Effect sensors for decades now. They tend to pickup less when they start aging (5+ years) and drift with temperature (shunts do the same)

Further they are influenced by external fields. They pickup other electric stuff which is turned on. So wherever you mount them - make sure that there are no other wires close by. Leave plenty of distance to anything else electronic.

Otherwise, Hall Effect sensor themselves are pretty bullet prof - usually the electronic driving and reading them are garbage. The sensors never fail - but the electronics, which you need to see results.
 
It I think it's because folks have been using shunts for so long.

Perhaps it's simply a hard habit to break.
Good shunt setup is lot more accurate on low current than (budget)hall sensor.
Hall sensors have quite large offsets, +-0.5A for the linked 100A model if I found the right specs.
Resonably good shunt setup on the other hand can have something like 0.01A to 0.05A offset making it 10 to 50 times more accurate at low currents.
 
hall effect less accurate than resistor shunt for small usage (when amps low like 0-1amps)

hall effect influenced by environment can cause temporary lower accuracy

shunt "wastes" power because it's a resistor, but it's a fairly small amount. hall effect sensor has no wasted energy (ok a TINY bit from the CT sensor but it's at least 100x less than shunt

if asked between the two, i would recommend shunt resistor type, due to less vulnerable to interference from environment, along with higher accuracy
 
Good shunt setup is lot more accurate on low current than (budget)hall sensor.
Hall sensors have quite large offsets, +-0.5A for the linked 100A model if I found the right specs.
Resonably good shunt setup on the other hand can have something like 0.01A to 0.05A offset making it 10 to 50 times more accurate at low currents.
Any suggestions for a "non budget" hall effect type monitor?
I had not realized the offsets could skew the numbers so much. Thanks for pointing that out. (y)
 
hall effect less accurate than resistor shunt for small usage (when amps low like 0-1amps)

hall effect influenced by environment can cause temporary lower accuracy

shunt "wastes" power because it's a resistor, but it's a fairly small amount. hall effect sensor has no wasted energy (ok a TINY bit from the CT sensor but it's at least 100x less than shunt

if asked between the two, i would recommend shunt resistor type, due to less vulnerable to interference from environment, along with higher accuracy
Hall effect current sensors can be suprisingly power-hungry.
to get any better accuracy you have to go to closed-loop hall effect sensors and these typically output current proportional to primary current.
one example:
300A sensor that needs 140mA +-15v supply = apprx 4.5 watts.
now if we select shunt smartly we might opt for 50% derating and using 600A 60mV shunt. that is same as 300A with 30mV loss= 9 watts
 
Further they are influenced by external fields. They pickup other electric stuff which is turned on. So wherever you mount them - make sure that there are no other wires close by. Leave plenty of distance to anything else electronic.
Do you have any idea if wires could be replaced with shielded wires, or shield the existing wires to reduce the effects of external fields?

If you know of a decent product, please insert a link. Thanks
 
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