Renogy battery monitor doesn’t show solar panel incoming watts/amps

[Chevchick]

Hey y’all. Hoping someone could help me figure my issue out. Everything was working fine until I went to 8 on my induction cooktop and blew the main fuse to my system. Now I can’t get the monitor to read correctly. It no longer shows a charge from the solar panels. I’ve checked all connections & fuses and found nothing out of the ordinary. Is it possible I fried something in the monitor itself and should buy a new one? Here’s what I’m running:
Renogy 4x100 watt solar panels
Renogy 2000 W pure sine wave inverter/charger
Renogy wanderer 30A PWM SCC
Renogy 2x 170ah batteries
Renogy battery monitor

 

[sunshine_eggo]

Can't really tell anything meaningful from the pictures.

Do all loads and chargers pass through the shunt, or are any directly connected to the battery (-). I'm seeing a LOT of cables to the (-) terminal and only one on the shunt.

 

[Chevchick]

Can't really tell anything meaningful from the pictures.

Do all loads and chargers pass through the shunt, or are any directly connected to the battery (-). I'm seeing a LOT of cables to the (-) terminal and only one on the shunt.

I believe they all pass through the shunt. Everything worked fine before I blew the main fuse. Now I can’t get the monitor to show the correct data. My inverter/charger always shows full. I bought it set up this way, so I apologize for not knowing the system better.

 

[sunshine_eggo]

It's possible that you're only noticing a difference. That doesn't mean everything was working correctly.

You don't need to know the system. You can personally trace all the negative connections to the battery and where they go. If any of them go directly to devices, it's not wired correctly. They should all go to the shunt before they go to any devices.

If it's truly wired correctly, it may have been damaged, though that seems unlikely.

Would try a complete system shutdown including cutting the main disconnect switch AND disconnecting the small b+ wire from the shunt. Let it sit for about a minute, reconnect the b+ wire and turn the main switch on.

 

[mikefitz]

The shunt is wired incorrectly, with all the connections to the battery negative, the monitor will never have indicated true battery status. To be blunt the wiring is a mess and must be difficult to fault find. Connecting major positive and negative cables to buss bars rather than the battery direct ensures reliable connections. It seems you have inherited the system, so its advised to fully examine and ensure cable sizes are correct for the currents expected and over current protection , fuses and/or breakers, are installed where necessary.

Mike

 

[Chevchick]

The shunt is wired incorrectly, with all the connections to the battery negative, the monitor will never have indicated true battery status. To be blunt the wiring is a mess and must be difficult to fault find. Connecting major positive and negative cables to buss bars rather than the battery direct ensures reliable connections. It seems you have inherited the system, so its advised to fully examine and ensure cable sizes are correct for the currents expected and over current protection , fuses and/or breakers, are installed where necessary.
View attachment 144378
Mike

Thanks for the info. I think I’ll definitely go through it all and try to trace things down better.

 

[Chevchick]

It's possible that you're only noticing a difference. That doesn't mean everything was working correctly.

You don't need to know the system. You can personally trace all the negative connections to the battery and where they go. If any of them go directly to devices, it's not wired correctly. They should all go to the shunt before they go to any devices.

If it's truly wired correctly, it may have been damaged, though that seems unlikely.

Would try a complete system shutdown including cutting the main disconnect switch AND disconnecting the small b+ wire from the shunt. Let it sit for about a minute, reconnect the b+ wire and turn the main switch on.

Thanks! I’ll try the complete system shutdown first and see if that works. If not, I’m thinking I need to just trace where everything goes and find the fault there. Appreciate the info.

 

[Chevchick]

The shunt is wired incorrectly, with all the connections to the battery negative, the monitor will never have indicated true battery status. To be blunt the wiring is a mess and must be difficult to fault find. Connecting major positive and negative cables to buss bars rather than the battery direct ensures reliable connections. It seems you have inherited the system, so its advised to fully examine and ensure cable sizes are correct for the currents expected and over current protection , fuses and/or breakers, are installed where necessary.
View attachment 144378
Mike

I just found the P- is going directly to the inverter/charger. The B- goes to the negative on one of the batteries. I’m assuming that’s wrong?

 

[Rednecktek]

The B- should go to the battery and EVERYTHING ELSE goes to the P- bolt.

 

[Chevchick]

Update- I tried the reset with the B+. Didn’t change anything. I did, however, find that the solar panels are wired to fuses next to the SCC and then they go directly to one of the batteries. Should the positive cable be wired to the shunt? To the P-?

 

[Chevchick]

 

[sunshine_eggo]

ALL (-) wires to/from loads/chargers should be connected to P-

 

[Black Pearl]

If you didn't make any changes to the system after the blowing a fuse incident, kinda makes me wonder if something else didn't trip, blow, come loose, or fry when that happened. I say this because I basically have the same meter, and seen this happen several weeks ago.

When I recently re did my own setup, the layout was quite a bit different than the former, and I had several brain farts while re wiring it. I accidentally connected my negative output from my solar charge controller (SCC) directly to my new negative master battery buss bar - before the shunt, and my solar input was no longer seen.

Completely different set of circumstances here, and mine was an easy fix. Not sure if my input will be helpful to your troubleshooting, IDK.

Edit - @Chevchick , Thought I'd mention that my monitor looks identical, and functions identically, but it isn't a Renogy branded meter. I may have bought mine before Renogy got their hands on the legalities and/or marketing of this particular meter.

I've never had a single hiccup from my meter over a period of several years. I just read a bunch of reviews on Amazon regarding the Renogy branded meter, starting with lower reviews first, looking for problems similar to what you are reporting. I didn't read everything, but never seen anything like you are reporting. Their meters certainly do screw up, die prematurely, unexpectedly, etc, on an unknown amount of occasions.

Strange that this happened in the same time frame as the fuse blowing incident. Coincidence? IDK... That's why I thought maybe something like a connection between the SCC and the end connections had came loose, or something like I previously suggested.

 

[mikefitz]

The basic system, assuming two 12v batteries in parallel, should look like this,

 

[42OhmsPA]

Please address this yesterday.

 

[Rednecktek]

Update- I tried the reset with the B+. Didn’t change anything. I did, however, find that the solar panels are wired to fuses next to the SCC and then they go directly to one of the batteries. Should the positive cable be wired to the shunt? To the P-?

Yup, there's your problem. The charging is bypassing the shunt so it doesn't see any watts going into the battery.