My old VA (Volt-Amp) meter on my ’97 Rexhall Rexair never displayed the correct current reading. In addition to that, the ‘charging’ light was always lit so I never really knew whether the batteries were charging or discharging.
In addition to that, the old battery shunt was damaged. I may have done it myself, but I do know it was bent out of shape.
In order to address both of these issues, I decided to add a Renogy Core One and Renogy Shunt 300 to my DC power system. Since I already upgraded my solar panels and controller to Renogy, this seemed like the logical choice. See THIS post about the solar panel installation.
I made a wood block and stained it to match the trim since the Renogy Core One was too large to fit where the old VA meter was.
The Renogy Core One also provides leveling information that is sent via bluetooth to my iPhone. Definitely a great feature since I don’t have automatic levelers like most of the Rexhalls do.
I moved the shunt location next to my inverter which is under the front dinette bench directly above the battery compartment. I had to drill a hole for the 2/0 negative battery cable. The motorhome already had existing cables which I used for the other connections. The red wire is Coach Battery Positive, and the green wire is Chassis Battery Positive. The black wire is a thermistor wire to monitor battery temperature. The orange/white wires provide amperage information to my dashboard VA meter.
After the physical installation, you can set the parameters to match your system. I have 4 6v flooded batteries rated at 230ah each, so my total ah at 12 volts is 460. The SOC voltage for my batteries is 12.84 volts, so this is the parameter I used for that. I discovered that my parasitic draw on my rig is 500ma. The solar panel easily makes up for this even on cloudy days.
Leave a Reply