Installing a Victron Smart Shunt on Two House Batteries

[magee-JAY]

I want to install a victron smart shunt to my house battery so i can remotle check with my phone. Has any body done this and i need the wiring instructions.
Thanks
Henry

 

[Morich]

Seems you are not getting too much attention to the post??
Maybe we can reboot and get some better response! Maybe some more info on where you might have looked and what you have now would help. I see a number of videos from Victron on installs. Is there something missing on those or the info that comes with the equipment?

 

[creativepart]

The instructions with the Smart Shunt, and the many YouTube videos really tell all you need to know.

The shunt is inserted between the main negative battery connection and all other negative loads. If you only had one negative load - which you likely have multiple - you would simply take the negative battery cable off of your house battery and attach it to the load side of the shunt. Then run a new battery cable between the shunt's output and the battery's main disconnect.

It get's a tad trickier when you have multiple negative loads, i.e. chassis ground, inverter neg and solar negative. You could stack all of those on the load side of the shunt. But better practice is to get a buss bar and connect each of the negative loads to the buss bar and then run one cable from the buss bar to the negative load side of the shunt, followed by one new neg cable from the shunt output to the negative post of your house battery.

But... I hear you saying I have more than one battery connected in parallel. So, you treat that as ONE battery and it has one main negative terminal and one main positive terminal so you simply connect the shunt's output to the one main negative post.

Here's a diagram:

 

[RV_Lee]

Does it have a lithium house battery? Does the battery have an app? If so you can just check that to monitor charge.

 

[Old Navy]

As long as all you want to monitor is current drawn from your house battery, it's as easy as the diagram @creativepart posted.

I have the BVM-712 which is similar, mounted right on top of my battery.

 

[magee-JAY]

I have two batteries, the load side is on one of the batteries, then a jumper goes over to the second and terminates there. Im assuming the load side is the one that is attached to the shunt and then another negative cable goes to the battery side of the shunt and then attaches to the battery where the load side negative was originaly,
thanks

 

[creativepart]

Yep, with two batteries in either Parallel or Series connection (your's sounds like it's parallel) you treat the combined batteries as one battery.

Do you have more than one main negative cable, and no other cables, on that main neg connection? It's fine to stack up to two, but pretty much if you've got 3 or more you should use a buss bar.

Here's a photo of my buss bar with connections labeled. This was on my previous RV:

 

[Old Navy]

I have two batteries, the load side is on one of the batteries, then a jumper goes over to the second and terminates there. Im assuming the load side is the one that is attached to the shunt and then another negative cable goes to the battery side of the shunt and then attaches to the battery where the load side negative was originaly,
thanks

The shunt's "TO BATTERY MINUS" terminal is connected ONLY to the negative terminal of the battery. Nothing else can be attached to this terminal OR the battery's negative terminal (other than the battery to battery jumper to your parallel battery's negative terminal. The shunt's "TO SYSTEM MINUS" should be connected to chassis ground and negative busbar (if you have one) only.

 

[rshort40]

The directions are confusing but Old Navy explained it. Here’s a picture that should help.

 

[fred21]

I tried using it and was not happy with it and the tech support from the company basically said they didn’t know why it wasn’t working. It is to hard to pull the batteries out to remove it so it just sits there