Smartbank installation

[curzons246]

I am replacing my defunct Sterling alternator to battery charger with the Smartbank advanced split charge relay and Smartguage.

At the moment my two 12v alternators are twined at the Sterling. They don't appear to be included on the wiring diagram for the Smartbank so is it one alternator to the starter battery and one to the domestic bank?

[Iain_S]

Might as well : in which case the Smartbank is a bit redundant (Smartgauge still very useful, though!)

 

Iain

[nicknorman]

Might as well : in which case the Smartbank is a bit redundant (Smartgauge still very useful, though!)

 

Iain

Might as well, yes. But the SB is still useful because the engine battery will take very little recharging and once it's done, the SB will mean the engine battery's alternator can assist with charging the domestic bank.

[tagulablue]

I have had smartbank for 10 years.. our problems were due to size of alternators ... too much charge going into domestic bank and boiling batteries. we now have agm and all seems well. I was told they use smartbank on ambulances and military vechiles but that didn>t make me feel better when we had all our intial problems.

[BargeeSpud]

Might as well : in which case the Smartbank is a bit redundant (Smartgauge still very useful, though!)

 

Iain

 

That depends on your experience, mine isn't great & I will not be having another one. Its information is too limited, SOC & engine/domestic battery voltage are not enough to give you a full picture of what's going on & therefore doesn't represent value for money as a stand alone monitoring system IMO. If you have an Adverc BM or similar that doesn't give you SOC & you want that information, then a SmartGauge as an addition makes sense, but if you don't have anything, then serious considerations of other options makes sense. The Victron BM, for example, gives you voltage on domestic & engine start batteries, amps being consumed, amp hours consumed, SOC & time to go to 0% SOC, all for a similar price.

[nicknorman]

The Victron BM, for example, gives you voltage on domestic & engine start batteries, amps being consumed, amp hours consumed, SOC & time to go to 0% SOC, all for a similar price.

Not really. The Victron BM gives you a fictitious SoC and fictitious time to go to 0% based on a fictitious battery capacity. Well anyway it is fictitious for most people as their batteries have nothing like the stated capacity.

 

If actual SoC is of interest, the Smartgauge is by far the best. I agree that some means of measuring current in and out of the batteries is very useful too, but that can be added seperately and should not be a reason to compromise the SoC indication.

[curzons246]

Thanks for advice/experience folk I can see where I'm going now.

[Theo]

I have had smartbank for 10 years.. our problems were due to size of alternators ... too much charge going into domestic bank and boiling batteries. we now have agm and all seems well. I was told they use smartbank on ambulances and military vechiles but that didn>t make me feel better when we had all our intial problems.

If the alternators were boiling the batteries then I would suggest that they were wrongly regulated. You can have alternators as big as you like provided the regulators are properly set for the type of battery to which they are connected.

 

N

Edited May 5, 2015 by Theo

[Theo]

I think that what the OP will be getting is Smartbank Advanced. There should be a data link between the SG and the SB box. The features for this arrangement are:

 

1. On starting the engine the domestics are not connected until the engine battery is fully charged.

2. If, for some reason your engine battery will not start the engine there is an emergency function which will energise the relay and allow you to start the engine on the domestics.

3. If, while the engine is running, there is a big draw on the domestics (she dries her hair, frinstance) the relay contacts will open to prevent discharge of the engine battery.

 

There might be more but I can't remember at the moment.

 

N

Edited May 5, 2015 by Theo

[BargeeSpud]

Not really. The Victron BM gives you a fictitious SoC and fictitious time to go to 0% based on a fictitious battery capacity. Well anyway it is fictitious for most people as their batteries have nothing like the stated capacity.

If actual SoC is of interest, the Smartgauge is by far the best. I agree that some means of measuring current in and out of the batteries is very useful too, but that can be added seperately and should not be a reason to compromise the SoC indication.

Really? The Victron gives a fictitious SOC, yet the SG doesn't? Are you sure about that Nick? My experience of SG is that it makes it up as it goes along & most of it's readings seem to bear little resemblance to power usage. In my case, I could use the same appliances for the same amount of time at the same time of day & get really wild variances of SOC readings. 1 day would be down to 60%, the next could be 85%. All with an identical power consumption & charging regime, so from my point of view, SG can be pure fiction I'm afraid Nick. In my opinion SG isn't what its cracked up to be.

[nicknorman]

Really? The Victron gives a fictitious SOC, yet the SG doesn't? Are you sure about that Nick? My experience of SG is that it makes it up as it goes along & most of it's readings seem to bear little resemblance to power usage. In my case, I could use the same appliances for the same amount of time at the same time of day & get really wild variances of SOC readings. 1 day would be down to 60%, the next could be 85%. All with an identical power consumption & charging regime, so from my point of view, SG can be pure fiction I'm afraid Nick. In my opinion SG isn't what its cracked up to be.

Well that's your opinion which of course must be respected. However my experience, and that of many others, is contradictory. Perhaps you had an issue either with your particular SG or its installation.

 

It is interesting to note that with my "new" (1 yr old, but still at 100% of their original capacity) Trojan batteries, my Smartgauge and my Mastershunt (AH-counting SoC gauge) are normally within a few % during discharge from 100% to say 60% (I don't tend to go lower). During recharge it is certainly true (and admitted by SG) that the SoC reading is not very good, often 10% or so lagging, although by the time 100% is approached it has caught up again.

 

On the rare occasions that we don't cruise each day to reach 100% SoC, but instead run the engine for a while, what I find is that with repeated cycles down to say 60% and back up to say 85%, the Mastershunt soon goes off the mark and never realigns itself with reality until 100% SoC is reached again at some point in the future, whereas the Smartgauge soon resets itself back to reality as soon as charging is over and discharging begins. This is apparent from only perhaps 3 such cycles and I'm sure with prolonged such use (a typical CMer!) the Mastershunt would be pure fiction whereas the SG would remain pretty accurate, though not perfect as nothing is.

 

In addition of course, an AH-counting gauge has no knowledge of actual capacity. I receive a phonecall from a friend puzzled that his lights had gone dim, fridge no longer working even though his AH-counting gauge said 85%. The batteries were in fact completely flat as they were completely knackered.

 

So I remain convinced that the SG is by far the best means of getting a true SoC indication. It is accurate to within a few % on discharge, somewhat less on recharge but never loses synchronisation big-time, unlike an AH counting gauge.

Edited May 5, 2015 by nicknorman

[BargeeSpud]

Well that's your opinion which of course must be respected. However my experience, and that of many others, is contradictory. Perhaps you had an issue either with your particular SG or its installation.

 

It is interesting to note that with my "new" (1 yr old, but still at 100% of their original capacity) Trojan batteries, my Smartgauge and my Mastershunt (AH-counting SoC gauge) are normally within a few % during discharge from 100% to say 60% (I don't tend to go lower). During recharge it is certainly true (and admitted by SG) that the SoC reading is not very good, often 10% or so lagging, although by the time 100% is approached it has caught up again.

 

On the rare occasions that we don't cruise each day to reach 100% SoC, but instead run the engine for a while, what I find is that with repeated cycles down to say 60% and back up to say 85%, the Mastershunt soon goes off the mark and never realigns itself with reality until 100% SoC is reached again at some point in the future, whereas the Smartgauge soon resets itself back to reality as soon as charging is over and discharging begins. This is apparent from only perhaps 3 such cycles and I'm sure with prolonged such use (a typical CMer!) the Mastershunt would be pure fiction whereas the SG would remain pretty accurate, though not perfect as nothing is.

 

In addition of course, an AH-counting gauge has no knowledge of actual capacity. I receive a phonecall from a friend puzzled that his lights had gone dim, fridge no longer working even though his AH-counting gauge said 85%. The batteries were in fact completely flat as they were completely knackered.

 

So I remain convinced that the SG is by far the best means of getting a true SoC indication. It is accurate to within a few % on discharge, somewhat less on recharge but never loses synchronisation big-time, unlike an AH counting gauge.

 

 

OK Nick, I take your point, but only because your installation is different to mine in that you have a shunt fitted whereas my SG installation doesn't, so I can't directly compare your evidence against mine. When I got my SG, it specifically mentioned that no shunt was required, so maybe the reality is that a shunt is advisory for proper accuracy.

 

Unfortunately for Merlin Equipment, my experience & total confusion with the SG has induced me to considering it to be sierra hotel india tango as a stand alone monitor & I cannot trust it, or them.

Edited May 6, 2015 by BargeeSpud

[nicknorman]

OK Nick, I take your point, but only because your installation is different to mine in that you have a shunt fitted whereas my SG installation doesn't, so I can't directly compare your evidence against mine. When I got my SG, it specifically mentioned that no shunt was required, so maybe the reality is that a shunt is advisory for proper accuracy.

 

Unfortunately for Merlin Equipment, my experience & total confusion with the SG has induced me to considering it to be sierra hotel india tango as a stand alone monitor & I cannot trust it, or them.

My shunt doesn't have anything to do with the Smartgauge, it just helps me to know what is going on in terms of current and AH.

 

I think one area where the SG on its own can get confusing arises from its inaccuracy during recharge. So in our case (with a big alternator) if you stop charging at say 75% indicated on the SG, it is more like 85% or 90% in reality. So when you start to discharge, the SG will hold the 75% indication until the actual SoC drops to 75% after which it will track the SoC correctly. So if you then discharge to say 60% you get what is actually say 30% of the batteries' total energy compared to the 15% indicated by the SG. Alternatively if you noticed that the SG was reading 75% during discharge from 100%, and then discharged further to 60%, you would get actual energy of 15%, the same as the indicated energy.

 

So whilst I'll agree with you that when you don't fully charge to 100% there can be a significant error at the end of charging, this error disappears part way through the discharge and most importantly, the error is not cumulative unlike an AH counting gauge.

Edited May 6, 2015 by nicknorman

[Arnot]

So whilst I'll agree with you that when you don't fully charge to 100% there can be a significant error at the end of charging, this error disappears part way through the discharge and most importantly, the error is not cumulative unlike an AH counting gauge.

Actually I respectfully disagree... an Ah counting gauge is absolutely accurate (if that's what you meant). It's just that this won't give you any idea of how much of your available power you have used up. It knows how much power you have used with absolute precision, it just doesn't know how much you started with. It is true that the SOC indication on the popular Ah indicating instruments does not take into account the degradation of the battery and the inevitable loss of capacity. However, the Smartgauge doesn't know if the battery is on charge or being discharged. Ultimately, any SOC indication will have to be a finger in the wind. It has to make a lot of assumptions in one respect or another.

 

I think that we need to be aware that there is no universal panacea for electrical power storage indication, all of them are just an indication not a calibrated measurement.

 

My thoughts (and suggestions to my customers) are that for the technically challenged or those who just don't want to have to think about it, a Smartgauge is a good call. It will give an intuitive snapshot of the battery state that is good enough to base decisions on. I believe it was originally developed for use in active service military vehicles and I can speak from experience that peering at a miniscule gauge and doing mental calculations is not a good idea when someone is trying to kill you... The downside is that the information it provides is limited.

 

On the other hand, if you are technically minded units such as the Victron BMV700 provide a lot more information, some of which cannot be gained or even inferred from a Smartgauge. One very useful part is to be able to accurately monitor the current flow to or from the battery. This in conjunction with the voltage can give very valuable insight into the condition of the charging system and battery condition.

Another useful feature (from an engineers perspective) is the facility it has to store historical high and low points. This allows me as said engineer to gain valuable information about the battery and charging systems on a boat that I have never seen before or not seen for a long time and thus come to a faster and more accurate diagnosis of a problem.

 

I guess the ideal is to have both. A BMV700 (or 702) somewhere near the engine or instrumentation and a Smartgauge easily seen in the cabin, probably somewhere near the galley.

 

Does this help?

 

Arnot

Edited May 6, 2015 by Arnot