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so here we are again on a cruiser 420

Express and we've recently installed a

large battery bank about 400 amp hours l

16 wired in series to make a 12-volt

battery bank and it was really essential

and what I always recommend to owners is

know where you are you know I think it's

especially with a battery bank know what

your depth of discharges and the only

way of knowing that is really with a

battery monitor and a battery monitor is

not adjustable meter of course it gives

you volts but it also gives you other

really pertinent formation the two ones

I really always recommend to people to

look at is capacity expressed as a

percentage so readily available and

understandable so a little bit in our

cars it's may be fractions you know full

half full 3/4 full quarter full but on

here they just show that as a percentage

so 50 percent 70 percent 25 percent and

then the other thing too is it shows you

amps in and out and this here actually

the meter actually the shunt is close to

the end the house bank but what the user

is going to be or the boater is going to

be checking is actually right here at

the battery monitor and the battery

monitor on this bone is a victim arm

battery monitor and right now the first

thing you'll notice is it's a little bit

dark and that's a way for the screen not

to burn out so you can press any button

and you're not really going to change

what you're seeing you're just kind of

waking it up so I press a button and

here we see that we're looking at

percentage and you can see actually it

says a hundred percent meaning the house

batteries are currently full and that

makes sense because we're actually right

now charging the batteries because we're

connected to shore power and we can

actually see that here on the Victor on

AC mains are on and we're on the charger

Mo's inverter charger mode on so we've

got 100% capacity and with AGM batteries

you can obviously like they're all let

acid batteries but depending on the make

you can compromise a little bit and

bring your batteries down to obviously

50 percent and sometimes even thirty

percent and so as an owner you want to

kind of make sure that you don't ever go

below 30 percent especially with these

aging and batteries 50 is probably

preferable but you can do it sometimes

and then know when it's time to actually

reach this

start the generator run the engine or

however you need to to actually get the

batteries recharged because there's a

big sacrifice that happens when you

bring your batteries down to zero or ten

point five volts you know capacity or

heavy complete discharge of the battery

is going to affect the number of cycles

so batteries are at play between two

variables how many times can you use

them and what's the depth of discharge

and so the deeper the depth of discharge

the least amount of cycles you're going

to be able to use so good compromises

around 50% or 30% on some AGM makes so

the next thing that's really useful in a

battery monitor which I really like is

seeing the amps so here on this Victor

on battery monitor you just simply press

the down arrow and then eventually we're

going to get two amps and you can see a

little a right here and amps can either

be positive or negative negative amps

means you're drawing from the battery's

positive that means you're charging and

that's really good as a way to kind of

figure out if you're using too much

power and also to extrapolate and figure

out how long can you stay an anchor

because if you're on your boat and

you're suddenly using you know 40 amps

why are you using 40 amps on this sized

boat what's on maybe you left your radar

on maybe your TV and is on or maybe

you've left the coffee pot on and your

inverters on it's really important to be

able to gauge what's being drawn from

the batteries and the aunt tells you

that it's a way it's like a speedometer

car how fast are you going if you're in

a school zone you've got to be looking

at your speedometer to know that you're

not going over 20 cars an hour or 30

kilometers an hour and it's the same

thing with the apps if you're going to

about to call it for a night you know

why are you drawing 30 amps on a boat

like this you know all the lights should

be off pretty much the only thing that

should be on is your fridge and maybe

some lights and anchor light maybe the

chart plotter if you're looking at your

location but you should have very

limited limited loads and so amps is a

really good way of assessing what your

loads are but also figuring out what

your charge rate is how many ants are

you getting when you're running your

engines on this specific boat he has a

diode combiner you know from the

alternator so he's going to have limited

output figure out okay look I'm

recharging right now but I'm not

recharging that much so I got to run my

engines for long

to get my batteries charged and so

that's a way for them to know the speed

at which they're recharging the

batteries and that's really useful

you

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