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[Music]  you  [Music]  all right monitoring okay  so we've actually believe or not I've  done all of this now pretty much even  did the inverter and we're going to talk  a little bit about the panel there and  we're gonna go into monitoring why is  monitoring so important you want to be  in the note so question earlier on was  Jeff I have a voltmeter on my boat I'm  good I don't need a battery monitor I'm  like oh okay  interesting you must be aware then and  we're just sharing knowledge that we  both know but let's just remind  ourselves that battery voltage is only  an indication of capacity if your  battery has neither been charged nor  discharged for a 24-hour period and  therefore when you're reading your volt  meter  you must stop all discharge in discharge  for a 24-hour period  let your battery voltage to come to rest  like a Harding like a resting heart rate  right wait 24 hours look at the volt  meter and then make an assessment on the  capacity and then start using your  batteries again now that seems really  plausible and practical on a boat no  clearly the only time that's a really  plausible is on an engine battery think  how often that makes sense you start  your engine you use your engine you stop  24 hours later you go and see your  voltmeter you've neither used your  engine battery nor started it and/or  charge it probably for 24 hours good no  problem now your battery capacity with a  voltmeter on your engine battery's  doable how in the world are you going to  be able to infer battery capacity off of  your house battery when it's used it's  like saying oh you know what Jeff I'm  gonna figure out if you're healthy or  not looking at your heart rate at any  given moment and I'm not gonna take into  consideration what you're doing as an  activity level Oh weird why is your  heart rate 160 oh my I'm spinning oh  okay why is your heart rate 145 Oh  actually I'm going up a bunch of stairs  and I'm running I'm working out Oh heart  rate is a function of activity level  volts is a function of what you've done  doing now  what you did just a little short while  ago what you've been doing for the last  24 hours so you can't use both as an  indication of capacity it's a crude  method of knowing am I in the ballpark  that's all it is am I in the ballpark  one thing about AC volts which is great  because volts AC volts don't have  batteries is having an AC voltmeter on  your boat so you know before you connect  to shore power if you have low volts  coming in because believe it or not in  destination marinas right places where  they're only open two months of the year  and let's be honest they're struggling  they're not gonna have the best power  grid on the dock in the middle of  nowhere and you might come to a marina  where there's a bunch of hundred footers  that decide to plug in and are running  the world like they're connected to  North America on the continent and  they're on a real grid and the voltage  is dropping like free-falling the  generator can't keep up with the demand  of all these boats so you might be  playing into marina that only has 195  volts but you don't know that the marina  operators not BC Hydro it doesn't have  a techy on the dock measuring what's  happening it assumes that everything's  fine now if you plug in your boat 295  volts  do you think your up AC appliances are  gonna have a good time No so before you  connect to a dock you always want to  know what the output voltage is at that  marina right the one you're gonna  connect to and that's why the code says  that you should have an easy vote meter  connected to the line side before you  even turn the breaker on you want to  know what the AC volts is before you  turn the breaker on so you go oh yeah  120 115 I'm good  turn the breaker on question nope no not  unless you have a boost which is  complicated but isolation transformer  does not change voltage per se unless  you have a boost isolation transformer  isolation shred I'm not you know what  I'm not gonna go there nope that's fine  there's none  yeah we're not gonna go there a cat  can't time I know unless you guys are  willing to spend the evening with me but  not gonna happen can't go there I wanted  to do isolation transformer there's so  much stuff I had to leave I can't do it  so basically the big thing about we can  talk later on I'm can be here forever  but not everyone I'm assuming DC  voltmeter big thing that you got to ask  yourself this is a common common common  question that I get all the time in this  mystery my battery monitor my battery is  at twelve point six my DC meter on my  panels at twelve point four that is  because a voltage drop the pressure the  voltage downstream of something is not  the same thing as the pressure of the  source right it's like anything right  you start water it's called a head  pressure you start something and you go  down the pressure is not going to be  same downstream so when you're looking  at voltage on your boat and you're  looking at meters what voltage are you  looking at are you looking at the  voltage at a load at an appliance like a  panel distribution point or are you  looking at voltage at the battery right  that's very different  so that think of mine and know where  that voltage is because if you're basing  your decisions on if your batteries are  charged or not charged based on volts of  the panel you might be off by point two  point three volts so that's really big  these new ole's are amazing old that  battery monitor or volt meters had to be  you had a source selector and you were  normally they were momentary because  they actually draw power when they're on  the new ones the OLED they're so low  power draw that you can leave them on  all the time they're like milliamps  that's an OLED one see I installed one  of those always-on on my engine battery  on my boat always there because I think  information is power and I want to know  that my engine battery is always there  that thing is like twenty thirty bucks  it's like amazing tiny this big awesome  awesome and I know all the time I'm  always looking at my DC panel I'm like  oh look my engine battery twelve four  eight twelve point eight to twelve point  seven eight like beautiful this stuff is  crude it's sort of like  did I hit the ball in the ballpark yeah  kind of like you're not gonna make any  decisions on this it's like do I have a  battery or I don't is it sort of  charging I think or is it dead like  you've got like maybe three four set  points with an analog meter there are  very very crude ways of knowing what's  happening with your batteries