Living Off-Grid 101 - Battery Monitors and Control Panels

Written by: Randy Anderson, Technical Sales & Training Manager

Our next topic is battery monitors and control panels. So what does a battery monitor do? Essentially, what it does is it measures the amount of amperage in and out. Now this device is actually connected to a shunt, so the shunt measures the amount of amperage going out of the battery pack and coming back into the battery pack from different charge sources.

The battery monitor is a device that controls the depth of discharge with a battery pack so you can precisely control how deep you’re discharging a battery pack. If you want the battery pack discharged to 80% depth of discharge, or 50% depth of discharge, or whatever the number is, you can configure that in the battery monitor. So again, you set up what size the battery pack is, and it knows how many amps are going out and how much are coming back in so it can control exactly what the depth of discharge is in the battery.

With the battery monitor, you're going to maximize your battery life. We know that controlling depth of discharge is one of the best ways to maximize battery life. So this would be a device that's going to control that better than other devices that are controlled solely on voltage.

The system control panel in the system is essentially used to configure the system, make changes, and view any setting changes or any faults or warnings in the inverter and system. Again, these Schneider devices all communicate on a Xanbus Network, connected via Cat 5 cable.

That’s it on battery monitors and control panels. If you have any questions on this topic, or any others, please give us a shout through our contact us page!

Watch the video: