SpongeBob's Power Management System

[davidbrady]

Ross,

Good stuff! Thanks for giving us a window into the workings of the M450. If the amperage demand exceeds the Smart EMS's limit of 30A is there some wiggle room in the over amperage before load pruning takes place? For example, a surge current could push you over for a brief period and within the circuit breakers slow-trip specs.

SpongeBob's answer to that is to taper off the charging amperage or to start drawing battery power and syncing with the shore power to satisfy the transient load. It's required that I reach into the inverters to set the shore, generator, and charger max AC amps level. Once I do this then the inverters will do their best to taper off charging or sync up battery power to meet the demand as it exceeds the available shore power.

Al,

I have 8 4D Lifeline batteries which theoretically should power two full-time cruiseairs for three hours, maybe a gnats hair longer if they cycle in the usual manner. With the AC off and using the bus in the normal manner including running the fridge, I've gone 60 hours without starting the generator. The generator auto start is built into the Trace inverters and it's one of the few that actually look at rate of power depletion and not simply voltage.