Renogy 500A Battery Monitor, Tester with Shunt, Battery Meter Power System

The Renogy 500A Battery Monitor with Shunt was received in good condition. It was professionally packaged and is of good quality. My application is the off-grid power source for my well. The input is 860-Watt peak solar array, output through the batteries to a 3000-Watt, 230 Volt AC inverter to power my well pump. The on-time duty cycle of the pump is low. Follow the instructions and connect both the C- charge source and the P- Output (load) to the Shunt sampler P- terminal. Also "Teach" your battery bank capacity to the monitor per the instructions. Keep in mind that the Amp reading and Watt reading is the Net current and Net power. Example; you may have 10 Amps coming from the charge source, but a 4 Amp load so the Battery monitor will read +6 Amps going to the battery. With no charge source current (solar panels in the dark) the meter will read -4 Amps for the same load. Think of it as the old center 0 analog Amp meter, but with much more useful tracking of the Net Amp-hours going in and out and percent of remaining capacity of the battery bank. It should be used with a quality charge controller that has an Amp meter so you can distinguish the total solar power output. My charge controller cable going to the sampler P- terminal is AWG 4 because my solar array is capable of 52 Amps peak output. My load cable going between the sampler P- terminal and the 3000-Watt inverter is AWG 2/0 because it can draw over 250 Amps. My only complaint is the mounting of the meter itself. It is designed to be snapped into a panel rectangular cutout dashboard rather than surface mounted on a wall. I Macgyvered a mounting bracket for it from what I had available. Overall, it is good value, good quality, accurate and reliable.

Very nice product, a couple of things to note. there is no mounting plate, I don't know what others have done but I made one out of 1/8 black plastic made for easier install on the wall. You will need to know your values for the different types of batteries. The instructions are somewhat confusing. for my interstate AGM's 100AH, I have three so I used CAP: 300.0 AH Full V: 13.5 Zero V: 11.8 Power off V: 10.5 V Alarm 90 for the AGM's I called the battery company to get the first three values, used chat GPT to help with the others and to better understand what each means. It is nice to have some numbers to see what is going on I hope this helps? To dim the background lighting, I push the up arrow once and a flashing light bulb blinks says 8 use the down arrow to adjust to 0 for off. to turn on again touch the up arrow and adjust up. it is pretty simple. I find the instructions could be a bit more in depth. I wanted to install this on my dash but the cord provided is only 20 foot long, on my motor home I would have needed 35 to 40 feet, it would be nice if there was and option when purchasing to have options of different lengths. I I know you can get Bluetooth, But I really like things being hard wired. Over all I like the monitor better than the amp meter on the coach. Only option i had was to mount this in the rear of the RV took some time but the end result is nice clean finish.

Just a backgroud. I had purchase 2 of the L**X brand, the full color version. Looked great. But the menu was no longer the one that they have now. It seems there are 3 versions and no one has the one I had. They never tid work based on extensive instructions from the selle. FAST FORWARD TO RENOGY! EXCELLENT ALL THE WAY AROUND! For the two I had, I swapped out thee shunt, did a little rewirie to clean up the backup battery setup, connecte dthe Renogy and it powered on. The default Ah is 100 and that's what I have. All set up with nothing else to do! Aftre about 15 hours of work on the others with no results, I am AMAZED. Now THIS is how you do it. I did the soemwhat more difficult replacement in my ham radio portable kit (inside a rack-mount case, where the shelves have to be removed). Replacing the shunt and everything else wasn't as easy, that not due to Renogy; my setup is compact and under layers and it is hard to get to things inside. But for making the mounting plate to replace the smaller piece I had, I just plugged in tin and there it was! Set the capacity (will need to redo after a full charge and there, right in the menu was an easy setting for the Ah, which took moments. Everything works as it is supposed to and all very easy. Almost sets itself up once installed and powered Love my Renogy suitcase panels and these are completely excellent. The screen, when off, is a dim grayscale, but draws no current at all somehow. Looks fine in the light. The green screen wout be nice in high contrast plack and white or full color, but I only mention this to my low vision. I can do without the nice screen for this easy setup and bigger screen. BUY THS IS YOU NEED A MOINITOR (OR TWO OR THREEE!)

Nice design. Well packaged. Clear instructions. Simple interface. Good screen layout. Adjustable backlight. Good screen contrast. The shunt is factory calibrated by filing on the edge of the resistive element. This was expected. But compared to my calibrated current meter it is off by about -10%. Meaning it reads current levels about 10% lower amplitude than actual. It is symetric around 0 though, so charging and discharging % is correct as long as the battery capacity is derated by 10% also. And since it is -10% that means I could file it some more to bring it in to spec. But I decided to just leave it as is. My old setup used a hall sensor which was very accurate in the charging polarity, but as I eventually discovered it was way off in the discharging polarity. Having a symetric current sensor is much more important than having a perfectly accurate current sensor. According to the box there is a 350A model available which would have been better for my application, but I could not find that version for sale. My only gripe is that I wish there was an alarm output. Something that changes state when the low voltage alarm is active.

I have been running this monitor in my RV for over a year now and it continues to work great. I mounted the shunt on the wall behind the batteries and there was enough cable to install the display above my circuit breaker box about twelve feet away. It looks like it came from the factory that way. Installation was straight forward. I have 228 Amp Hours of batteries and it is so easy to monitor them now. I like the provided metrics, the +/- indicator of how many amps are being charged or drained, how many watts are being consumed, the estimated time (hours:mins) remaining until zero, and the battery percentage. Since I'm running lead-acid batteries I have to keep them above 50%.

My $150k RV has a dumb battery meter that tries to guess capacity from voltage. Adding this meter gave me actually useful info. It’s awesome how it seamlessly switches between time remaining (when on discharge) to time until full (when charging). It’s been flawless. I 3D printed a small housing for it and it looks right home in my RV. The shunt was easy to install and can handle big current without adding resistance. I looked at cheaper options and they came with bad shunts, small screws/lugs, and got poor reviews for reliability. Don’t do it- just get the Renogy.

Overall, I am happy, and it seems to work well. It is reading about 0.1 V low compared to reliable mutitester but who knows which one is better. I screwed up my cutout for a panel install and ended up 3d printing a case for it. (search Thingaverse) I mounted that to a wood panel and glued it over my 'so called cutout'. It would be a nice addition for Renogy to include a case. The 20-foot sensor cable sounds long till you start snaking around the camper to get inside but I found a route that worked. One thing I do not like is if you run a load and it goes to say 80%, the lightest charge applied then causes the meter to show 100% even though it is clearly not. Removing the charge then shows the accurate percentage it is just not what I expected. Renogy support was easy to reach and seemed helpful, they said this is normal. I am not 100% sure they were understanding me and told me to set my capacity to 140 Ah even though my battery is rated at 120 Ah. This is contrary to their manual and most internet sources so I am not going to do that.

This battery monitor has a major design flaw. It doesn't accurately "count" amp hour usage, and mostly works based on voltage coming in and out of the battery. For example, I have this monitor installed in my vehicle to monitor capacity on a 100ah LiFePO4 battery that I use to power a small refrigerator. Whenever I start the engine and the battery charges the capacity jumps to 100% from 90 or 95 percent even though the battery was only charging for a few seconds. The slightly higher charging voltage makes it appear fully charged instantly, so this monitor is not very accurate.

Bem acabado, gostei

Works fantastic. Good directions. Monitor as it should lots of settings low voltage warnings etc.

Items works well very happy

Works great. Installed on a fully enclosed mobility scooter to accurately determine amp hour capacity for resizing battery replacements required for the distance needed out of one charge. The only drawbacks are that the lugs are quite large for my application (max 20a) so I had to install new wire lugs to fit. Secondly, the manufacturer doesn’t offer a surface mounting option which I need, so I have to fabricate a custom solution. Compared voltage and amperage readings against a good portable power meter and found accurate within 2%, good enough for my needs. Disappointed that the box it came in say’s assembled in China as I thought it was American made. I have other products from Renogy and am impressed with the quality so I bought this meter. Hoping for the same…

Eu precisei inserir um cabo de 10 m desde o Shunt, que fica atrás junto às baterias, até o painel que está na frente do MH. Funcionou direitinho, usei um cabo de rede Ethernet TP Cat-5E para isso e aos pares. Fiz os ajustes de capacidade do banco de baterias, das tensões máxima e mínima, mas ele não me pareceu muito preciso para determinar a capacidade de carga em Ah do banco de baterias. Me pareceu que ele usa apenas a tensão das baterias para essa estimativa de capacidade. Mas resolveu o meu problema de saber o consumo de corrente e a carga que está sendo feita via o painel solar, alternador ou o carregador DC. Isso é bem eficiente, além da tensão das baterias.