PL20 for lithium batteries

Did you set it on 4 or 2?
OBJ

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Wozza, if you have the PL20 connected to a battery and no input or load connected, solar or otherwise, then as RMD has said, it can read no more than the battery voltage. An expensive voltmeter.
Setting "4" simply enables the "event controller" and, as no "event" is going to occur, it is pointless. So it matters not if you select 2, 4, or any other program item.

Not only will it just be a voltmeter, but it will also be a fairly useless one for Lithium. The PL20 only has 1 decimal digit. Not enough to even know if your battery is full or 80% discharged.

The OP will need a Battery Monitor for Lithium given the voltage doesn't drop much till around 80% DOD.

i have it set up through the shunt everything is set up as normal except there is no solar input into the unit.it still reads every thing to do with the battery .i have 1000watts of solar through redarc dc/dc 40 amp mppt charger,also a 240 vx40amp voltech charger which is then hooked to the pl20 via the batteries. it was reading everything on setting 2 but after speaking to plasmatronics i have changed it to 4 and put in the lithium setting for the dingo.it is more accurate now.it is far from useless. i put up the 1st post before i rang plasmatronics.

Wouldnt you have to add external shunts for the reading of amperage flow and percentage of capacity?

Wozza
As BigFish said you would need a shunt AND/OR be having current run through the regulator somehow to register Coulohmbs/electron flowing and out to have it determine SOC. If just voltage and not current through unit, how can it be doing what you say? It does IF used as the regulator of a current input source it would seem, but you aren't doing that. Are you running items off it's load terminals from the connected battery? That might register outs, but there are no IN's. We is all a but confused with what you are doing.

yes it is wired through the shunt on the negative side and to the battery on the positive side it just doesnt have the solar wired into the pl20 everything else is the same except that and it reads the input and state and what goes in and out and also voltage from the other chargers and maintains the history side of things . i have been using it for quite a while now but wanted to be sure of the settings which i have now corrected thanks to plasmatronics tech advise.i used the pl20 before i upgraded to redarc mppt dc/dc 40 amp and thought i could use it as a monitor to save buying one.

Looking at the wiring diagram and manual the unit needs power to come in through the solar panel connection. Its a PWM style regulator and has a voltage drop of 0.2 - 0.3V

It seems to me that you would need the power to be applied to the solar input ( otherwise how can the shunt measure the current?) It specifically says that power should not be applied to the load terminals. The shunt appears to be internal so you can't access it for the BCDC


That all seems very inefficient if it works at all for what you describe. But I don't have one, just looking at the manual