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.

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%.

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.

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.

Beautiful !! Everything works as advertised. Install tip.... be sure to unscrew and insert red + wire into green block BEFORE mounting it to the wall. Trust me on this one..theres not enough room to get end of wire in. Other than that this is a great monitor. Have it hooked up to both - wires coming off 100amp hr lifepos at the B- side. Then a jumper from other end to - busbar. Followed the calibration instructions and all is good. No more guessing where batteries are at either during use or while charging. Super simple and a great value compared to others that do the same thing for alot more $

This one really works. I have tried a couple of others. They did not work well. I saw some review that said it was hard to set up. I found it easy. I have a 4 group 27 deep cycle battery pack, smart charger and an inverter generator. I have a 3000 watt inverter for offgrid camping. I can only use 50% of my battery pack 380 ahs. I need a meter that will alert me when the pack gets to 190 ahs. This unit will do just that. I have used it for a few times. No problems at all. Just make sure to wire the battery pack the right way. Take the ground from one end of the pack. Then take positive flow from the other end of the pack.

Super nice, High quality and packed with features. Installed in minutes. Like the display very much. It lights up when battery being drained and goes into sleep mode when it's not.

Works it should

Finally, I can see what my battery is actually doing and what state it's in. I installed this meter in my travel trailer to provide more accurate information than the trailer's useless battery meter. That meter measured in 1/3 power increments which drove me crazy...what's that suppose to tell me! I love this Renogy meter because it provides lots of info on the batteries current state in volts, and amp hours remaining based on what you programmed in during initial set up. It will also show you battery usage info i.e amps and watts being drawn or gained if your battery is being charged. Two of the most useful info it has are percentage of power left and time to depletion if the rate of consumption remains the same. It was very easy to install and setup...two thumbs up from me, just what I was looking for : )

Bem acabado, gostei

Items works well very happy

Excellent batt monitor I put it in travel trailer with renogy 2000 watt inverter

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.