Emergency over but any insights for the future?
Your educated insights for future reference will be appreciated, it was the most bizarre error I have ever come across in 10 years.
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Yesterday late afternoon I noticed for no apparent reason my Amp Draw was up, way up.
Drove to a couple of clients in the evening & at 11pm noticed my SOC was at 88% from just 5 hours after a 100% SOC earlier.
Usually in a 12 hour period from 8pm to 6am it would never fall below 90% with different draws in place..
In fact, the Amps being used/Current was as high as 6.5amps-7.25.
Normally even with a couple of lights on, the fridge cycling, the Fantastic Fan, etc it would never pull more than 3.5amps.
Tried switching off the Roadtrek OEM Battery Cut Off at the Switch & on again.
Tried starting & running the Generator to see if it would disconnect/dislodge this huge draw.
Tried pulling each fuse out individually but even when I did that to the fridge fuse, it would drop about 2-2.5amps but there was still a 3.88-4.04amp draw somewhere.
And then if I turned on the Inverter (again in the hope of disrupting the draw), the amp draw would run to 9, 10, 12amps.
Again, it has never ever done this before.
And the batteries are normally 22% by midnight & they were as hot as 28%.
(see screenshots)
Frustrated I drove 90 minutes to a place I trust but they were all off for the weekend I only discovered in the am.
This am in the time between 3am & 7am it used 28amp hours & got worse as I wasn't connected to any power & the sunlight took a while to hit the solar panels.
Finally around noon I managed to get a Mobile RV Guy who is supposed to be adept at Electrical and the FIRST THING HE DID WAS DISCONNECT ONE OF THE BATTERY TERMINALS to no avail.
Nothing really changed.
For 45 minutes we we were trying all kinds of things he suggested to no avail, in the middle of the day in full sun, even though my battery were reading100% now, there was barely any excess flow into the battery, it was going to cover this negative 5-7*amp draw according to my Victron BMV712 Meter.
*as high as 7amps when the fridge was on
We tried running the 110 volt Vacuum Cleaner, the Food Mixer, etc.
I am an Idiot when it comes to Electrical but even he, the Expert was nonplussed.
FINALLY HE TURNED THE ROADTREK BATTERY CUT OFF SWITCH to the OFF position in the Coach.
Suddenly everything returned to normal, there was excess amps coming from the solar into the battery & no mysterious draw.
He explained it as a Short/Whatever/Glitch in the system that somehow threw all the systems or most certainly the Meter, off.
I kept my questions to myself & was happy to be Normal again.
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Ladies & Gentlemen,
Do you have any insights into what happened?
Is it really that simple that some errant high current hit the system & caused everything to run haywire?
Is there a more eloquent description?
Tonight I did notice that the Pump when it is on will draw as much as 6amps but it was NOT on⁷ last night & this am, running in the background.
Could the pump unit circuit have been shorted/stayed in an on position but without being turned on?
I know the pump, when it runs, its noisy.
Have a suspicion that if he disconnected one of the Terminals & flipped the battery cut off & left both "off" at the same time, we might have found the answer earlier.
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