Hello all! I'm new to these forums, and the information I've found thus far has been outstanding in my conversion. I plan on posting pics of my bus later, but in the meantime, i'm running into a problem...

I bought a Trimetric 2030-rv to monitor my battery bank (Thanks, Handy Bob!), and everything was working perfectly for about a month. I noticed the other day that the amp usage reading was off: The meter was reading -3.0 amp (so a 3 amp draw) when I didn't have anything plugged in or turned on! Nothing on the VDC side of things (because nothing's hooked up yet!), and my inverter was turned off, so no VAC draws either. I disconnected all the postive cables coming off the battery bank (to the VDC panel and the inverter) to make sure. Still reading -3 amps. I had my electrical engineer friend, who helped me set up all my electrical systems, doublecheck with a multimeter, and it was reading as expected: 0.0 amps.

When I start turning stuff on, the change in amp draw changes in accordance to what that appliance is expected to draw. It's just that now the baseline with nothing running has changed.

So, I must ask, has anybody ever encountered incorrect battery monitor readings like this before, and how do I get this corrected? As far as I can tell, there's no reset for the amp draw readout on this Trimetric.

http://www.bogartengineering.com/sites/ ... Metric.pdf

If you haven't already looked at the troubleshooting guide you might take a peek. It seems to suggest bad wiring/connection, but it has other info in there.

You probably have a problem--a vampire load (something staying on) that you didn't know about, a stuck relay, shorted wire, bad connector, etc.

An ampmeter doesn't lose calibration.

My question to you is what type of inverter. Some Chinese made units have a lot of ghost loads in the off position. If your inverter has a circuit breaker that doesn't effect your Trimetric then switch it of and see.

Chuck