Balancing Trace SW4024 Inverters

[davidbrady]

If you go into menu 4 (meters) and look at the "Inverter/Charger Amps AC" (first item) you may see one of your inverters has negative amps while the other has positive. Negative amps means the inverter is powering AC loads and the batteries are being discharged. Positive amps means the inverter is charging the batteries. It seems odd to me to have one inverter sinking amps into the batteries while the other inverter is drawing amps from the batteries. If you want to fix this go into menu 10 (Battery Charging) and dial back the "Set Float Volts DC" on the inverter showing Positive Amps. This will shift the burden of charging to the other inverter.

For example, my inverters showed -2 Amp and 4 Amp. This is a net 2 Amps of charging current. By adjusting my float voltage level down a tenth from 26.6 to 26.5 I shifted the charging on to the other inverter and now both my inverters read 1 Amp for a net of 2 Amps of charging current. This is also good for balancing your current draw on each leg. When you have a mismatch; i.e., negative on one inverter and positive on the other, effectively what's happening is you're shifting current from one leg to the other. If you pop a shore power CB because of excessive draw on one leg you can play this trick to balance the load across both legs.