Espar bunk heater low voltage cut off

[ChanceMaster]

Our new Cascadia came with an excellent Espar bunk heater and state of the art control module. D1000.

The heater was cutting off a few times a night due to "low voltage" cut off, necessitating pushing the reset button a few times a night to get the bunk heater working again.

This YouTube video shows how to get into the parameter menu of the controller to be able to fix that problem.

Reset perimeters on Espar D1000 bunk heater - YouTube

 

[Turtle]

12.2 volts is 50% depth of discharge on a battery. Going down below 12.2 volts reduces the life of the batteries. 12.0 volts is 75% discharged. So, if you are changing the low voltage cutoff to less than 12.2 volts, you are reacting to a symptom of weak, or undercharged batteries, or of batteries already nearing their life cycle. Just so you know.

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[ChanceMaster]

12.2 volts is 50% depth of discharge on a battery. Going down below 12.2 volts reduces the life of the batteries. 12.0 volts is 75% discharged. So, if you are changing the low voltage cutoff to less than 12.2 volts, you are reacting to a symptom of weak, or undercharged batteries, or of batteries already nearing their life cycle. Just so you know.

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Turtle,
Thanks for that info. Your reply is really appreciated. I have now set the start @ voltage to 12.2 V on the parameters of the generator control module. I had set it earlier today to 11.8 V. I have read many of your posts and believe you to be the " go to guy" on EO for mobile electrical questions.

The inverter and generator on our truck have a large amount of settings and parameters, VERY confusing to someone like me with little mechanical or electrical knowledge.

Even reading the manuals was confusing, I think we are very close to dialing everything in. Thanks again.

 

[Turtle]

The shallower you discharge the batteries the linger they will last. If you could discharge only 10% and then recharge, they'd last a ridiculously long time because they will have thousands of discharge/charge cycles in them. But that's hardly practical for most applications. Regularly discharging them 75% or more is great, because you don't have to recharge them as often, but that dramatically decreases the overall life of the batteries because the deeper you discharge them the fewer discharge/charge cycles they'll have. 50% depth of discharge is the best compromise between available energy and the number of discharge cycles a battery can provide during its lifetime. But you can go down well below 50% once in a while, not that big a deal.

Setting the generator to automatically come on at 12.2 volts is the right move. It'll keep the batteries alive and kicking for much longer. Just make sure they get fully recharged when you start charging them.

Just yesterday I ran across a Blog entry over at Expedite Now by a brilliant author that addresses how batteries die, and ways to help prevent that premature death.

 

[str8trk]

Our new Cascadia came with an excellent Espar bunk heater and state of the art control module. D1000.

The heater was cutting off a few times a night due to "low voltage" cut off, necessitating pushing the reset button a few times a night to get the bunk heater working again.

This YouTube video shows how to get into the parameter menu of the controller to be able to fix that problem.

Reset perimeters on Espar D1000 bunk heater - YouTube

Thanks for posting this information ChanceMaster .... I also have a nearly new truck and my Espar is doing the same thing. Glad you figured this out, the manual that came with the unit is useless.

 

[jamom123]

I have a carrier apu and it was doing something similar, I could turn it on and run it for as long as I wanted but when I would turn the heat on it would idle up and then die and say it was under voltage. It only did it a couple of times and it has been working fine ever since, I wonder if it had some kind of communication problem or something?

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