Problem Phantom 30A DC drain on house batteries in 2023 New Aire

[MarkMaxPayne]

I ran into this on my 2023 New Aire last night with Lithionics LiFePO4 batteries. During a 5 hour drive I ran my air conditioning off my inverters to keep the rig cool. This ran the batteries down to 51% SOC. After I parked in my spot I then plugged into shore power I checked on how the recharging was going a few hours later. They were at 100% but the chargers were still in Bulk charger mode. I checked a couple of hours later and still in bulk charging mode. I went to SilverLeaf and turned off both chargers. That's when I noticed the DC side of things now claimed I was sucking over 30A out of the house batteries. I verified I was on 120AC shore power and that the inverters were in Standby mode. I wasn't able to track down that huge DC vampire drain. After several attempts of trying to diagnose and resetting things one at a time (including the Xantrex inverter/chargers) I was still showing this phantom DC drain out of the house batteries. I went for a cold reboot of everything. I turned off the inverters, disconnected the chassis battery, turned off the Lithionics batteries, and unplugged from 120VAC shore power. After five minutes of no power going through anything I started by reconnecting the batteries, turning the inverters back on, and then replugging into 120VAC shore power. Things came back fine after that hard reset, no more bulk charging (was in Float mode) and no more phantom 30A DC drain.
Unfortunately the factory Xantrex inverter/chargers just don't provide the data that the Victron ones do and the only data I have is from the SilverLeaf panel. I don't know what got them into this strange situation, but the hard reset was the only thing that seemed to resolve it.

Best,
-Mark

 

[Neal]

Weird. Sounds like the inverters didn't pick up the shore power and kept drawing from the house batteries.

 

[Neal]

Are you able to update firmware on your components such as inverters?

 

[MarkMaxPayne]

That's what I was thinking. Even though SilverLeaf claimed the inverters were back in normal standby mode and that I had 120VAC shore power. However, for the batteries to charge to 100% SOC that would mean it was inverting and charging at the same time, no? Didn't know that was possible from the Xantrex inverter/chargers.

Also, I'll have to check on firmware versions and updates. This morning things seem to be working again...

Best,
-Mark

 

[Richpatty]

30amp is a huge “phantom” load. It had to be going somewhere. Did you try knocking one breaker off at a time?

 

[MarkMaxPayne]

30amp is a huge “phantom” load. It had to be going somewhere. Did you try knocking one breaker off at a time?

Given the late hour last night I did not. My brain was trying to figure out that much of a DC drain (according to SilverLeaf) and I didn't think to go through AC breakers one by one. Even though SilverLeaf claimed both Xantrex inverter/chargers were charging and in standby mode, allowing the 120VAC shorepower to pass through) I am wondering now if one of them was actually inverting instead and/or SilverLeaf was confused...

 

[Richpatty]

OK. Keep us posted...really weird. It is harder when you have to depend on the Silverleaf interface to see what is going on (something I do not have nor have any experience with).

Could it have been charging and the SOC was not accurate (100%) at the time?

 

[Scotttkd2]

Sounds like your AC may have still been connected to battery power and not the AC when you got plugged in.

 

[Richpatty]

An Air conditioner would pull about 15amp AC....unless we are talking about 30amp of DC, which would represent a smaller AC load.

30Amp at 12v would equal only 350 watts AC (according to a calculator).