TM-2030 Technical Manual
6
5. As before, momentarily push both SELECT and RESET—three green lights will flash. Enter
your “battery capacity” in amp hours. If you do not know what your “battery capacity” is,
see below “How to determine battery system capacity. As before, the RESET button will
increase the numbers. Note that the display can’t show above 999, so above this you will see a
flashing decimal point. The flashing decimal point means “multiply the number by 1000.” . To
go down in this display, you will need to go all the way up to 9.99, (9990 amp hours) then down
to 10.
These numbers cause the Percent Full to reset to “100%” every time the battery is fully charged.
This occurs when the voltage exceeds the P1 value and the charging amps are less than P2
(expressed as a percent) times P3 (amp hours.) Refer to TM-2030 Users manual, Section 6.2 for
a comprehensive description of what these do.
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C1. How to determine program item P3: “battery system capacity” This is a number in
“amp hours” that indicates how much charge your batteries hold when they are fully charged. For “deep
cycle” batteries this number is specified by the battery manufacturer. Find the “capacity” in amp hours from
the manufacturer. If several different values of “capacity” are given, you can use the “20 hour discharge”
value. If you have only one battery then use that value in P3: It is more usual to have more than one battery
connected together as shown in Figure 1: Batteries A and B are connected “in series”. String A-B is then
connected “in parallel” with string C and D.
When combining batteries here’s how to calculate total amp hours:
When you put identical type batteries in series the amp hour of the series string is the same as the
amp hour rating of each single battery in the string. (Add the voltage of each for total volts.)
When you put them in parallel then you add the amp hours of each string or battery. (Total volts are
SAME as each.)
When you have batteries that are both in series and in parallel, first compute the amp hour of
EACH series string. Then add those together for as many series string as you have to get the total
value. Put this value in the “battery system capacity” (P3) in Table 1 on page 7. Values over 1000
amp hours will appear with flashing decimal point: e.g. 1.02 (decimal point flashing) means
1020 Amp hours.
C2. How to program your meter for the 100A/100mV shunt. If you are using the
100A/100mV shunt you must program the TM-2030 for this—otherwise the “amps” values will
show as ten times higher than they should. Follow these steps:
1. Hold SELECT switch until “P1” comes into display. Then release SELECT. If you miss the P1, hold SELECT
again .and it will come back around.
2. Push SELECT about 6 times to show “P7”.
3. Push SELECT and RESET both momentarily together—and release: 3 green lights should flash.
4. Push RESET a few times to change the display to “L3.”
5. Push SELECT several times until display shows “P11” It will probably show “Sh.H”.
6. Push SELECT and RESET both momentarily together—and release: 3 green lights should flash.
7. Push RESET once to change display to “Sh.L”
8. Push SELECT a number of times and you will be back to the normal display. Continue with step 7 above.
C3. Optional: Now or later you may wish to program P4, P5, P6. For information
about these, see TM-2030 User’s instructions, Table 2, page 6.
P4: Allows the main display to show “watts” instead of “amps”
P5: Sets up meter to let you know when too many days have elapsed since last full charge for your
batteries. Most useful for people that are continually using their batteries. Not as useful for people that
only occasionally use batteries such as many RV’ers or weekend cabin users.
P6: Set up a timer to remind you to equalize your batteries at some set number of days.