Review on 🔍 Enhanced Blue Sea Systems Add-A-Battery Kit: Optimize your Search! by Erick Hernandez

After much reading and calling Blue Sea Technical Support I am very impressed with this product and their support. I know others are concerned about the low voltage draw of the ACR block. The ACR unit consumes a small amount of power for a VERY long time and can drain the batteries it monitors. I spoke to Blue Sea Tech about this and they thought it took about 4 months just to sit around and watch the battery voltage before the voltage drop started causing starting problems. (Of course this depends on the condition of the battery and its size/value). However, if you speak to a tech about it, there are a few things you can do to disable ACR entirely. If you connect it as shown in the product image, you must first connect a small toggle switch to one of the three blade terminals on the device to turn it off. Or, if you're like me and want to know that everything turns off when you put your boat away, you can wire it up like I've shown in the attached image. By placing the ACR on the "Output side" of the switch, you can turn everything off when you turn off the main switch. This will allow the ACR to continue monitoring the batteries while you are using the boat and it will work properly. The only thing is, if you connect a charger to one of the batteries during storage, you should leave the main switch in the "on" position to allow the ACR to function and pass power from one battery to the other. Otherwise, with the main switch off, you would only be charging the one battery that the charger is connected to. The batteries are isolated from each other and from the ACR. When I spoke to the tech, I also mentioned that I was concerned about the unit's 120 amp rating when ACR was enabled. If there is a large voltage difference between the two batteries, there will be a surge of current through the ACR as it connects the two batteries. This 120 amps is a constant rating and the ACR will not turn on the circuit if the voltage difference is too large. This can happen when a battery is defective, has a bad cell, or is under an extremely high load and cannot hold a high enough voltage. In this case the ACR will shut down and try to isolate the batteries. In continuous operation, the ACR really only sees the total power that the generator can produce. In my case it's about 100 amps, so a 120 amp ACR block will do. The product itself is very solid and works perfectly. I had a Pergo Basic 1, 2, 1+2, off switch on my boat and I got tired of having to think about turning the switch to 1 at anchor and back to 1+2 when sailing. However, none of this is required. Just turn on the main switch when I'm loading all that stuff and turn it off when we put it away. SIMPLE SIMPLE SIMPLE.